Why financial literacy matters more than ever

Patrick Jenkins::

Growing up in a just-about-managing former market town on the fringes of the south Wales valleys, with a music teacher dad and a psychologist mum, there weren’t many signs to suggest I would develop an interest in finance. Then, for my 16th birthday, my father gave me a present: £100-worth of BT shares on the occasion of the telecoms group’s Thatcherite privatisation. For months afterwards, I would check the share-price pages of The Daily Telegraph, my parents’ paper of choice. If the stock was up a ½ pence, I would rejoice that I was now £1 better off.

Primitive stuff. And yet that early interest has taken me to my current job as the Financial Times’ deputy editor. Financial literacy has been the cornerstone of my career.

The contrast between my professional life and my early years, as well as the stark gap between haves and have-nots in northeast London where I live, are among the factors that have encouraged me to try to make a difference. In the coming months, the FT is going to establish its first ever charitable foundation, the Financial Literacy and Inclusion Campaign.

We no longer live in a world of paternalistic employers, nanny states and friendly bank managers. The shift towards a myriad choice of financial products, self-determined retirement planning and sometimes unscrupulous companies that seek to exploit us has made it steadily more important for all of us to have a firm grasp of basic finance. Your mobile phone contract might be great value or a horrible rip-off. Your credit score can rule your life unless you understand its mysteries. These would be reasons enough for the FT to be launching this initiative.