Financial Literacy

Albermarle

GazzaBloom said:

alleycat` said:

I do find that regardless of how intelligent the person there are certain financial systems people come into contact with that are, in my opinion, deliberately designed to be as impenetrable as possible.

Pensions are a classic example of something that's important but are an utter minefield to negotiate. This is why i found Malthusian post particularly amusing and sad at the same time.

Utility bills as well. I spent a couple of hours with a spreadsheet a few years ago (when the world was normal) trying to figure out if switching my energy provider was actually beneficial or not and by how much. It took some doing when trying to figure out usage, standing charges and price per Mwh but I got there in the end.

How is a pensioner with no knowledge of spreadsheets supposed to make head or tail of it? 

Having been through the same exercise a couple of times, I also wondered how 90% of the population could work it out. 

ChilliBob

I watched the video before the thread. Tbh I think it's more one you'd forward on to mates than pay much attention to yourself if you're subscribed to Ben Felix.

I whole heartedly agree about education on this. It wasn't something I received from school really, some from my folks, then I think I sort of had a natural gravitation to it.

One thing though - I don't think I'm super hot on it, I always think I can improve - right now looking into bonds more for example. Which plays well onto his 'those who think they're brilliant probably aren't'.. Well, to crudely paraphrase.

Oh and I do find Ben's video's hard watching compared to say James Shack or Ramin. A bit too monotone and rapid! 

Beddie

GazzaBloom said:

Utility bills as well. I spent a couple of hours with a spreadsheet a few years ago (when the world was normal) trying to figure out if switching my energy provider was actually beneficial or not and by how much. It took some doing when trying to figure out usage, standing charges and price per Mwh but I got there in the end.

How is a pensioner with no knowledge of spreadsheets supposed to make head or tail of it? 

Most people would use Uswitch or similar - takes two minutes. It won't be 100% accurate, but it's close enough not to matter.

Daliah

Anyone here ever did the Academoney course? https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2020/05/mse-launches--academoney--financial-education-course-with-the-op/

Malthusian

alleycat` said:

Pensions are a classic example of something that's important but are an utter minefield to negotiate. This is why i found Malthusian post particularly amusing and sad at the same time.

It is also an example of something that is completely pointless to teach to kids in any greater depth than a 10-minute Assembly talk, because the system will have changed dramatically by the time it becomes relevant to them.

Albermarle

Beddie said:

GazzaBloom said:

Utility bills as well. I spent a couple of hours with a spreadsheet a few years ago (when the world was normal) trying to figure out if switching my energy provider was actually beneficial or not and by how much. It took some doing when trying to figure out usage, standing charges and price per Mwh but I got there in the end.

How is a pensioner with no knowledge of spreadsheets supposed to make head or tail of it? 

Most people would use Uswitch or similar - takes two minutes. It won't be 100% accurate, but it's close enough not to matter.

The last time I tried to use USwitch and similar (a couple of years ago) when there were plans in the air for increasing prices, the results were very confusing, when compared to my own calculations. After some more digging the reason was that the apparently big discounts on offer, were from suppliers using their current tariffs against the future planned increased tariff from my current supplier. Even though their oen tariffs were due to go up. So totally misleading and could have caused someone to switch, only to find a couple of months later had saved nothing , or were even paying more.
I vaguely remember there was some stuff in the media about it at the time and maybe the practice was stopped.
However the moral of the story is that you can not have 100% faith in these comparison sites, as it is in their interest for you to switch.

Daliah

Malthusian said:

alleycat` said:

Pensions are a classic example of something that's important but are an utter minefield to negotiate. This is why i found Malthusian post particularly amusing and sad at the same time.

It is also an example of something that is completely pointless to teach to kids in any greater depth than a 10-minute Assembly talk, because the system will have changed dramatically by the time it becomes relevant to them.

I disagree entirely. There is a huge amount pupils should be thought about pensions. Firstly, the need to start pension planning and contributions early on in working life, and the need to review/monitor on an annual basis. Secondly, the massive differences between state pensions and works or private pensions. Thirdly, the general principles of investing vs saving. And lastly, the need to keep an eye on potential changes in pension legislation - e.g. works pension schemes, state pension age increases, tax treatment of pensions, ISA vs pension etc etc. And perhaps also about pension scams - though this could be covered by general education about scams.