According to a new study, 94% of Irish people believe personal finance education should be taught as part of the school curriculum.

A new survey from Ulster Bank shows that 89% of parents with children of school-going age say it’s ‘very important’ their children have the ability to manage money and know how to budget.

49% of parents believe children should start to learn about managing money as young as possible while a further 1 in 4 (26%) believe between the ages of 7-11 is the right stage.

PA

Meanwhile, 59% believe the most effective way for young people to learn about banking, budgeting and managing money is by parents opening a savings account for their children and encouraging them to save and budget.

MoneySense is a free financial education programme for schools which Ulster Bank first introduced in 2007.  Commenting on the findings, Pauline McKiernan, Sustainability & Community Affairs Manager Ulster Bank said:

"The new MoneySense parents’ resources are about helping families talk about money, making it easy for parents to use everyday examples from family life to build good attitudes and money-management skills.

"These survey results tell us that Irish people clearly place a priority on financial education and we hope the new resources will help parents to reinforce the work teachers do in the classroom by creating good money habits at home."

Rising costs

After dropping for the first time in four years in 2015, the annual cost of owning and maintaining a family home has risen again to €16,611.14 – equating to about 45.39% of the current average Irish national wage, according to new figures from AA Home Insurance.