By Steve Conley, Founder of the Academy of Life Planning
Early Investment: Why Human Capital Matters Most
At the Academy of Life Planning, we advocate for a definition of wealth that goes beyond bank balances. The CFA Institute’s 2024 study Lifetime Financial Advice: A Personalized Optimal Multilevel Approach defines total wealth as:
Total Wealth = Financial Capital + Human Capital – Lifetime Liabilities
Early in life, human capital dominates total wealth. That means your future earnings potential, life skills, personal development, and resilience represent your most significant asset. As you grow older and begin to earn, save, and invest, you gradually convert that human capital into financial capital.
This is why financial education in schools must focus not just on products like savings accounts and credit cards, but on the development of human capital – the skills and understanding young people need to make informed life choices.
The Problem: When Financial Education Becomes Marketing
Too often, financial education initiatives in schools are sponsored by financial market participants who have a vested interest in pushing products. These programmes tend to focus narrowly on financial capital products rather than life skills.
This shift turns financial education from an essential life skill into stealth marketing. And in doing so, it betrays the public trust.
For financial education to serve its real purpose, it must be delivered by structurally independent providers who are not influenced by the financial services industry.
That’s why, when we founded the Academy of Life Planning in Chorley in 2012, I helped the Debt Advice Foundation develop its Money Diaries programme — a peer-led initiative that builds real-world financial capability in children through story-based learning.
When I was working as an independent financial adviser in Chorley, I met Brian Souter, then Deputy Head Teacher at Southlands High School, where he had created the pioneering Money Diaries project. Brian invited me to review the early drafts of the diaries, and I was glad to contribute technical and editorial input to help shape their development. Although our professional paths eventually diverged, we’ve kept in touch over the years, occasionally reconnecting to reflect on the programme’s remarkable growth. Brian continues to lead its educational delivery as Education Manager at the Debt Advice Foundation to this day.
Today: A National Petition to Make Financial Education Compulsory
The fight continues.
Today, the Transparency Taskforce supports a national petition to legally require all secondary schools in England to teach financial education. The petition was launched by Cameron Holt, a 16-year-old Member of Youth Parliament for Bassetlaw who feels he’s missed out due to the current policy.
Although financial education is technically part of the national curriculum, it isn’t compulsory. Schools can, and often do, ignore it.
The petition aims to change that. It needs 10,000 signatures by 17th June 2025 to trigger a formal government response. At the time of writing, around 4,500 more signatures are needed.
Click here to sign the petition
Why This Matters
- Structural Integrity: Education must empower, not sell. Product sponsors should have no say in shaping children’s understanding of money.
- Human Capital Development: When young people learn to invest in themselves, we build a society that is more financially resilient and less dependent on extractive systems.
- Closing the Advice Gap: Financial education is a public good, not a sales pipeline.
As Charles Henderson, Chairman of the UK Shareholders’ Association, put it:
“It is not in the interests of the financial services industry for anyone to know and understand how to look after their money matters.”
We couldn’t agree more.
Download: Financial Education in UK Schools – Programmes, Content, and Concerns
This briefing explores the current landscape of financial education in UK schools, including both government-led curricula and third-party programmes sponsored by financial institutions. It raises serious concerns about the dominance of product-focused content, potential stealth marketing, and a lack of holistic, values-based learning. The report contrasts this with best-practice principles—such as human capital development, financial empowerment, and goal-based life planning—and argues for structurally independent, purpose-driven financial education that truly serves young people.
Dowload the briefing note here.
Why We Need a GAME Plan for Kids: Empowering a New Generation with Human Capital Strategies
Everyone agrees that financial education in schools must include financial planning. But here’s where we need a shift in thinking: not planning in the traditional, delegated sense—where a financial adviser does it for you—but planning in the self-directed sense, where the individual is empowered to do it for themselves.
That’s why we need a GAME Plan for kids.
At the Academy of Life Planning, we teach financial planning as a life planning system, not just a money management exercise. Our GAME Plan is the world’s first end-user financial planning app integrated with open banking—structurally independent of product providers or distributors. It’s product-agnostic, transparent, and empowering. But the technology is only part of the story.
What truly sets the GAME Plan apart is this: it integrates human capital strategies, something most financial planning programmes ignore entirely.
When Andy Agathangelou, founder of the Transparency Taskforce and a strong supporter of the campaign for compulsory financial education in schools, experienced the GAME Plan, he said the comparison to traditional planning was like a Ferrari versus a horse and cart. Traditional planning assumes the planner is pulling the client toward a savings product. Our model flips that dynamic. We plan the client before the money—engaging in self-discovery to uncover purpose, direction, and ambition. Then, and only then, do we build the human and financial capital to support that vision.
