Comments on: FSA Launches Personal Finance Site For 16-24 Year Olds

By: John

John — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:05:33 +0000

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.

By: Tristan

Tristan — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 15:15:29 +0000

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.

By: John

John — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 14:48:02 +0000

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.

By: Tristan

Tristan — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 09:21:29 +0000

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.