Parents often ignore the importance of financial education in the developmental years of their children. A huge population of children in the UK is not even aware of how money works. For them, it is a piece of paper that people use to buy items and services.
However, there is more to these papers than buying gifts for them. The Scouts are working to educate the children about money management. They are giving money badges to children after teaching them the concept of money, savings, and financial literacy.
What is the Scout Association?
For those who don’t know, Scout Association is an active group of volunteers trying to educate children around the globe with life skills. They are known for their activity-based programs to create awareness among young audiences and their parents.
It started from activities such as lighting fire for the kids aged between 6 to 10. Now, the association provides programs to teach children about the environment and digital citizenship. Now, they are trying to control the damage because of the pandemic to the education of children while working on financial literacy in the UK.
Impact of Covid on Financial Literacy of Children
Our schooling systems are among the worst affected because of the pandemic. Students were forced to study from their homes because the schools were shut. And this affected their learning as the teachers were unable to attend to every student like in the classroom.
It has led young children to lose grip over mathematics and money management. They are stuck inside the home because parents don’t want to take the risk with their children. Therefore, everything is provided to them without them managing the pocket money.
The gap in the understanding of the finances was present before the pandemic. But the situation is made worse by the covid restriction. You can arrange for private lessons with high-acceptance loans for bad credit to secure the future of your child.
What is a Money Badge?
Scout Association is trying to improve the condition of young children towards financial literacy. They have created a series of activities with the help of parents and professionals to teach the young lads about money management and mathematics. With the completion of the activities, the students will receive a money badge from the Scouts.
The association is targeting 200,000 children to take part in these activities. It will include some intuitive tasks such as creating their own currencies and budgeting for a camping trip. Kids will learn the real-life application of these skills during the whole program.
Thus, the money badge will act as a reward to motivate the children. You will find similar badges for every life skill people learn at the Scout Association. Your children may put extra effort to learn new skills to fill their uniform with multiple badges.
Purpose of a Money Badge
You can imagine the problem with financial literacy that 1 out of 15 kids in the world is not able to make simple financial decisions. For the schools in the UK, financial education is not part of the curriculum. Therefore, the money badge needs to serve many purposes other than simple budgeting.
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To Introduce Money Management
Money management is important for children to avoid unnecessary expenses. They should know the difference between needs and “wants” to spend the money on the right purposes. In the end, it will help them make ends meet within the limited pocket money.
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Help Them Make Good Financial Decision
We make financial decisions daily in our life. From our morning coffee to the travel option, you can save money or chose comfort with the endless decision cycle. Similarly, the children need to make the right decision with the finances.
The activities in the program will help the kids to make the right financial decisions. Take the example of a hiking trip. The volunteers will ask the kids whether to bring a water bottle or laptop with them.
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Teach Different Concepts Related to Finance
The activities are not limited to teach the kids about budgeting and financial decisions. You can expect the kids to learn the basics about advanced topics like taxation. They will teach how the community works to make the concept simple to understand.
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Aware of the Consequences
There are consequences to our financial decisions that children need to understand. The decision they make during the activities will impact their final result. Therefore, they will not make stupid decisions with their quick student loans.
Benefits of Financial Education for Young Children
You need to understand the benefits of financial education to support your kids through the learning process. They should learn the importance of savings and investment to ensure they are on track to achieve financial freedom in the future. Here are a few benefits of making the kids financially literate from a young age.
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Future Investment
The kids will make the right decisions in the future to save money. You are responsible for supporting until the graduation is complete. Therefore, financial literacy during childhood will save you money in the future.
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Fewer Debts
Debts are often the result of unnecessary purchases and disastrous financial decisions. A responsible person will not take debts to live beyond their means. If they are not spending a penny over their allowance, they will not ask for debts unless the situation is unavoidable. If possible, teach them ways to better counter the loans with options such as personal loans for debt consolidation.
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Importance of Savings from a Young Age
You need to save money if you want to achieve your financial goals. A major reason people don’t have a savings account is because of their habit of using the allowance from childhood. If they can save money for a console, there is a very good chance for success at saving for major financial goals such as a car or house.
How to Teach Your Children Good Financial Habits?
Scouts Association has provided a great platform for the kids to learn about money management. Still, parents should induce positive habits from their end for more effective learning. You can use the following ways to make the children financially literate.
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Lead by Example
Kids learn from their parents about approaches towards different aspects of life. Your lifestyle and spending habits will affect your attitude towards money. Therefore, you must lead with an example to induce financial habits in them.
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Let Them Earn Pocket Money
It is a fun way to teach the children about the importance of money by asking them to complete chores if they want pocket money. The hard work they put in to earn money will make them spend only on the necessary purchases. Also, it will help create a habit to earn to live for their means.
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Make Financial Education Fun
Kids will make more efforts towards an activity that is more fun. Scout Association is using the same method to teach kids to learn many life lessons. You can use the same technique to teach them the different aspects of financial education.
Conclusion
To sum up, Scout Association has started an initiative that the education curriculum should have for a very long time. Millions of kids around the globe are not able to make the simplest of financial decisions because of ignorance from our side. And the problem is very prominent in the UK that requires support from the parents.
Jessica Rodz is the Senior Content Writer at Cashfacts. She has a long career in the field of content writing and editing. Jessica has the expertise in the UK lending marketplace where she has worked with 7 different lending organisations and acquired many responsibilities from preparing loan deals and writing blogs for their websites.
At Cashfacts, Jessica is managing a team of experienced loan experts and doing a major contribution in guiding the loan seekers via well-researched blogs. She has done graduation in Business (Finance) and now currently doing research papers on the UK financial sector.
