Lack of financial nous amongst young people

Yakubu22

Degenerate wrote: »

You're asking us to believe in this "paradox", when the simpler explanation is that she just isn't very clever at all.

Well, your "very clever girl" clearly lacks these comprehension skills, as your first post made clear. So a "very clever" 18 year-old, taught by you, lacks the comprehension skills of an 11 year-old. Maybe you're just not a very good teacher?

I think there are many people (young and old) who are "bright" and very intelligent but have no common sense. I know one friend in particular who got a 1st at Uni and is tremendously knowledgeable in his chosen field. He also is very eloquent, well read, and comes accross very intellectual. HOWEVER he can be very stupid, like making daft decisions without proper thought over the consequence. A funny example was while living together in Student digs, i walked into the Kitchen to find him washing dog turd off his shoes over the Kitchen Sink (full of plates). I went mad and he was embarrassed. But it never struck him at the time that he was being a fool.

Slightly off subject but my point is that Common Sense and being a good Student are two different things. A lot of entrepaneurs were poor students but had common sense in abundance (which helped them in Business).

bendix

I don't see how anyone can be considered 'bright' or intelligent without having commons sense.

Being booksmart is pointless unless you have basic living skills and common sense to back it up. I don't care how superficially intelligent the student in question is in terms of passing exams or understanding scientific theorem. If she genuinely thought (or, worse, didn't have the mental curiosity to question) her bank had simply given her £500 for free then there is only one word that describes her.

Idiot.

Yakubu22

bendix wrote: »

I don't see how anyone can be considered 'bright' or intelligent without having commons sense.

I think this is the point. Many people are well educated, studious, well read, and hold excellent qualifications. However they seem to lack another form of intelligence called common sense.

Lokolo

Yakubu22 wrote: »

I think this is the point. Many people are well educated, studious, well read, and hold excellent qualifications. However they seem to lack another form of intelligence called common sense.

Also there is a difference to studying and learning than just rememebering.

My friend who did A Level Business (as well as me), and got a A. Who is at uni studying busines. Asked me what break even was.

Wow.

Degenerate

It's a false conclusion anyway, this case has nothing to do with the supposed "book smart" vs common sense dichotomy. If you're "book smart", you're capable of reading and understanding the terms of a financial product. That's something that lives much more in the realm of "book smarts" that many people with common sense find difficult.

Pennywise

Isn't a lot of the problem down to a very short attention span? I've found that a lot of the younger generation just can't concentrate or think about anything for more than a few minutes.

I run a small accountancy practice and have started shortening my standard appointment slots from an hour down to 30 minutes for younger clients because you can see them glazing over and you know that we're all wasting our time as they've lost all sign of comprehension. For new business start ups when we've got a lot to discuss, I've found that I need 3 or 4 sessions with younger people when a single session would be fine for someone in their 40's or 50's.

Of course, this is a generalisation, but in most cases, I've found quite startling trends and differences between the generations.

In particular, I've found the majority of youngsters really struggle with contracts and terms & conditions. They seem to give up on life about 1/3 of the way through and just don't read the rest which is obviously very dangerous. Compare that to more mature people who tend to be able to scim through the document to pick up and concentrate on the important and relevant bits and gloss over the generality clauses.

I wonder if the tendancy to break down subjects, topics and exams into "bite sized" chunks has reduced our younger generation's attention span and ability to absorb large amounts of information in one go? If so, this is very dangerous if they can't properly review and make informed decisions as to what are legal documents.

I've also noticed that it is getting more difficult to find the original laws and regulations in most areas of public life. As a case in point, I recently had cause to delve deep into the laws and regulations surrounding disposal of trade waste. Now, there are loads of sites on the internet and loads of leaflets about this, but most are in very simple general terms with very little technical detail. I finally found the underlying legislation and was quite amazed at just how different it was - there was so much detail that was just "glossed over" in the official pamphlets and websites and quite a lot of what purported to be "rules and regs" in the official publications that just wasn't part of the underlying legislation at all. As a result, I discovered that I had the backing of the law itself to fight a case against my local council in which I won after they backed down - they were basing their case on the official publications and it seems had never bothered to read the legislation on which they believed their own interpretation of the rules was based and despite repeatedly trying to make them understand, they seemed completely unable to read and digest what the law actually said.

Mr_Matey

Pennywise wrote: »

Isn't a lot of the problem down to a very short attention span? I've found that a lot of the younger generation just can't concentrate or think about anything for more than a few minutes.

