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This article is part of the FT’s Financial Literacy and Inclusion Campaign
At what age are children the most keen to learn about money? According to financial educator Abigail Foster, it is seven. Faced with a class of children, she says she can easily tell which ones talk about money at home with their parents, and those who do not.
“The kids that don’t talk about money at home won’t put their hands up to answer questions, whereas those that do are just desperate to tell you everything they know,” she says. Extending this confidence and curiosity to every young adult by teaching key financial concepts from an early age is the mission the 30-year-old has set herself.
Three years ago, Foster quit her job as a chartered accountant and entered the classroom, and now teaches personal finance to children aged seven to 18 through Elent, the financial education company she founded. Working in both private and state schools, coming up with novel ways to explain money concepts to young minds spawned a successful sideline in creating social media content for a slightly older audience.
When an early video explaining how to understand a payslip went viral, she knew she was on to a winner. She now has more than 200,000 followers on Instagram and TikTok and her first book, The Money Manual, has just been published by Penguin.
Seven-year-olds are her favourite age group to teach because of their eagerness to learn. “How often do we give responsibility to seven-year-olds? Never. But they see their parents using money and making financial decisions on a daily basis, and relish the opportunity to ask questions.”
Her workshops for this age group cover everything from bills to earning money, spending and saving it — and they lap it up. “My advice to parents is just be more open with your kids about money; bring them in on the conversation but be aware of the phrases you are using.”
When she asks students to tell her what their parents have told them about money, the phrase “Money doesn’t grow on trees” is often repeated. Rather than shut down money conversations, Foster is all for creating a more inquiring mindset to better equip young adults for the modern financial world that awaits them.
She has long campaigned for personal finance to be properly embedded in the curriculum in all primary and secondary schools. “Right now, the banks have too much power to come in and teach finance to kids in a way that benefits their business models,” she says, noting that bank-funded school workshops tend to coincide with the ages children can open an account.
She says starting lessons in primary school — even if this only happens once a term, or once a year — gives students of all backgrounds a foundation of knowledge that can be built on. Now in the third year of teaching the same year group in some schools, she can see their financial knowhow compounding.
“I had a sixth-form group recently who wanted to talk about how to avoid paying tax,” she says. This prompted a lively discussion about what taxes pay for, and what would happen to public services without this money. She says that age group has very little trust in public institutions — “they don’t trust politicians to do the right thing by them” — with the high cost of leaving home and going to university looming large for older pupils.
“For a 17-year-old, the motivation to learn about money is different — they’re fearful that if they don’t, then they’re screwed.”
Student loans are one area where she says sixth-formers bombard her with questions: “The biggest misconception is that the more they borrow, the more they will have to repay every month.”
But the one topic all of her students want to learn more about? Crypto and investing. “They want to know how they can make what they call ‘big money’ — they see people on YouTube doing it, and it’s presented as a glamorous, no-risk situation.”
This, and the huge number of spurious ads on social media about investing, worry her. “You see a lot of ads saying ‘Sign up to my trading course and I’ll show you how to turn £100 into £100,000’, that kind of thing. If you are 18 and aware that you’ll likely need to save up over £50,000 for a housing deposit, you’re going to want to play that game.”
For this reason, she thinks the most important money lesson she can teach 16-17 year olds is how to spot scams, closely followed by borrowing money responsibly. Foster believes there should be much stricter rules when granting credit products to young adults to make sure they understand what they’re getting into, given the risk of early debt mistakes impacting their financial future for years to come.
The Money Manual, which was published this week, aims to deliver the same messages to workers in their 20s and 30s. Part financial reference book and part pep talk, Foster packs in a lot of information about tax, payslips, pensions, investing and managing your finances if you’re self employed. The final chapter, How to Invest in Yourself, is particularly poignant, with advice on pay negotiations, upskilling and — perhaps unexpectedly — investing time in friendships.
Imagining readers will dip into it throughout their lives, she hopes it will be the financial education the younger generation never had. “Every conversation about money can help close the knowledge gap and empower others.”
The Money Manual: Everything You Actually Need to Know About Personal Finance by Abigail Foster is published by Penguin Books
