I’m Naomi – I’m a Writer working on our new Under 16s account here at Monzo. We’re creating some in-app content for kids, and we’d love your input!
A couple of questions for you:
If you’re a parent or guardian, what would you like your kids to learn about money?
What do you wish you’d learnt about money as a child?
It’s all helpful, so please share whatever comes to mind – but please don’t post any identifying information in your answers, especially about your children.
This one could be when they are transforming their account into the 16-17 one, but I’ve seen a lot of cases online where kids are (sometimes even willingly) money mules without understanding the consequences
You could have a lesson on this and common other scams, while it wouldn’t apply really at all to a 6-13/14 year old, I think it would be a very good thing to educate people on after 16
Definitely important to learn about saving — whilst I’m aware many younger children follow the “spend now, don’t care” approach, I’d love if I cared more when I was younger and saved up any sort of additional pocket money or so.
It’d be great if you advertised how if you saved now, you could get yourself something bigger or better in the future - perhaps self made goals or recommended goals based on spending (i.e, save £30 for Smyths if most recent transactions were around £20-£40)
My parents tried to get me to save as a kid. I didn’t understand why.
Why would I save to buy something in the future when I can buy something that I want now.
I didn’t undertand that you can put money to work and that through compounding returns you could build wealth and financial independance.
I would like my children to be able to save/invest 50% of everything they get so that they can enjoy spending but also enjoy seeing their savings/investments go up through compounding returns and regular contributions.
Ideally I would like to be able to automatically provide them with a % return on any money that they put into a savings/investment pot. I would be the provider of the returns and could pick a number like 5% per month to give them on any money that they put aside. This would supercharge their money’s growth and show them in an exagerated way how savings/investments can benefit you long term.
My only advice would be never lend anyone money, period, not even family. It destroys friendships when you don’t get it back and it destroys families - If someone wants something they can’t afford, it’s TS for them
Totally agree on the suggestions about explaining compound interest as a concept - understanding that the sooner they save, the more they’ll benefit.
I like the idea of little savings motivation tips. Like sharing with them ideas that people have used successfully to motivate themselves to save, such as having separate pots, tracking savings on physical charts, waiting some time before making a purchase to see if you really want or need the thing, savings challenges and saving money they considered spending.
I have two points. The first one is saving - just because the money is there, doesn’t mean you have to spend it. I was taught this as a child, and my lad has a good grasp of this already. Having a visual saving’s goal/chart/message type thing in the app would be good to reinforce it - “you’ve saved £45 towards your Lego R2D2, £50 to go - Keep up the good work!”
What I wasn’t taught as a child which I wish I knew back then was about the different types of account to earn interest. All of my money before the age of 21 was just sat in a current account earning 0% interest, when at the very least could have gone into an easy access savings account earning something. This may be at odds with the Monzo child account, however, as from what I understand it offers no interest!
Love these ideas.
For me saving and budgeting are key.
As others have said, a nice clear, kid friendly message about waiting a couple more weeks for the cool shiny thing, rather than blowing it on ice cream and a temu knock off.
Savings pits with clear goals, and positive reinforcement messaging would be tremendous.
I also encourage my kids to siphon off some % of their pocket money into a savings pot, and a previous account (go Henry?!?) allowed micro charity donations as money went in. I found that brilliant as a way of talking about charity and the wider world, but also at teaching them about outgoings, and that you may not have quite as much to spend as you thought
Naomi - thank you for your post above regarding educational content for kids.
Having worked in the education sector all my life (now retired), reading this has genuinely been a high spot of an otherwise pretty crappy few days
The very fact that someone in the sector is actively seeking input from those with a direct investment in their children’s future well-being is quite unique and to be praised at any opportunity.
My initial suggestion would be to be ambitious and to be bold in what you do. PLease don’t try to just do better those things which have already been tried - and mostly failed because there was no depth of purpose and often no integrity behind them. If you’re doing this, it’s a long game
Pretty much everything that has gone before over the last 30 - 40 years has been a marketing gimmick. Some were more succesful than others but pretty much all of them dwindled into nothing, because the programmes were about attracting (and hopefully retaining) x number of new account holders rather than genuinely wishing to educate and support.
