Why is Financial Education important?

Financial capability is an important life skill for everyone and is becoming more important as people are faced with increasingly complex financial decisions. Life events that involve financial choices, such as setting up a home, starting a family, planning for retirement, and many everyday decisions, have a direct impact on an individual's wellbeing. Today we see a more flexible labour market, where lifelong learning, short term contracts, and greater longevity all have serious implications for how we undertake financial planning.
We need to equip young people with the skills required to deal with these decisions and help them to avoid the debt trap which affects so many people in the UK. When people are trapped in a cycle of financial exclusion they are unable to access many financial products and services.
The way in which we manage our money is rapidly changing from the point of view of young people, for example, when we go shopping we are more likely to pay with ‘plastic’ than pay with cash, and the role of cash may be unclear with cash coming from the supermarket till as ‘cash-back’ while paying for the week’s groceries.
Managing money is one of the most important and challenging features of everyday living. People need to: