I wish the Daily Mail well with its campaign to have compulsory personal finance education introduced into schools.
That I was only ever taught how compound interest works, never that it is one of life’s most powerful forces, is one of the few regrets I have over my own education and having watched the early promise of an endowment policy erode to something somewhat less glamorous over 25 years, without an ounce of contrition from the company that provided it, I am on a personal mission to ensure that my own children are capable of investing their own money in future without recourse to the so-called financial services sector.
As to how much support – genuine support – the Mail can expect from the Government in its endeavour, however, I harbour serious doubts, for it is just a matter of days since revelations that our rulers are considering plans to penalise graduates who repay their student loans early.
What a message to send out. What better way to reinforce the mindset of an irresponsible, clueless age where money is concerned: an age in which bankruptcy is seen no longer as a cause for embarrassment but as a genuine tool in financial planning. An age so clueless that one muppet interviewed by Radio 1′s Newsbeat yesterday was clamouring for an end to cuts because they haven’t achieved anything, as if a double-dip recession is something you see off in a week.
Shamelessly, the Coalition is poised to add its own six penn’orth to this madhouse: dare to display some precocious thrift where your student loan is concerned, be savvy enough to realise that the first rule in any sensible financial strategy must be to cut debt, and you won’t be encouraged or supported, you’ll be fined.
It’s okay for the Government to cut deep and fast in trimming its own debt, apparently, but you plebs in higher education must wait. Turns out that George Benson and Whitney Houston were wrong; children aren’t our future in the eyes of this shower but cash cows to be milked ad infinitum.
Shame on them and to the newspaper that would spit into this wretched wind, the best of British.
