We teach quadratic equations to teenagers who will never knowingly use one, and we send those same teenagers into the world unable to work out the true cost of a credit card. That isn’t an accident of the syllabus. It’s a choice, and it’s the wrong one.
The three things that actually matter
If I could put one lesson into every school, it wouldn’t be budgeting spreadsheets. It would be an intuitive feel for three forces:
- Compounding, so that “small and early” stops sounding like a consolation prize.
- Tax, so that a headline salary or a “0% finance” deal can be read for what it really is.
- Debt, so that the difference between borrowing to build something and borrowing to spend becomes obvious.
Everything else — apps, hacks, products — is decoration on those three.
Why it doesn’t get taught
Partly it’s that money is treated as slightly rude to discuss, so it never becomes a subject in its own right. Partly it’s that the people designing curricula often find this material as unfamiliar as their students do. And partly, uncomfortably, there are industries that do rather well out of the general fog.
What “good” would look like
Not a qualification. A set of instincts. A school-leaver who hesitates before a “buy now, pay later” button not because they were told to, but because they can feel the shape of the deal. Who reads a payslip and understands where the money went. Who knows that time is the one advantage the young have and the one thing they can’t buy back.
That’s the version of financial literacy I care about — less exam, more reflex.
Who's writing
I'm a senior manager at a UK accountancy firm, with a particular interest in construction and inheritance tax — and, off the clock, a parent of three under three. Carried Forward is where I write about money, work, and the decisions that shape both, in plain English and without the jargon.