MSE News: Major strategy launched to improve financial skills

Playing_with_Fire_2

colsten wrote: »

It's ironic that your post follows straight after Goldiegirl's one. If more people assumed responsibility for themselves and didn't point at others for their own misery, many if not most of them would be significantly better off.
In addition, the UK benefit budget would be massively lower and those that genuinely need support would find it easier to get and keep it.

I agree with Goldiegirl's post, and with your comment that more personal responsibility would do more good for the majority than more benefits. I didn't echo those comments because I had nothing more to add. My concern is for those that genuinely need support. I see this as a cynical operation to take benefits from people who are unable to work/work more/earn higher wages, through no fault of their own, and then blame the ensuing poverty on poor financial management rather than the benefit cut.

I see horrendous waste of money and poor financial decision making everyday, and it annoys me. While there are plenty of people who get themselves into scrapes, and need to take responsibility for that; the genuinely needy shouldn't be penalised for the mistakes of others.

[I don't get tax credits.] I do feel for people who are in work, are currently entitled to tax credits, and have budgeted sensibly based on that expected income, and will now be thrown into a budget emergency, but can't even plan because no-one can tell what tax credit they will lose.

alexmi

colsten wrote: »

Similar applies to reading T&Cs. Too many people are proud of not only not reading T&Cs, but also shouting about it from the rooftops. The amount of questions posted on the MSE Forum by people who simply cba to look up the T&Cs is staggering.

Sure, some T&Cs are still totally unintelligible but especially banks have come a long way simplifying their terms.

Yeah, the banks' t&cs are nowhere near the worst or hardest to read. I have recently opened accounts with a couple of banks (Halifax and Santander) and the t&c documents and key facts documents are very straightforward and easy to understand, so to my mind there is no excuse for some of the things that some people seem to complain about when it was there in black and white to read before taking the product.

psmartp

I was good at maths in school, better than any other subject. Found maths arrigantly easy but English painfully boring & difficult to grasp. Im from England as well!!!! Iv still never read a book front to back & im mid 30's. My maths orientated brain wasnt enough to keep me from a life on the black list & my only saving grace is it ment i never ran up depts on many cards in the 90's. Now i feel ready to focus on the importants of life finance (i want & can afford a low morgage but not allowd ), but have a multitude of sins to sort in a credit history iv discovered actually ment something! Maths skills not the key in my view.