News John on 03 Jun 2008 07:55 am
FSA Launches Personal Finance Site For 16-24 Year Olds
I saw via MoneyWatch that the Financial Services Authority (FSA) has launched a new website - What About Money? - aimed at helping young adults (16-24) with their finances. According to the about page:
This site is aimed at 16-24 year olds, to help you better understand money issues. It is part of our National Strategy for Financial Capability, which aims to improve the financial capability of consumers in the UK.
It includes a series of ‘Life Stages Guides’ such as Getting on the road, Getting on the road and Going to university. Unfortunately however the advice seems rather thin consisting of a top 5 need to know and doesn’t actually seem to explain the financial instruments involved - which surely is where the FSA’s advice would be most useful. After that it just links out to a number of external sites, seeming to place more of an emphasis on rating them than providing guidance.
The site seems to have been designed to be as unpleasant on the eye as possible, so I couldn’t bring myself to read it all.
on 04 Jun 2008 at 10:21 am 1.Tristan said …
I have taken a quick look at the http://www.whataboutmoney.info and I agree with John, it’s an awful looking website which has made it impossible for me to actually spend a significant amount of time reading the information written on it.
Why on earth would the FSA spend good money on building a website that looks so awful? Do they really think that 16-24 year olds are so juvenile that they would enjoy reading a website that is black with white text - have they not seen FaceBook…? It’s a normal looking website with a massive appeal to the younger generation, why on earth didn’t they simply emulate the design styles used on FaceBook?
I would usually want to comment on the quality of the advice by the FSA, however, I can’t be bothered to strain my eyes for that long…I suspect 16-24 years old won’t either, so it looks like we’re in for another generation of financially incompetent idiots, which will probably lead to another credit crunch in the next decade.
on 04 Jun 2008 at 3:48 pm 2.John said …
To be fair I don’t think we can blame the credit crunch on 16-24 year old, or even the average man on the street and his (lack of) financial education. The real problem is the poor understanding of risk with the investment banking industry.
Quite how they ever managed to believe that lots of adverse credit mortgages was low risk I do not know.
on 04 Jun 2008 at 4:15 pm 3.Tristan said …
I would argue that there is a cause and effect situation with the credit crunch.
The cause is cheap credit, driven by low interest rates and irresponsible lending.
The effect is that borrowers have also been duped into thinking that credit will always be this easy to come by and this cheap. That has made people less bothered about having debt and defaulting on debt, as there has been for over a decade lots of adverts for debt consolidation, whatever your circumstances we’ll lend you money type lenders and loans.
That has led to a generation of chancers who spend today and think about paying it back tomorrow. If the next generation can get it into their heads to spend less money and save a little, without being so blasse about their finances, including the levels of debt they get into then if there is a credit squeeze in the future, it shouldn’t have such a pronounced effect.
on 04 Jun 2008 at 5:05 pm 4.John said …
I have to disagree with you Tristan, cheap credit is a symptom of the problem not the cause.
The cause is poor understanding of risk (or outright the ignoring risks) when trying to find higher profits within the investment banking community.