Getting your first payslip might come as a shock if you don’t really know what taxes you need to pay. You open it, only to realise that a big chunk of your money has disappeared before you get your hands on it. Most people aren’t expecting this because they don’t really have a good idea of how much tax they should be paying. This is also a big problem because if you don’t know what you should be paying- you won’t be able to tell if there is a mistake and you’re paying too much or not paying enough. Everybody has a tax code which tells your employer what tax contributions you should be paying. The percentage of your wages that you pay in tax depends on how much you earn, but a lot of people misunderstand it. If you earn £11,850 or less, you don’t get taxed on that money. Anything up to £46,350 is taxed at 20 percent; up to £150,000 is taxed at 40 percent and anything over £150,000 is taxed at 45 percent. However, people get a bit confused about what this really means. For example, if you earn £30,000, that doesn’t mean you pay 20 percent on the whole sum. You still don’t have to pay any tax on the first £11,850, you just have to pay 20 percent of the remaining £18,150. Most people tend to think that you would just have to pay 20 percent of the whole £30,000 so they’re expecting to pay more than they actually owe. This misconception can cause problems because if your tax code is wrong and you’re paying more than you need to, you might not realise.

Things get even more complicated if you’re self employed and this is something that people still don’t really know about. When you’re working for a company, the contributions are taken automatically but if you’re self employed you need to fill out a tax return every year and then you’ll get a bill that you have to pay. If you’re late or you make any mistakes on the tax return you could end up being subject to UK Tax Investigations. Any mistakes could be misconstrued as an attempt to avoid tax and that will land you in a lot of trouble.

This is probably the most important financial skill that you need but most people never learned a thing about it at school. If you don’t know how to manage your money properly, you’re really going to struggle in later life. Basic things like putting money into savings each month or paying off bills as soon as you get your wages through are second nature to some people, but others just don’t know what they’re doing. Being sensible with your money from an early age will put you in a good position later on when you’re trying to save for a house and put aside money for retirement etc.

How To Avoid Debt

When credit card companies send you letters in the post they make it all sound very attractive. Have some free money with no interest for a year, what could go wrong? If you haven’t been taught about the dangers of debt and how to avoid it you might think it’s a great idea to go for it. We live in a culture of debt so it’s been normalised to some extent and that leads to a lot of younger people with limited financial knowledge thinking that building up credit card debt is just something that you do. In reality, getting into a spiral of debt can be incredibly damaging both financially as well as mentally. It’s true that you probably will have to use credit cards at some point in your life but they should be considered an emergency resource, not an unlimited supply of free money.

Payday loans are especially dangerous and their advertising campaigns specifically target people that might not understand just how high the interest rates are and how easy it is to get into a cycle of debt. Always avoid payday loans at all costs, there’s always a better way. You need to live within your means and only spend what you can actually afford to. Knowing how to budget is a real help here.

You’ve probably heard the term credit score being thrown around but chances are nobody ever taught you what it actually is, or what a good one looks like. Your credit score is basically a record of your financial history. If you’ve got a lot of debts and you’ve been missing payments on bills etc. you’re going to have a bad credit score. When you apply for loans or a mortgage in later life, they’ll look at your score to determine how likely you are to pay the money back. That’s why having a good credit score is so important. If you start running up debts now, you’re going to struggle later in life. You can check your credit score for free online but that might not help you that much if you don’t know what you’re looking at. A score higher than 700 is considered good and anything over 800 is excellent. Anything below 580 is a bad credit score and it’ll cause you trouble.

The curriculum has been changed to include these sorts of things a lot more but there are still plenty of people that missed out on important money lessons.