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Britain's youth is adopting a careless 'live for today' culture according to a recent report published by the Personal Finance Education Group (pfeg). Despite attempts made by consumer watchdog groups to warn people in the UK about creating debt they can ill afford to repay, pfeg's data suggests that the youth in Britain today are mote willing than at any time in the past to live by "a get-rich-quick, live-now-and-pay-later" ethos.
According to pfeg's findings, 52 percent of teenagers in the UK will be indebt by the time they reach their 17 th birthday. This appears to be the case despite the fact that, legally, is should be virtual impossible for under 18s to create personal debt in the UK.
23 percent of teenagers who responded to pfeg's questionnaire said they thought that an overdraft facility was used in order to be able to spend more than you earn. A quarter of respondents saw overdrafts facilities as being a good fall-back so that they would not have to worry about budgeting their monthly expenditure.
More worryingly, however, was that one in five respondents answered that they saw having credit cards as being a means to purchase items they would not otherwise be able to afford out of their salary or savings. Indeed, one in 20 respondents did not believe there was any real need to repay a credit card debt at all. Even among those who did believe they would have to repay their credit card bill, 23 percent of teenage believed it was their parent’s duty to pick up their credit card bill at the end of each month. Adequate insurance coverage is being left behind in many people's eyes.
Commenting on the growing trend of Britain's teenagers willing to drift in to debt at such an early age, Wendy van den Hende, chief executive of pfeg, said that the survey showed young people today appeared to be "seamlessly… drifting towards an adulthood of debt."
Correcting this growing problem will require further education in real-life finances, displaying the long-term harms of having debt problems you cannot hope to repay that were created as a result of a quick fix to have something you want to today, rather than saving up before you purchase the item.
Nevertheless, Ms. Van den Hende said that: "We owe it to our young people to ensure they have the financial acumen to deal with the responsibilities of being an adult. That’s why personal financial education is absolutely vital in schools."
However, given the rising debt problems among the UK's adult population, the question remains as to who exactly is qualified to provide this hands-on education to our younger generation to ensure that Britain's youth successful moves away from its "live-for-today" attitude.
Tom Smith
01.03.07
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