🔍 What Is Human Capital—and Why Does It Matter?
The London Business School identifies three types of human capital:
- Productive Capital: Your skills, talents, and knowledge—what generates future earnings.
- Vitality Capital: Your physical and mental well-being—what sustains your ability to work and enjoy life.
- Transformational Capital: Your capacity to adapt, pivot, and reinvent yourself when the world changes.
And the world is changing fast. Kids today are growing up in the age of AI and automation. Jobs are evolving—or disappearing—at unprecedented rates. What they need more than anything is the capacity to pivot. That’s where the GAME Plan thrives. As I outlined in Reclaiming Purpose in the Age of AI: The GAME Plan at the Crossroads of Humanity, human capital is not only central to individual wealth—it is key to navigating the disruption ahead.
The GAME Plan teaches:
- How to generate multiple income streams for financial resilience.
- How to extend your productive life, well into old age.
- How to build generational value in both human and financial terms.
- How to pivot and adapt, even in volatile global markets.
📚 Why It Belongs in Schools
The GAME Plan isn’t some expensive, inaccessible service. It’s free through our Planning My Life platform. It’s available in multiple languages, accessible in nearly half of the world’s countries, and it’s already being used by individuals to take back control of their lives and finances.
Imagine if every young person was taught not just to save—but to strategically build their life from the inside out. To understand who they are. To dream boldly. To act with purpose. And to design the architecture—of time, talent, money, and energy—to make that life happen.
This is the future of financial education: digital-age appropriate, structurally independent, and permanently empowering. Not contaminated by the interests of a rigged system that wants to keep people dependent, confused, and extractable.
✊ Let’s Not Miss This Moment
If we’re serious about teaching children how to thrive financially, emotionally, and ethically—we need to start by handing them the keys, not the leash.
Let’s deliver the GAME Plan for kids.
Let’s teach them to plan their lives, not just their money.
Let’s build a generation that doesn’t just survive disruption—but leads through it.
From Grassroots to Law
When I helped co-design the Money Diaries project over a decade ago, we knew we were building something powerful. Now, we have a chance to take that power national.
With your support — and the backing of the Transparency Taskforce, UKSA, and thousands of concerned citizens — we can move beyond voluntary programmes and make real financial education a legal right for every child in England.
Let’s transform today’s grassroots insight into tomorrow’s statutory change.
Sign the petition. Share it. Start the conversation.
Because knowing how money works shouldn’t be a privilege. It should be a birthright.
Click here to sign the petition
Download All Party Parliamentary Group on Financial Education for Young People Report.
Why Financial Education in Schools Must Include Human Capital Strategies
Early in life, human capital dominates total wealth. As children grow, they gradually convert that human capital—their skills, knowledge, and potential—into financial capital through work, learning, and life choices.
That’s why school-based financial education must go beyond savings accounts and student loans. It should teach young people how to invest in themselves—their talents, values, and future earning power. These are the foundations of long-term prosperity and resilience.
Unfortunately, many school programmes today are shaped—or subtly skewed—by sponsors from the financial services industry. These sponsors often promote products over principles, nudging the curriculum toward financial capital instruments instead of lifelong capability-building. That’s when education becomes marketing.
True financial education is about empowerment, not extraction.
It must be independent, trustworthy, and structurally detached from the financial system it critiques and explains. That’s why, when we founded the Academy of Life Planning in Chorley in 2012, I chose to support the Debt Advice Foundation in shaping their Money Diaries—a peer-led approach that builds critical thinking and real-life money management skills from the ground up.
Because if we’re serious about closing the advice gap, tackling poverty, and preparing the next generation, we must start by teaching children how to build wealth from within—not just how to consume financial products.
The CFA Institute’s definition of total wealth
The CFA Institute’s definition of total wealth from their 2024 study, Lifetime Financial Advice: A Personalized Optimal Multilevel Approach:
📊 Total Wealth Framework
Total Wealth = Financial Capital + Human Capital – Lifetime Liabilities
- Financial Capital = savings, investments, and liquid assets.
- Human Capital = the present value of your future earnings—it reflects your skills, career trajectory, and personal development potential.
- Lifetime Liabilities = commitments such as mortgages, loans, nondiscretionary expenses, and protected capital obligations (e.g., life insurance, pensions).
Further reading from AoLP:
Human Capital Development in Financial Planning.
