MoneySense believes that every young person deserves a solid financial education, and that it’s important to build good money habits early in life. That’s why we’ve continued to grow our library of free, impartial and informative resources to help teachers bring money lessons into schools, developed interactive games for children on the mymoneysense.com website, and published a range of advice and guides for parents. All these assets are designed to make it easier for teachers and parents to deliver valuable lessons that help young people make sense of money and build a better financial future.
In 2019, the Money and Pensions Service reported that only 44% of 11- to 17-year-olds felt confident managing their money. In addition to this, young adults have been hit hardest by the Covid-19 pandemic. This information led us to develop a new content hub on mymoneysense.com.
Launched in July 2021, ‘MoneySense for Young Adults’ is designed to help those in their late teens get to grips with their finances. With no-nonsense guides to financial terms as well as advice on budgeting, saving and managing debts, the hub has a different look and feel to those aimed at younger students.
We worked with 16-18-year-olds to find out their priorities and interests and this enabled us to use real-life situations that made the advice relevant for our audience. One such content series was ‘Money Diaries’, which saw a hand-picked selection of teens share their money stories as they juggle work, A-levels, apprenticeships and university.
The section has proved popular – accounting for a 10% share of traffic to the site within the first two months of launch. It will be updated with additional Money Diaries and ‘In Focus’ reports, which cover hot topics such as the rise in SMS scams. These will sit alongside existing advice and video content.
Covid continues to have an impact on schools, with many remaining closed for long periods, and visits from external volunteers still not advised or possible. MoneySense has continued to innovate with live online lessons and pre-recorded input from bank volunteers to ensure that our popular workshops in schools can take place without too much disruption.
Elsewhere, NatWest Group was confirmed as a Principal Partner of the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26), which takes place in Glasgow in November. This provided an excellent opportunity for MoneySense to engage young people on the ever-important issue of sustainability.
September saw the launch of the MoneySense Climate Savers competition in schools, in partnership with Top Trumps. We gave primary pupils aged 7-12 the chance to get their ideas featured at COP26 by designing a Top Trumps card showing an action they could take that could help save the planet, and potentially money too. The 26 winning cards will be included in a special Climate Savers edition of the popular card game, which will be distributed at COP26. Teachers could also win money to put towards environmentally sustainable projects at their schools.
At the heart of the competition was a suite of resources that would help teachers deliver a lesson to educate pupils on the links between finance and climate change. Pupils were then given Top Trump card templates and challenged to design a card showing a climate-positive action, scoring it for environmental impact, money-saving potential, ease and feel-good factor.
The competition is complemented by additional climate-themed resources for different age groups, including a teacher-led workshop for 16-18-year-olds, a ‘Climate detectives’ activity sheet for home-learning, and for 5-8 year olds, a ‘Virtual Assembly’ presented by Paralympian Ade Adepitan.
Links:
mymoneysense.com/climate-savers
Social media: