At a conference where everyone seems to have drunk the kool-aid on the importance of financial education, I was surprised to hear Professor Lewis Mandell, renowned expert on financial education, telling us that most financial education doesn't work. My first instinct was to cover the ears of my fellow conference-goers, like when I know foul language is coming up in a movie I'm watching with my young daughters. But soon I realized that his point was not to deny the importance of financial education, but rather to stress how important it is to deliver effective financial education. His studies have shown that the financial education provided in schools rarely has any impact on financial knowledge. It got me wondering if financial education might be generally more effective when delivered in conjunction with a matched savings account, providing a specific purpose for the training that might make it more sticky.
I also enjoyed hearing from David White, speaking about the United Kingdom's Child Trust Fund. White is CEO of The Children's Mutual, a financial firm that focuses on children's savings accounts and controls a large chunk of the market in the UK (which now has a quite a significant market for children's savings accounts since the government began giving such accounts to every child at birth). The UK's example of how child savings accounts can be made universal is definitely worth checking out.
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