🧠 Why It Matters
- Life‑Cycle Insight
Early in life, human capital dominates total wealth. As you earn, save, and invest, you shift wealth from human to financial capital. - Holistic Asset Allocation
By including human capital and liabilities within an “economic balance sheet,” the study integrates life-cycle dynamics with optimized portfolio allocation and tax-efficient positioning—what they call “net-worth optimization”. - Evolving Risk Strategy
Human capital is often viewed as bond-like in risk. Thus, younger individuals naturally skew financial capital more toward equities. As human capital declines over time, portfolios gradually shift toward more conservative investments.
Further reading:
Net Worth Optimization: A New Era of Personalized Risk Optimization
📚 About the Study
- Authors: Thomas M. Idzorek, CFA, and Paul D. Kaplan, CFA; Foreword by Roger G. Ibbotson.
- Structure:
- Builds a three-stage model integrating life-cycle finance with single-period (Markowitz-style) optimization
- Incorporates human capital and liabilities into net-worth calculations
- Addresses taxes, risk capacity, preferences, lifecycle variability, and asset location—all through a unified, actionable model.
- Innovation: It bridges the gap between theoretical life-cycle finance and real-world portfolio construction—enabling personalised consumption smoothing and risk/return optimisation over a lifetime.
🔍 Practical Takeaway
- Total wealth = your starting point, recognising both current assets and future earnings.
- Holistic advice: Adjust spending, saving, insurance, and investing based on a unified view of your full life journey.
- Dynamic strategy: As your career and financial life evolve, so should your asset allocation and protection strategies.
DebtAware, a school-based financial education programme
The Debt Advice Foundation in the UK runs DebtAware, a school-based financial education programme aimed at preventing and curing problem debt. Their core resource is Money Diaries, which are real-life narratives written by students that bring financial lessons to life in classroom settings.
🎓 Programme Overview
- Age Range
- Primary-level (9–13 years) – Money Diaries and DebtAware lessons introduce budgeting, saving, and basic money management skills .
- Secondary-level (14–16 years) – Extended with real-world scenarios, including student-specific challenges like university loans.
- Lesson Structure
- Delivered through eight class modules, each lasting ~2 hours, taught by DebtAware staff with teacher collaboration.
- Materials include PowerPoints, workbooks, at-home activity sheets, short video clips, and most notably, the Money Diaries — student-written stories illustrating financial choices.
- Peer Engagement (“Money Mentors”)
- Older students in each class are trained to act as Money Mentors, supporting peers and reinforcing the learning.
- Scale & Reach
- Approximately 140 schools in North West England participate, educating around 10,000 children annually. Over time, more than 80,000 children have benefited.
✅ Key Strengths
- Peer-to-peer learning & relatability: Money Diaries written by real students boost engagement and authenticity.
- Curriculum integration: Designed to align with PSHE, Citizenship, Maths, and Economics, seamlessly embedding into school programmes .
- Preventative focus: Emphasises life skill development before financial issues emerge—guided by students’ own financial stories.
📚 Supporting Resources
- Teacher’s Guidance Notes: Offer structured advice on implementing the Money Diaries modules effectively.
- Home Activities: Encourage family engagement beyond school.
How it Compares
- DebtAware vs. MyBnk – DebtAware focuses on peer-generated stories and early prevention, while MyBnk targets a broader 7–25 age group with enterprise, saving, and borrowing themes.
- DebtAware vs. Aflatoun – Aflatoun delivers globally oriented social & financial education; DebtAware is UK-localised with UK farming, budgeting content.
🌱 In Summary
- DebtAware is the Debt Advice Foundation’s signature programme, with Money Diaries at its heart—authentic, student-written stories that drive financial learning.
- Tailored to ages 9–16, combining classroom modules, peer mentorship, teacher support, and family engagement.
- Built for scalability, having already reached tens of thousands of students across primary and secondary schools.
Further reading:
DebtAware—Money Skills for Life Programme
Download Teacher Guidance Notes.
Download All Party Parliamentary Group on Financial Education for Young People Report.
Inquiry by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Financial Education for Young People
The All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Financial Education for Young People published a comprehensive report highlighting the urgent need for systemic change in how financial education is delivered in UK schools—especially at the primary level.
Why Early Financial Education Matters
The APPG’s inquiry found that many of the UK’s most pressing financial challenges—rising debt, gambling harm, and financial anxiety—are rooted in a lack of foundational knowledge. Research shows:
- Money habits are formed by age 7, yet only 1 in 3 primary children recall receiving any financial education.
- 52% of UK teens were in debt before age 17.
- 67% of young people lack confidence in planning their financial future.
- The COVID-19 pandemic worsened financial anxiety for 6 in 10 young people.
Key Findings
- Geographic and socio-economic gaps persist. Children from lower-income households and rural communities are less likely to receive financial education.
