Why Nobody Taught You About Money

The Numbers Are Embarrassing

Almost half of UK adults — around 23 million people — would fail a basic financial literacy test. Only 23% pass a comprehensive money knowledge assessment. Among young people, fewer than one in ten get through it.

Perhaps more revealing is the gap between confidence and competence. In a recent survey, 78% of UK adults described themselves as financially literate. Yet 71% of those same respondents couldn't explain how a savings account works. A fifth of people who consider themselves financially literate run out of money every month.

The UK performs poorly compared to other developed countries. France, Canada, and several other nations significantly outperform us on standard financial literacy measures. When demographic factors like gender, income, and ethnicity intersect, the gap widens to as much as 45%.

This isn't a personal failing. It's a systemic one.

What Schools Don't Teach

Financial education was added to the secondary school curriculum in England in 2014 as part of Citizenship for 11 to 16-year-olds. On paper, that sounds like progress. In practice, only a third of children recall learning about money at school and finding it useful. The content exists in the curriculum, but it's often not taught — crowded out by subjects that are tested and graded.

Martin Lewis campaigned for years to get financial education taken seriously in schools, eventually giving evidence to a parliamentary committee that described the current provision as inadequate. In 2025, the government announced that financial education will become compulsory for primary school pupils in England as part of a curriculum overhaul, with full implementation from September 2028.

That's a step forward. But it raises an obvious question: what should actually be taught?

The basics feel almost too simple to need a lesson — but clearly they do. What a budget is. What interest means and how compound interest works. The difference between saving and investing. What a pension is and why it matters. What debt costs. What insurance does. How tax works in practice, not just in theory.

None of this is complicated. But if nobody explains it, people reach adulthood without the vocabulary to make informed decisions about their own money. They sign up for credit cards without understanding APR. They opt out of workplace pensions because the letter was confusing. They leave cash sitting in current accounts for decades because investing feels like something other people do.

The Richmond Project

Rishi Sunak and his wife Akshata Murty launched The Richmond Project in 2025 — a charity focused on building confidence with numbers across all ages. Named after the area of North Yorkshire where Sunak lives and which he represents as an MP, the project aims to identify and support initiatives that drive social mobility by helping families break down barriers to numeracy.

The charity's focus is broader than financial literacy alone — it covers numeracy in everyday life, from shopping to mortgages. But the underlying problem it's addressing is the same one: too many people in the UK feel uncomfortable with numbers, and that discomfort costs them real money throughout their lives.

Whether a post-political charity can shift a problem this deep is an open question. But the diagnosis is right. The UK has a numeracy confidence problem, and it starts early.

Schools Can Only Do So Much

Here's the uncomfortable truth about financial education in schools: you can teach a 14-year-old what a pension is, but it won't mean much to them. Not because they're not clever enough — because they have no context. Money is abstract when you don't earn any. Pensions feel impossibly distant when retirement is 50 years away. Budgeting is a theoretical exercise when someone else pays for everything.

This isn't an argument against teaching it in schools. The foundations matter. But it is an argument for recognising that school alone won't solve this.

The moment people actually engage with finance — really engage, not just in a classroom exercise — is when they start earning. When they get their first payslip and wonder why it's less than they expected. When they see a pension contribution they didn't ask for. When they have to decide whether to rent or save, spend or invest, pay off a credit card or build an emergency fund.

That first employer is, for most people, the real starting point of financial life. And almost no employers treat it that way.

The Employer Blind Spot

Auto-enrolment was one of the most effective financial policy changes in recent UK history. Since 2012, employers have been required to enrol eligible workers into a workplace pension. Opt-out rates are low — most people stay in simply because inertia works in their favour for once. Millions of people are now saving for retirement who otherwise wouldn't be.

But enrolment isn't education. Most people have no idea how much is in their pension, what it's invested in, what fees they're paying, or whether their contribution rate is appropriate for their goals. They receive a letter, a login they never use, and a vague sense that it's being taken care of.

Employers have a unique opportunity here. They're the ones handing someone their first real financial product. They have a captive audience — literally, the employee has to be there. And the questions are immediate and practical: what is this deduction on my payslip? Should I contribute more? What happens if I leave?

Some employers do this well. Most don't. A one-page PDF in an onboarding pack is not financial education. A genuine 30-minute session in the first month — here's what your pension is, here's what compound interest will do to it over 40 years, here's what your options are — would be transformative. Not advice. Just education. The same distinction that schools should be making.

Whose Responsibility Is It?

The honest answer is: everyone's, and therefore nobody's.

The government sets the curriculum, but financial education was an afterthought for decades and is only now being expanded. Schools deliver what they're told to, but teachers aren't trained in finance and the subject isn't assessed. Parents pass on their own relationship with money — good or bad — but many lack the knowledge themselves. Employers could fill the gap at exactly the right moment, but few see it as their role. The financial services industry creates products most people don't understand and then blames consumers for not reading the terms.

The result is a country where people are expected to make consequential financial decisions — choosing pension funds, taking out mortgages, managing debt, planning for retirement — without anyone having systematically equipped them to do so.

It's like expecting everyone to drive safely without requiring driving lessons.

What Good Looks Like

Fixing financial literacy in the UK doesn't require a revolution. It requires a few things to happen consistently.

In schools: Teach the basics from primary age, as the new curriculum plans to do. Make it practical — real numbers, real scenarios, real products. Don't bury it inside Citizenship where it competes with democracy and human rights for a single lesson a fortnight.

At work: Every employer should give new starters a proper introduction to their finances — not a product pitch, not a leaflet, but a clear explanation of what they're being enrolled into and why it matters. First employers especially. That 22-year-old starting their first job is the person who most needs to hear it, and the person least likely to seek it out themselves.

In the industry: Financial products need to be simpler, clearer, and explained in language people actually use. Jargon isn't expertise. It's a barrier. If a pension statement can't be understood by someone without a finance degree, the statement is the problem, not the reader.

In public life: Initiatives like The Richmond Project are welcome, but they need to be backed by sustained investment and measured against outcomes, not just intentions. The UK has had financial literacy campaigns before. They haven't worked well enough. The next generation of efforts needs to be more ambitious and more accountable.

The Cost of Getting It Wrong

Financial illiteracy isn't just embarrassing. It's expensive. People who don't understand compound interest pay more for debt and earn less on savings. People who don't understand pensions retire with less than they could have had. People who don't understand risk either avoid investing entirely — missing decades of growth — or pile into speculative bets they don't understand and lose everything.

The Money and Pensions Service estimates that the UK's low levels of financial capability cost individuals, families, and the wider economy billions every year in poor decisions, missed opportunities, and avoidable debt.

The good news is that the basics aren't hard. You don't need a finance degree. You need to understand a handful of concepts — budgeting, compound interest, diversification, tax wrappers, inflation — and apply them consistently over time. That's it. That's the whole thing.

The question isn't whether people are capable of understanding this. They are. The question is whether anyone will bother to explain it to them at the moment it actually matters.

Further Reading

• The Richmond Project. "Our Mission." richmondproject.org
• Money and Pensions Service. "UK Strategy for Financial Wellbeing." maps.org.uk
• Martin Lewis's evidence to the Education Committee on financial education in schools. parliament.uk
• Santander UK. "Millions of young people still leave school without financial education." January 2025.
• City St George's, University of London. "Landmark study suggests how the UK can accelerate financial capability." January 2025.
• Lewis, M. and Willmott, B. "It's Not You, It's the System: Why Financial Education Needs a Rethink." MoneySavingExpert, 2024.