Young Brits ‘pay for lack of financial education’

Many of the UK’s young consumers end up in financial trouble because of a lack of money-related education at an early age, it has been claimed.

Wendy van den Hende, chief executive of the Personal Finance Education Group (Pfeg), insists that children do develop an understanding of the importance of money, but often are not given the tools they need to avoid debt management problems.

The aim of Pfeg is to encourage the introduction of financial education at an early age to help British children foster their good intentions with regards to saving and avoiding over indebtedness.

“Although young people have all sorts of exposure to finance in all sorts of ways, they are very good consumers, a lot of them have jobs outside of school, and they are very sophisticated in all sorts of ways, but they are not actually taught about finance,” said Ms van den Hende.

“There seems to be an expectation that they will pick things up by some kind of osmosis, which tends not to happen.”

A report from Skipton Building Society recently claimed that the level of borrowing among family members is on the increase across the UK.