- Delivery is inconsistent, with teachers citing a lack of training, time, and prioritisation.
- In England, there is no statutory requirement for financial education in primary schools—unlike in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.
APPG Recommendations
To correct this imbalance, the APPG proposes a bold but achievable target: universal, high-quality financial education for every primary school child by 2030. Key recommendations include:
- Statutory curriculum inclusion of financial education in all UK nations.
- Government-funded training and resources for teachers.
- Use of dormant assets to finance long-term initiatives.
- Longitudinal studies to evaluate the impact of early education on future financial wellbeing.
Call to Action
The APPG urges government departments, educators, and civil society to treat financial education as a critical life skill—on par with literacy and numeracy. They call for a national strategy in England, aligned with international standards set by the OECD.
Conclusion
This inquiry reinforces the message behind our own campaign: financial education must start early, be delivered independently, and be enshrined in law. Without early intervention, we risk perpetuating cycles of poverty, financial vulnerability, and disengagement. The APPG’s findings give powerful political and policy weight to the work being championed by the Academy of Life Planning, the Transparency Taskforce, and petition supporters across the country.
Yes, the APPG Inquiry does mention the Debt Advice Foundation and its DebtAware programme.
Here’s the relevant excerpt from the APPG Inquiry report:
Debt Advice Foundation Case Study:
DebtAware provides a financial education programme for children aged 9–11 years of age. The main aim of the programme is to give children the knowledge, understanding and skills to develop a sound and sensible attitude towards managing money.The programme consists of eight modules, with key lessons delivered by DebtAware to classes. This consists of two-hour lessons, supported with resources and further tasks to embed the main points of the session. Each module includes a PowerPoint, workbook, extra tasks, tasks to try at home, short story books called Money Diaries and short video clips. Schools use Money Mentors, four trained children from the class, to deliver extra sessions.
DebtAware delivers to a wide variety of schools in the North West of England. Currently, there are 140 schools in the programme and about 10,000 children receiving the sessions. Since the programme started, over 80,000 children have received financial education from DebtAware.
This confirms that the Money Diaries and the peer-led ‘Money Mentors’ model are recognised components of the programme and were formally included in the APPG’s evidence base.
🔍 Today’s Campaign: Transparency Taskforce & Legal Mandate
📝 Petition: “Legally require all secondary schools in England to teach financial education”
- Author: Cameron Holt, 16‑year‑old Youth MP for Bassetlaw
- Objective: Move financial education from optional to statutory across all secondary schools—including academies and free schools—by securing 10,000 signatures by 17 June 2025.
- Current Progress: ~6,335 signatures, with ~4,500 needed for a government response.
🔔 Call to Action (from Charles Henderson, UKSA):
“Signing the petition is easy. Click on the petition link… and follow the instructions. …For your signing to be recognised you will receive an email confirmation link.”
He warns of resistance—especially from the financial services sector, which benefits from financial ignorance—but emphasises the campaign’s importance and reassurance around data privacy compliance. He’s already signed and urges others to join before the 17 June 2025 deadline .
Click here to sign the petition
🛡️ Why This Matters – A Transparency Taskforce Alignment
- Structural Independence
- Education must be trustworthy, not repurposed for product sales.
- A legally enshrined curriculum secures autonomy from vested interests.
- Human Capital Strategy
- As highlighted in CFA’s Total Wealth model, investing in education and skills forms the foundation of long-term prosperity.
- A systematic, curriculum-wide approach ensures every student gains vital awareness—beyond savings accounts and loans.
- Public Backing & Institutional Momentum
- Supported by UKSA and Transparency Taskforce leadership.
- Endorsed by MPs, Youth MPs, and industry voices (including GoHenry, PSHE Association).
- Financial Times confirms a growing cross-industry push to embed financial literacy into core maths and life‑skills curriculum.
Further reading:
Young people need financial education – here’s how we do it
Bassetlaw Youth MP working with Worksop school to help shape the future of education
✅ Next Steps: How You Can Help
- Sign the petition before 17 June 2025 to trigger a government response.
- Share via email or social media, especially through networks like the Transparency Taskforce.
- Encourage organisations—such as academies, professional bodies, membership groups—to promote the campaign internally.
Click here to sign the petition
📣 Closing Note — Steve
Your early work—especially co‑designing Debt Advice Foundation’s Money Diaries in Chorley—laid the groundwork for credible, peer-led financial education. Now, with the Transparency Taskforce’s support, there’s momentum to legally entrench that ethos across England’s schools.
💡 Let’s transform today’s grassroots insight into tomorrow’s statutory reality.
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