My attempts at teenage rebellion were an absolute disaster, thanks to my dad’s unconventional parenting style. When I got to the age that school friends were starting to get into trouble for various misdemeanours – smoking behind the bike sheds, dyeing their hair purple, getting their nose pierced – my dad acted disappointed that I wasn’t doing the same.
He asked: ‘Rachel, why do your friends keep getting suspended and you never do?’ He promised that if I got suspended, he’d take me out on day trips wherever I wanted to go for the full duration.
Of course, it had the opposite effect. Parent-endorsed rebellion holds no appeal, let me tell you.
The only revolt left open to me was to go against his wishes and be a goody-goody-two-shoes.
A high-risk strategy from him, but if his ultimate intention was to keep me on the straight and narrow, it worked.
I’d forgotten about this for years, until the memory jolted back last week when the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, announced plans for a massive advertising campaign to encourage the British public to invest.
Flying the flag: The Treasury, the financial regulator, major high-street banks and investment firms are teaming up to extol the benefits of investing
The Treasury, the financial regulator, major high-street banks and investment firms are teaming up to extol the benefits of investing.
A great idea in theory. Investing tends to produce better returns over the long term than leaving savings in cash. Encouraging savers to try it should help make them wealthier in time.
But if the advertising campaign gets the messaging wrong, I fear it could have the opposite effect.
Little saps the appeal of doing something more than being told it’s fun and good for you by politicians, financial regulators and banks. For many of us it taps into that teenage instinct to rebel.
But at least when a parent tells you to do something you have a vague sense that it’s probably for your own good – even if you don’t want to do it.
When the Government, regulators and companies that stand to profit tell you to do something, there is not always the same reassurance. You don’t have to be a hardened cynic to find yourself wondering: are you telling me to invest for my own benefit – or do you have your interests at heart?
There are simple steps that the Government and financial firms could take to allay our fears.
Firstly, banks and investment firms could cool it with lobbying the Government to introduce new rules that would serve them – but not us.
In recent weeks, countless firms have been piling in to tell the Chancellor to cut the cash Isa limit from £20,000 to as little as £4,000.
They clearly have her ear: she nearly did it. This would have harmed the savers for whom holding cash is a better strategy than investing. Savers should be encouraged into investing if they can – not forced into it.
But if the cash Isa limit were cut, investment firms would be some of the biggest winners. When firms act out of such cynical self-interest in one area, it makes it harder to trust them in others.
Secondly, the Chancellor could assure us she’s listening to the voice of savers, households and consumers when forming new policies that affect us.
Her Mansion House speech last week exposed who she has really been listening to when coming up with her ideas to reshape household finances: industry.
She thanked Nationwide chief executive Debbie Crosbie, for example, for ‘her leadership’ in reforming mortgage rules.
She expressed gratitude to Chris Cummings of the Investment Association for ‘spearheading’ the campaign to promote investment.
No one can blame Reeves for obsequious name-checking of financial groups – the Mansion House speech is a Chancellor’s key moment to schmooze the City. But now we need to see that she is listening to groups who represent us, too. It will help her build trust – and it could stop her being led astray by self-interested financial firms.
I suspect that if she had, she wouldn’t have even considered cutting the cash Isa allowance in the first place.
But those steps alone will not be enough to guarantee a successful campaign to get us investing. It also needs to be backed up by a complete overhaul of personal finance education in schools.
Encouraging people to invest is not as simple as previous Government-backed financial campaigns, such as those telling us to claim for missold PPI or fill out a tax return by the self-assessment deadline.
After all, these campaigns required only one action and involved little choice or downside.
Starting to invest is a much more nuanced and sprawling idea. Investing covers everything from buying fine wines to building a portfolio of funds in a pension. The term is also used liberally (and often recklessly) to describe anything from trading crypto-currencies to buying expensive handbags. Simply telling us to ‘invest’ could end in disaster.
The solution is not to regulate further and restrict how the term ‘investing’ is used, or to steer savers to invest in a certain way.
Instead, the answer is to provide personal finance education in schools so that savers have the knowledge and confidence to work it out for themselves when they need it.
Yes, it could be years until we start to reap the rewards – however, if the Chancellor is asking us to invest for the long term, surely she can do the same.
Almost two-thirds of young adults do not recall receiving financial education at school, a study by comparison website Compare The Market and financial education charity Money Ready found. So we have a long way to go.
But simply telling people to invest without giving them the financial confidence to do it is like putting a 17-year-old in front of a car steering wheel and telling them to drive.
Even the most unorthodox parenting style wouldn’t be so reckless.
My rebellion against authority did me a lot of favours – but if the Chancellor sparks one among savers, it’ll leave us all poorer.
DIY INVESTING PLATFORMS
AJ Bell
AJ Bell
Easy investing and ready-made portfolios
Hargreaves Lansdown
Hargreaves Lansdown
Free fund dealing and investment ideas
interactive investor
interactive investor
Flat-fee investing from £4.99 per month
InvestEngine
InvestEngine
Account and trading fee-free ETF investing
Trading 212
Trading 212
Free share dealing and no account fee
Affiliate links: If you take out a product This is Money may earn a commission. These deals are chosen by our editorial team, as we think they are worth highlighting. This does not affect our editorial independence.
