What they don't want to teach you in school...

"A GCSE in financial services is set to be dropped from schools in Northern Ireland, due to low uptake and "overlap" with other exams.”

The above is an excerpt from the BBC website on Wed 29th Oct 2008.

It does beg the question “will our young people leaving school at 16, 18 or 21 ever get to grips with understanding the fundamentals of how to manage money?

Sadly, I fear not.

This decision to drop financial services from the Northern Ireland schools curriculum is, I suggest likened to stopping spelling lessons, as MS Word has spell check, or even abandoning cooking lessons, as there are plenty of fast food outlets around.

The frightening thing about the Northern Ireland Education Ministers decision to drop the GCSE in financial services is that it is based on a low take up of the subject. The chair of a Northern Ireland Board of Local Governors said, quite rightly, the decision was disappointing.

It’s not the fault of the Education Minister; it’s the fault and therefore the responsibility of the parents of children who don’t receive a basic grounding of money and its value at home.

Being proficient at mathematics or economics, does mean proficiency with money.

Most students are broke for a good many years after college, paying of their student loans.

Many people are living weekly wage to weekly wage. There is even a loan firm called Payday loans to help the weekly paid bridge the gap from being broke until payday.

The frightening thing is this. In 10 or 20 years time, our teenage students will be running both government departments and commercial organisations; one wonders what sort of money management skills they will have acquired at school or college.

I said a few blogs ago that we have been here before: if we don’t ensure our young people get a solid grounding in money management and more importantly, how the world and money works, we could be here again.

When the going gets tough...

I felt more surprise than shock when I read two stories in The Sunday Times published on 26th Oct 2008.

One unfortunate chap had his house repossessed after missing just one mortgage payment. His house was valued at £400,000, although it was going through at auction on behalf of the lender at £260,000.

It also transpires that credit card companies (credit card debt is classed as unsecured) can now apply for a charging order against your assets, i.e. your home, if you do not maintain regular payments, or make good missed monthly payments.

Strictly speaking, these procedures have always been available to lenders, although it does smack of the sinister that someone could lose their house with one mortgage payment in arrears, and now the credit card companies can in practice apply for an interest in your home, or indeed repossess it if they wish to.

If anything, this proves more than ever that everyone should be better informed about their legal standing with a loan of any description. A typical credit card or store card agreement advertised as unsecured is no such thing if a charging order can be placed on your property.

Be sure of this.

As the credit crunch deepens, banks and lenders will become more ruthless and unrealistic. Anyone with a loan, no matter how well your financial standing, is in debt, which if not repaid or serviced, could have horrible consequences.

My advice is to clear any borrowing that you have. For many that will be unlikely. If you remain in debt, start finding out where you stand with your lender by asking them what is the worse case scenario if you are unable to maintain full or partial repayments of your loan.

Equally, you can start being tough with your lender.

Did you know you can challenge most mortgage agreements if they commenced before Oct 2004?

Did you know you can challenge most loans regulated by the consumer credit act if they started before March 2007?

Well, you do now

You can contact me through the help with debt website and I'll show how it's done (there's no fee, other than a £10 file retrieval charge payable to the lender)

When the going gets tough, the tough get going: that means you as well as the banks!

Greed is still here

One thing that is happening more and more at the minute is the number of lawyers, accountants and intermediaries charging fees to supposedly assist people and businesses in financial trouble. Greed is still here.

In just about every web page I click on that offers help with debt, inevitably the sales pitch becomes apparent, and it’s either:

Refinance your loans (which you can’t afford to pay already)

Consolidate your debt (usually against the equity of an asset: property or land)

Enter into an IVA (more refinancing)

DON’T DO IT.

I recently made an appointment to see a firm of insolvency lawyers to research my web site. Before the interview began, I was asked by the lawyer how long I would need, and was duly charged their hourly fee before I had asked one question.

You need to understand that people with knowledge about debt and money management are making huge amounts of money from people with little or no knowledge about debt and money.

If the banks have made money out of you before the credit crunch, the lawyers, accountants and intermediaries are making money out of you during the credit crunch.

Don’t pay fees.

We've been here before

There is a risk of talking about the current financial situation or passing comment on it, the risk is one could be accused of of talking people into a situation.

Yes it's true that it is possible to talk oneself into a recession, but the reality is the reality.

Nobody talks themselves into being overweight, they actually have done something to get overweight, usually eating and drinking too much and little or no excersise.

Those of us who remember the economically challenging times of the 1980's and 1990's will realise what hard work was to get out of hard times.

However just like the 1920's and 1930's, our current recession is gravitating around bank collapes and a lack of confidence in the markets.

Simply put, when a bank fails a large amount of money disappears from the economy, which has a depressing effect on prices and a stagnating effect on business activity. Depositors scramble for their money, business customers lose their money and cannot finance their activities; thus everyone linked to the bank or its customers becomes economically paralyzed in one way or another, including other banks.

The reality is, we have been here before and we'd all do well to read up on the 1920's. the 1930's and what was the great depression.

It's also a lesson for us.

Life and nature from time to time, check the balances. If something is too little, or too much, or not fair and even, then it corrects itself.

We have been here before.