youthmoney

A charm offensive has begun from providers of payday loans. These companies offer cash advances to over-18s who are in work. They’re attractive because they are easy to get and don’t require a good credit history. They’re unattractive because they are very expensive, and likely to trap people in a spiral of increasing debt.
Some personal [...]

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There aren’t many options for low-income households wanting to borrow money.
Credit unions are a very  good choice. Their loans are designed to be affordable. Members can be encouraged to save as they make repayments. Some unions offer financial education and other support.
Loan sharks are disastrous. Their loans are illegal, very expensive and very difficult to [...]

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Jill is in debt, and struggling to get out of it. She is a single parent with a bank overdraft and expensive consumer debt on a credit card. Last year she managed to clear the debt on a second credit card. She has plans for 2010 – to get her bank account in the black [...]

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I was interviewed earlier in the week by a financial journalist. We were talking about young people and bank accounts. I just heard that nothing I said made the published article (a known hazard in talking to hacks). Which spurred me to offer some thoughts here about this crucial bit of financial inclusion.
The argument is [...]

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Tomorrow everyone gets a chance to vote for their favourite new word for pensions.
Axa is looking for a better word, and has shortlisted five from ideas submitted over the past week. Midnight tonight they switch on, and everyone gets voting. That’s the theory, and it can be tested at the Axa’s My Budget Day website.
Research [...]

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What will young people want to know about today’s surprise Supreme Court ruling? UK banks have won their argument that overdraft fees on personal bank accounts cannot be assessed for fairness by the Office of Fair Trading. So what’s the impact on young people?
For those who never spend more money than they have, it is [...]

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Refused credit? The charity Credit Action estimates that 25,250 applications for consumer credit are turned down every day.
Many of those refused will be young people who have not been able to build up a good credit rating. Yet most will want to borrow money at some point – for a major purchase or to get [...]

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You know those times when you are chatting to teenagers about long-term, financial lifestyle planning? Otherwise known as pensions. And you realise there is a desperate shortage of interactive websites that help young people to achieve their future goals and aspirations by encouraging them to imagine what their lives will be like in 40 or [...]

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Should a Times reader  “let” his 15-year-old daughter take a Saturday job?
It’s a Times Money section reader dilemma. Give the star  answer and you could win yourself vouchers worth £25.
More usefully, you could offer some thoughts on young people’s need for independence. And say a little about the relationship between power and money. And perhaps [...]

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Scrap child trust funds, says Carl Emmerson, deputy director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies. The analysis, from a widely respected think-tank, is that the scheme’s cost is small, but not insignificant. Emmerson floats the idea of ending the payments – two of £250 so far, more to low-income families. Parents save or invest the [...]

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