You have a chance here to do something innovative and ground-breaking which will have lasting benefit to generations of young people. Go for it!
If you do go with this could you please give the parents an easy toggle to decide whether they want their children to be subjected to it or not?
Kids deserve a good financial education and from an early age… From their parents and guardians. Personally, just my opinion, I wouldn’t want my kids’ financial education coming from a bank no matter how sincere the copy writers are in their desire to expand young minds.
A bank is there to make a net margin between deposits and lending, that is their reason for being and any drive to improve peoples’ education should be viewed with lots of pessimism in my eyes. A few years down the line the kind-hearted copy writers and education providers will all be binned off and an executive or algorithm is going to be deciding what to teach.
Banks should not be peddling piggybanks and banking products in classrooms or having a hot chip version of the Windows Paperclip popping up full of great information about how to make investments for the future. I would like to do that myself as a parent so please could I turn this feature off? Thank you
Agreed. But how many parents and guardians are capable of that?
I’ve worked for two different banks which did outreach work with schools and I was initially very sceptical. But both gave very well targetted, accessible and sensible information and it changed my mind.
If done properly I think in-app education could be a really good thing.
For the record I had parents who were financially savvy and well educated and who totally failed to educate me in even the basics of budgeting, with the result that when I left home for uni I ended up in quite a bit of debt despite those being the days of no tuition fees and a full grant.
Hi,
For me, one of the most important things is budgeting. You can’t manage your spending if you don’t know where your money is going so having a clear list of monthly outgoings with dates for payments and any income, certainly helps visualize what money is left over for saving or for spending. Using your instant access savings accounts as much as possible to gain interest, even if you don’t leave your money in there for the full month, every day there’s money in the account its gaining interest. I’m a big user of my credit card because I get cash back, so I leave my money in my savings earning interest, use my credit card to gain cashback and then clear my credit card each month. Its all about making your money work for you as much as possible.
I agree with giving parents/guardians the choice of whether they’re shown lessons about money within a banking app. But I also believe it should be taught in schools. I do not get the point of maths with throwing away a calculator in exam conditions and on the other hand, not teaching children the foundations of money at all. Completely out of scope for this conversation though.
I started to write and noticed that all of this stuff doesn’t really apply to children, but still useful to know at a young age:
Set aside money for your essentials (living expenses and bills) each month
If you have any debt which has interest, excluding mortgage, try to pay that off little and often (hopefully you don’t as a child!)
Budgeting. It can be boring, but it can really help to save money and identify issues early
Savings - I follow the rule that if the % on my mortgage interest rate is higher than the best savings account I can get, try to overpay the mortgage, if not try to put some in savings
Emergency fund - have enough to tide you over in case something goes and you’re out of work for 3 months
Investments - Do your research and don’t just get swooped into the next big thing whether it’s the latest meme coin or cool omniprescent AI company. If you’ve done your research, then put in a bit each week/month (as opposed to whacking lots in at once) to limit your exposure to big rises/falls. Also have a goal of what you want out of it and stick to that - don’t use this as your emergency fund
Pensions - Don’t opt out of auto enrolment, it’s basically free money. Also try not to leave it too late to start thinking about retirement. When you get a payrise, stick a bit extra in your pension so you don’t notice the shortfall of take home pay
I’d like to encompass this all with - at a basic level I had a good strategy when I was a teenager which doesn’t work too well in today’s cashless society. As a student, before a weekly shop, get cash out and pay in cash. You have a hard limit then and it gets you into the habit of looking closely at prices, deals etc. Yes, you can always pay with your card if you go over. That’s also another good thing about Scan as you shop/shopping online, you don’t get a big surprise with the price at the end of the till.
Also, I know this is a horrendously long comment, but gameification I think would work well - badges, medals and the like. I have no idea of how to implement this in a banking app though
Hot Chip needs an appearance