Debts & Loans

The government is abandoning its golden rules and advocating spending. Meanwhile banks and retailers are chasing teenagers' money. Are we doing enough to teach younger people how to avoid debt and shore themselves up for the future?

With 10,000s of kids facing ever-increasing debt piles with higher and higher interest rates, many still don't appear to realise that credit card debt can take longer to pay off than a mortgage.

And first time buyers are looking to borrow mortgages on terms of 35 years or more with many not really understanding how much it will cost or the possible impact of rising interest rates in the future.

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg tells us today that one family is being turfed out onto the street every eleven minutes as the lenders take possession of their homes. But at the same time pop stars and football players are pushed in our faces to encourage spending at every opportunity.

And finance companies and analysts alike are pointing out that credit cards could turn out to be as important a crisis as subprime 



In these troubled financial times, 'saving' still remains a dirty word and headlines everywhere suggest that saved money isn't safe.

So how are we to going to teach young people – a key market for big business and traditionally future averse – how to avoid the mistakes we have made?

The government's attempts to teach personal finance in the maths curriculum has been criticised as apparently it isn't effective. Even the FSA says so.



But while business leaders are being encouraged to manage content in secondary academies and Nationwide building society is teaching citizens advice volunteers about personal finance, shouldn't we be doing more to make sure that in the coming period of austerity the mantras of recent times are not passed on?

'Never a lender or a borrower be' seems a much more appropriate slogan for our times.

It is not one that is going to get much of a following though, I fear.