By Christina Melling

At a time when financial maturity and financial resilience are delayed and challenged more than ever before, recent reports show that 74% of teenagers do not feel confident about their current financial education, does the national curriculum vs. the real world fulfil a need?

This is a statistic that is now really beginning to seep into the workplace too, as the effect on engagement due to poor financial wellbeing in a working environment is now something that employers and HR professionals are noticing. In the workplace, 62% of employers admit that financial wellbeing affects engagement yet only 41% are trying to address it.

But what about the lack of education around getting on the property ladder?

According to the Money and Pensions Service, just 33% of students recall having any financial education at school; however, the topic of money appears frequently in maths lessons, but more from the perspective of work and business.

72% of homebuyers think the process of purchasing a property should be taught to school children, as the majority felt under prepared and overwhelmed when purchasing their last home.

In addition, 73% of young people want mortgage advice at school as they are worried about their financial futures, and research shows that school pupils want to learn more about money and mortgages at school. With this in mind, why is it that the majority of school, college and university students are leaving education without sufficient knowledge of tax, pensions, or mortgages?

Data shows that 63% of first-time buyers are not sure of the meanings of the terms ‘offer’, ‘exchange’, or ‘completion’.

In addition, 66% of those who have taken the leap to get on the property ladder in the last six months were unaware of how the actual process worked and 83% of recent homebuyers found the endeavour stressful. Organising and solicitor and surveyor, while the final exchange of contracts also ranked as one of the areas they were most in the dark about.

Many were also in the dark about sorting that all important mortgage in principle before they could get started with their house hunt, with completing on their purchase and finalising their offer and mortgage were also some of the biggest knowledge gaps.

No surprise then, that 60% didn’t feel they had access to enough resources to truly understand the process of buying a house.

Buying a house can be an incredibly daunting task, especially for first-time buyers, and it says a lot that so many existing homebuyers are still in the dark about the process despite having done it before. While it may seem a lifetime between being at school and buying your first home, it’s a huge event and one that would be time well spent educating children about. Bodies such as the Money and Pensions Service are going some way to tackle this with The UK Strategy for Financial Wellbeing, a 10-year plan that aims to ensure that two million more pupils and young people get a meaningful financial education.

As it stands, we remain at the mercy of the industry professionals that facilitate our purchases and while they do a great job, it’s impossible for them to educate every single buyer at every step of the property purchasing timeline.

This considerable lack of understanding is exactly why Stipendium launched Merge, an innovative, all-encompassing, step by step product with all the tools and services needed to get on the property ladder along with guidance that educates homebuyers what to expect and when to expect it.

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