New research by Aviva says 1 in 4 UK families have less than £95 in savings

I'm not so sure, I mean you're right that giving much more of a focus to financing would be more beneficial, but I don't think it would be helpful to confine maths to being taught within a finance framework. Maths is very useful in a wider context - for example, knowledge of basic statistics is useful everywhere from making informed judgements on political policies or news stories to understanding the risks/benefits of a drug or treatment that your doctor suggests to you. Those things are also not prioritised by our current system though!

Maths as it is currently taught provides a good academic basing for anyone progressing into STEM subjects at university or as a career, but otherwise is mostly forgotten back to primary school level by everyone else. It's definitely a waste of an opportunity.

Oblomov Boblomov wrote:How do you learn how to pay tax? Watch it come out of your wage slip?

I appreciate a lot of people are squeezed, which is a separate issue, but if they have to be taught that spending more than they earn results in difficulty then I hope they never learn how to vote .

Unless you plan on becoming self-employed then you need to learn what you need to declare, what you can right off etc

shadow202 wrote:
Oblomov Boblomov wrote:How do you learn how to pay tax? Watch it come out of your wage slip?

I appreciate a lot of people are squeezed, which is a separate issue, but if they have to be taught that spending more than they earn results in difficulty then I hope they never learn how to vote .

Unless you plan on becoming self-employed then you need to learn what you need to declare, what you can right off etc

It certainly becomes more difficult in those circumstances, but that's not a bridge likely to be crossed by someone straight out of further education.

Oblomov Boblomov wrote:How do you learn how to pay tax? Watch it come out of your wage slip?

I appreciate a lot of people are squeezed, which is a separate issue, but if they have to be taught that spending more than they earn results in difficulty then I hope they never learn how to vote .

Watching tax come out of your wage slip isn't particularly difficult, but knowing in advance of first getting a job how much in general you should expect to pay in tax is a useful thing, especially for budgeting. A significant proportion of the workforce is self-employed and has to deal with their own tax returns. I would guess that a lack of knowledge around how tax works is a significant barrier to setting up your own business. Knowledge of tax bands and how the amount of tax varies with earnings would be informative - especially in a political sense and deciding if a policy change is one you would vote for or against. At the bottom end of the scale, for those most vulnerable to financial difficulties, knowing what tax relief is available etc. could make a big difference. And even just learning how the government actually uses tax - where the money goes and what it is spent on - would make for a better informed public when voting in elections (especially in putting the numbers involved into perspective, rather than everything just sounding big).

Sometimes spending more than you earn is a temporary necessity, or actually the best option - and learning the best way to avoid, mitigate or deal with those situations would I'm sure be beneficial. Knowing how loans work and arming people with the knowledge needed to decipher the jargon would help them pick the best option when looking for a loan, for example.

Basically it's easy to simplify personal financing into what sound like obvious rules, but the details are often confusing and surely better education could only be a good thing (unless you're a loan shark and/or the tories).

Everyone should be forced to read MoneySavingExpert quite frankly.

Thinking about some of the gooseberry fool we had to learn about at school - Greek mythology, endless hours of RE, etc - makes you wonder if that time couldn't be better spent learning about finance and politics, i.e. things that will actually be beneficial.

Anyway, this is an alarming statistic. I've always been cautious with money and save as much as I can, so can't imagine the situation (and find it quite a scary thought) where one big bill or being out of work leaves you in the gooseberry fool.

While it's true that some people genuinely can't seem to afford to put any money away and really are scraping by each month, far more people seem content with just frittering money away with little to no thought about the future or the concept of having a safety net. The justification seems to be "well you can't take it with you, lol!", and while that's true, some people seem to just go to the extreme. I know people in their 20s who have reasonable jobs and minimal outgoings (living with parents and no kids) yet have no pension set up, no savings, and count down to the days to the next pay cheque to be able to go shopping again. They say they want to save for a house, but go on multiple holidays a year and spend every weekend going shopping and drinking. Just blows my mind.

While more should be done to help people who really are struggling, so many people could help themselves by just being a bit more responsible. It's like with anything though; you can only show and tell people so much, be it in relation to money, health, politicial or environmental issues, etc - ultimately they're the ones who have to do someting, and most of the time people just can't be arsed.

Holpil wrote:You can always afford to save something.

I put away at least 1/3 of my pay each month, and use 0% credit cards for most non-essential purchases and average out the repayments. It's taken a while to learn my limits on this (and control my spending enough not to rack up huge amounts on credit cards that'll need a high monthly repayment even at 0% interest), so I'm working on clearing all of my outstanding credit cards, I've got 3 left to get through.

With some restraint I find it a better way to save as opposed to just spending a chunk of savings, as then your savings can continue to accumulate and you really get the mentality that the money should pretty much never be touched. Downside is it's easier to justify buying something you don't necessarily need too.

No, some people cant.

Apart from when I bought my house I am awful at saving money. Unless I am saving for a goal like a mortgage that gooseberry fool is getting spent.

I did at the start of the year go for one of those company sharesave schemes though that takes £50 a month out of my payslip directly. But I guarantee the day that 3 year thing is up I will find something important to spend it on. :lol:

But I suppose my bad habits isn't the point this is making, I've never gone hungry. I'm just an idiot.

The Buildings Society I work for goes to schools to promote savings, explains what a mortgage is and much more.

It's a relatively new thing we started doing a few years ago.

I would love to have it become part of the curriculum as I feel that children don't really learn enough about money.

I agree that this should be part of the curriculum. It's a very important life skill.

Corazon de Leon wrote:Far be it for me to point out the flaws of my employers' research but Blackburn, Burnley, Bolton, Grimsby, Blackpool and Wigan aren't cities to the best of my knowledge.

It's OK, it's The Independent's error. It's not even part of the Aviva report. The Independent must have just stuck that in there as they thought it relevant. It's a year-old list.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/ho ... 02181.html

Life is hard man, it's hard to save when your job has a gooseberry fool pay, you live alone and have kids to contribute towards too. I can barely afford to run two of my three Bentleys

How the other half live eh.

Thank god my city isn't listed there lolz. But its shocking and its a shame. I used to be the same and never saved my money. No idea where it all went.
But in the past 1.5 years or so I have been better and make sure I save a bit each month. I haven't saved much tbh but enough for to keep me ticking over for a bit if I lost my job.

I'm gooseberry fool at saving.

I do currently have quite a lot as I'm saving for a mortgage deposit, but that's the only time I've ever really saved. Me and the missus earn quite a lot, but with three kids and eye-watering childcare bills (a nursery place near me is now over £11k a year) there's rarely that much surplus to think about saving.

Also I like buying games and clothes and going out and having holidays and things.

Corazon de Leon

KKLEIN wrote:Everyone should be forced to read MoneySavingExpert quite frankly.

Martin Lewis is a decent starting off point but he's as fallible as anyone else when it comes to money saving advice; some of his insurance stuff just doesn't have any bearing on reality.

I don't read the insurance stuff, just the bank account stuff mainly, so would be interested to see where he's going wrong.

Lucien wrote:
Squinty wrote:I agree that this should be part of the curriculum. It's a very important life skill.

The closest we got at school was a story about squirrels. One squirrel kept his nuts and the other one ate his like a greedy strawberry floater, and the latter also didn't put any nuts into a nut bank, which affected the overall supply of pretend nuts.

And the moral of the story was that nobody can survive on just nuts and ought to diversify their diet?

Are there any nice places up north beginning with B?

Snowcannon wrote:Are there any nice places up north beginning with B?

Bergen?

Snowcannon wrote:Are there any nice places up north

FTFY

New research by Aviva says 1 in 4 UK families have less than £95 in savings

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