• Despite this, 83% of UK parents have tried to teach their children about money management.
• Over a third of parents (37%) did so because they don’t believe their children receive enough education on this at school.

16, August, 2023, LONDON –

A new white paper from personal finance comparison site finder.com has found that less than half of UK parents (48%) are confident in their ability to teach their children about fundamental money topics.

The study, which surveyed parents of children at either Primary or Secondary school level, revealed that 83% of parents have tried to teach their children about money management. However, when asked about how confident they were in their ability to teach key money topics, under half (48%) of parents described themselves as confident in this area, and just 14% of these parents would say they are ‘very confident’.

On the other hand, more than a quarter of parents in the UK (27%) would describe themselves as ‘unconfident’ in teaching their children about fundamental finance topics. A further 26% of UK parents said that they were neither ‘confident nor unconfident’.

Finder.com spoke with Mat Megens, founder and chief consumer architect at HypeJar, who commented:

“Children absorb so much from their parents. If a parent isn’t confident, a child will sense that and will be less likely to follow that parent’s advice. Get your own financial house in order before giving advice to other people.”

Confident or not, the lack of financial education at UK schools is forcing parents to step in

As many call to question the quality of financial education for children in the UK, this study found that over a third (37%) of UK parents have tried to teach their children about money management because they don’t believe their children receive enough education around this topic in school.

Louise Hill, co-founder and CEO of kids banking app, GoHenry said:

“Education has borne the brunt of the government’s budget for consecutive years. This has put pressure on parents and businesses to play a greater role in teaching younger generations about the skills needed to effectively manage their money.”

Other popular reasons for parents in the UK deciding to teach their children about money management include the cost of living crisis (41%), because their parents taught them about managing money when they were children (23%) and because they were never taught about money management themselves and they therefore want their children to have a better understanding (22%).

Dr Lei Chen, senior lecturer in accounting and finance at Loughborough University said:

“The cost of living crisis will affect people’s financial awareness, their needs for financial products and services and their financial capability. In such a situation, it’s important to improve an individual’s financial capacity, to empower them with healthier financial behaviour. It’s even more critical for schools and the wider society to support vulnerable children during the cost of living crisis, ensuring financial inclusiveness and well-being.”

You can find the full report titled “Financial education: Are parents equipped to fill the gap?” here: https://www.finder.com/uk/financial-education-are-parents-equipped-to-fill-the-gap

Commenting on the findings, Kate Steere, deputy editor at Finder.com and author of the report said:

“The need for meaningful, practical financial education for children in the UK is clear. Schools are stretched, so it’s falling to parents to teach their children about money. However, as our research found, most parents have low confidence about key financial topics. Collectively we need to develop a programme that’s delivered effectively in schools, but also supported by parents, businesses and the third sector. And parents need reliable resources to enable them to teach money confidently at home.”

Methodology:

Finder commissioned Censuswide on 07/2023 to carry out a nationally representative survey of parents with children attending either Primary or Secondary school in the UK. A total of 1,007 parents were questioned throughout Great Britain, with representative quotas for gender, age and region.