Why Financial Education Is Priceless

Look around you, look at the number of people who are completely reliant on their jobs for financial security. What if they were made redundant tomorrow, for the majority of the UK population they wouldn’t even have the financial resources to support themselves for 3 months.

The reality is even if you work for a large multinational you could lose your job tomorrow. I’m not trying to say this in a bad way I just want to encourage people to think about the bigger picture. A “secure” job does not mean you have no risks as we saw with Lehman Brothers when it collapsed in 2008. A lot of the workers at that large US bank probably thought they had a “secure” job.

In this day and age, jobs for life are harder to come by partly because of the current economic outlook and partly to do with technology. The internet means that jobs can be farmed off to countries like India, China and the Philippines where jobs can be done for a fraction of the cost of Western Countries. This means that it is more important than ever to have something to fall back on. At the very least everyone should have 6 months worth of living expenses sitting in liquid assets- lets call this a financial security fund.

The other reason why people need to start thinking about their financial arrangements is because gone are the days when individuals worked for a company their whole lives and then got a pension until they died. These days people are living longer, much longer, for children born in this decade it will not be unreasonable to assume they will live to beyond 100. Governments in the Western world, on the other hand, are bankrupt, they cannot really afford to look after their citizens in retirement, what we will therefore likely see is that the value of government pensions will fall and fall in real terms pushing hard working pensioners back to work or into poverty.

It is therefore so important that people get financially educated. They need to understand the importance of buying up assets and businesses which will be able to provide a source of income whether they can work or not. To reach that level of financial education will be a long hard struggle, it will require significant effort and a change of mindset but if you do not start on that path you will be risking having a very poor retirement.

As a start have a look at some of the suggested reading on ExperimentalInvestor. As this portal develops it will eventually have a whole program of assistance that can be offered to help you reach financial independence. It doesn’t matter if you are 20 or 65 years old the most important thing is to start taking some action! Good luck.