Last week was Financial Planning Week in the UK; an initiative of the Institute of Financial Planning to raise awareness of the importance of financial planning to consumers. I ran a competition last week to incentivise Financial Advisers to take part, and be radical in their approach to promote financial planning.
A healthy number of firms entered the competition but there was one clear winner in my eyes, and that was Freedom Financial Planning (@freedom_fp).
Nick Heys, a financial planner at Freedom, took over a classroom at their local school to teach 10 - 11 year olds the basics of financial planning; savings, pensions and budgeting.
Lyn Nevett from Freedom explained the lesson :
"To really ensure the lesson conveyed the idea of saving and understanding financial planning, get our message we set some homework which took the form of a PDF Survey Quiz displayed on the front page of our website which the children could download, if they wanted to.
This quiz asked them to do some research within their family about what their Parents and Grandparents spent their pocket money on and indeed if they saved it. It also asked whether the children saved their pocket money. Once the survey quiz was completed and returned to us, we sent them a £4.99 Postal Order to save or spend as they wished!"
I was thoroughly impressed with their approach and the fact that they plan to roll this out to others schools in their local area. It was brilliant that they targeted the younger generation, and by the sound of it the children really enjoyed the lesson and were engaged in what was being explained. Great work!
Their brand spanking new Nexus 7 is on their way and I look forward to hearing more about their efforts with other schools in the future.
Well done to everyone who took part in Financial Planning Week!