I run a small accountancy practice and have started shortening my standard appointment slots from an hour down to 30 minutes for younger clients because you can see them glazing over and you know that we're all wasting our time as they've lost all sign of comprehension. For new business start ups when we've got a lot to discuss, I've found that I need 3 or 4 sessions with younger people when a single session would be fine for someone in their 40's or 50's.

Of course, this is a generalisation, but in most cases, I've found quite startling trends and differences between the generations.

In particular, I've found the majority of youngsters really struggle with contracts and terms & conditions. They seem to give up on life about 1/3 of the way through and just don't read the rest which is obviously very dangerous. Compare that to more mature people who tend to be able to scim through the document to pick up and concentrate on the important and relevant bits and gloss over the generality clauses.

I wonder if the tendancy to break down subjects, topics and exams into "bite sized" chunks has reduced our younger generation's attention span and ability to absorb large amounts of information in one go? If so, this is very dangerous if they can't properly review and make informed decisions as to what are legal documents.

I've also noticed that it is getting more difficult to find the original laws and regulations in most areas of public life. As a case in point, I recently had cause to delve deep into the laws and regulations surrounding disposal of trade waste. Now, there are loads of sites on the internet and loads of leaflets about this, but most are in very simple general terms with very little technical detail. I finally found the underlying legislation and was quite amazed at just how different it was - there was so much detail that was just "glossed over" in the official pamphlets and websites and quite a lot of what purported to be "rules and regs" in the official publications that just wasn't part of the underlying legislation at all. As a result, I discovered that I had the backing of the law itself to fight a case against my local council in which I won after they backed down - they were basing their case on the official publications and it seems had never bothered to read the legislation on which they believed their own interpretation of the rules was based and despite repeatedly trying to make them understand, they seemed completely unable to read and digest what the law actually said.

Too long. I gave up about 1/3 of the way through. Just kidding

I think a lot of the problem is information overload. Terms and conditions are the perfect example. Who reads T&C when joining a website? Who reads the masses of information given when opening a bank account? I used to work in a bank and I throw it all straight in the bin. But I do ask loads of questions throughout the process.

I point the finger at lawyers for this, as excessive compliance means the end product is unreadable. Young people are taught these days that T&C is a pile of junk that can be ignored.

Same with financial products to a large extent, and it's not just young people. I did some work in financial planning and met many financially illiterate, but otherwise successful older people. I think most people see finance related topics as "boring", and only try to understand things in more detail when they realise it's important. Young people often haven't made that realisation yet.

It's the same for your accounting I bet. It takes longer with young people as they are new to it and don't yet see the importance of it all.

PasturesNew

Intelligence is working out how to easily kill the spider that's out of reach on the ceiling without it dropping on your head or scuttling away....

Academic qualification will tell you how long the spider can live under the sofa after he's scuttled off - and how many babies it might be reproducing under there until you deal with it.

PasturesNew

Pennywise wrote: »

short attention span...
I run a small accountancy practice and have started shortening my standard appointment slots from an hour down to 30 minutes

To be honest, an hour is a long time. It might be worth looking into learning styles. There are basically three learning styles ... if I listened to you for an hour nothing would go in because I need to have it written down too. I perform best when something's written down (or I can write it down) and then annotated.

I can't retain the wholly spoken word.

lynzpower

In particular, I've found the majority of youngsters really struggle with contracts and terms & conditions. They seem to give up on life about 1/3 of the way through and just don't read the rest which is obviously very dangerous. Compare that to more mature people who tend to be able to scim through the document to pick up and concentrate on the important and relevant bits and gloss over the generality clauses.

Is this experience that does this, or a new modern youth, that is obsessed ( apparently) with bebo, twitterings and txt spk. Cant be bothered with writing full words, apparently society ( ie adults!) think this is OK, we collude with this, we buy the kids mobile phones at 7 so they dont get bullied etc, we decide instead of text books we are going to educate our children on touch screens or online in bite size chunks. Its OK for kids to zone out of lessons etc, not do homework. I heard on radio 4 the other day theaverage GCSE A grade is a mere 50%. Whne I was at school 50% would have been a major failure in my family! ( i dont know if this is true or not but it was someone from the NUT on radio 4)

Or is it that once you hit 30, youve been burned once by not reading the T&Cs and from her on in, you make sure you read everything twice over to make sure you dont get stung again?