Life Lessons For Kids- Money Management

Posted on March 23, 2008 in Education, Women by admin

It was announced in the British press recently that children in the UK state education system were to be provided with tuition on basic life skills, including how to manage finance, pensions and insurance.

Some of us have been complaining for years that the school system in UK has woefully neglected the economical health of our young adults by omitting to teach them the fundamentals of check book management.

Imagine being thrown into college or university at the end of one’s school career, with a loan from the government in the form of a grant, which means that one is already at the receiving end of bank charges, and not being shown even a rudimentary level of how to go about managing the documentation such obligations entail.

Most of our kids manage quite well and by the end of their courses are as cheerfully in debt as everyone else, and likely to stay there for the foreseeable future. British banks are notorious for irresponsibly encouraging insolvency among young people. Even before their first formal examinations have been applied for the banks are sending trash mail through letterboxes, offering loans without security and including credit facilities that most of these kids have no chance in hell of paying.

It is time the credit departments of high street banks were effectively hand-cuffed and forbidden to enter into such cynical recruitment of lambs to the slaughter. Many of these kids plunge headlong into debt even before they have left high school and such a condition becomes a way of life by the time they eventually leave university.

It was recently pointed out that with a balance of only £3000 on an average credit card, the repayment of this amount, if the card holder paid only the minimum payment invoiced on their monthly invoice, would take forty years! Shocked? I was.

When you are young (the recollection of which for me involves both hands and a calculator), a long repayment period seems an easy solution to the urgency of a cash flow problem. Before your child leaves school, try to ensure a comprehensive study of basic finance is undertaken.

Jan Gamm writes reflections on life with an emphasis on world travel. She has lived in many countries and traveled extensively in the Far East, the Middle East, America, South America and throughout the South Pacific. She writes for fun and for money whenever she can manage it.

Tags: college, insurance, kids, lesson, management, money, pensions, university

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