Financial Capability Week an initiative created by The Money Advice Service. It is a themed week which raises awareness about the importance of financial capability.

Financial education has been compulsory for secondary school students since 2014, the problem is only around half of secondary schools have to follow the national curriculum, as academies and free schools are exempt.

An investigation into financial education by PFEG (Personal Finance Education Group) found that existing financial education across schools in the UK is ad hoc at best, with 55% of teachers they surveyed reporting that they had never taught it before.

This week at ClearDebt we conducted a survey of our staff, encompassing five generations, to see just how competent their financial education was and how it has affected their lives.

Generational differences

The Money Advice Service concluded that, out of all the generations still with us, millennials aged between 25-34 were the most likely to be struggling with debt.

One in four millennials (2.1 million) are currently living with a debt problem, scary statistics when you consider the bottom end of that scale have only had access to credit for seven years.

Hardly surprising though, when you consider how the world has changed significantly over the last thirty years in its attitudes to borrowing and lending.

However, it’s not just credit agreements that we are struggling with now. The never ending rise in the cost of energy means many people, from the young right up to the elderly, are now struggling to keep up with energy payments.

Add that to the difficulty of managing the cost of water and council tax too and you can see why low paid income workers, people who receive benefits and the elderly have felt the pinch so harshly.

How does the debt industry compare with Joe Public?

In conjunction with icount Money we have conducted a series of surveys on the general public to compare the results against the debt industry.

Have we learned from the mistakes of others, or have we followed a similar trend to the rest of the UK?

You can see how we have got on throughout the week. We’ll be looking at the Baby Boomer generation first.

See you there!