**"At 19, I Saved £15k for a House Deposit—Despite My School’s Lack of Financial Guidance"**

As a 19-year-old journalist apprentice I’m definitely lucky to be in the position I am, with a stable income and finding myself in a good place to start my career.

I started the job in March and moved to London where I was fortunately able to stay with a friend of a friend under an informal renting agreement.

However, this was only a temporary and now I am having to look for other places to stay, leaving me with the dilemma of whether to rent , or gather up my pennies to put down a deposit on an eye-wateringly pricey one-bedroom flat.

My situation got me thinking about how I would be completely clueless as to where to even start if it wasn’t for my parents, who taught me to manage my money from a young age.

When I turned 18, they encouraged me to squirrel away my not insignificant lump of cash – around £15,000 – into a stocks and shares ISA , a lifetime ISA and premium bonds , advice that has meant I am well on my way to being able to afford a deposit on a flat in London.

Yet during my time in school and college, I can’t remember a single occasion when I was taught about saving money, or how taxes, pensions and mortgages work.

This is despite financial education officially becoming part of the UK national curriculum in September 2014.

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Data gathered by Santander earlier this year found that only one in four young adults are leaving school having received financial education, and research conducted by Experian shows that 38 per cent of 18- to 25-year-olds don’t know how to go about organising their finance, with 18 per cent having no savings at all.

Whilst I, courtesy of conditioning from my parents, was quite frugal with the earnings from various jobs I had worked since I was 15, I saw many of my friends constantly complaining about their lack of money, and even rejecting invites to social events due their bank balance.

Despite this I still feel like my financial knowledge is weak, with discussions about different mortgages, loans and taxes going way over my head.

This tracks with the general consensus of other young people , with data gathered by Experian showing that 59 per cent of young people find thinking about money stressful and overwhelming, and 47 per cent struggle to stick to a budget.

In the current economic climate, managing your personal finances is hard enough, but for young people with little knowledge of what to do with their money, it becomes that much harder.

Education has definitely progressed in leaps and bounds when it comes to social issues, with topics like sex education, drugs and religion being covered by my teachers from as early as Year 6, but when it comes to personal finances schools are not nearly as savvy.

Young people are increasingly looking to social media to inform their financial decisions, with Santander finding that 31 per cent of 18- to 21-year-olds look to influencers on platforms such as Instagram and TikTok for advice.

If we are at the point where nearly a third of young adults are getting more financial education from TikTok than at school, I think it makes it clear that more attention needs to be paid to a subject that affects every young person going through the British education system.

Whilst there is certainly some good tips given out by these internet finance gurus, as my Mum always says – don’t trust everything you see on the internet.