Four tips for financial planning in your teens

The sooner you start managing your finances, the better prepared you will be, and developing good financial habits before your 20s will give you the best head start.

Fairstone Chartered financial planner Simon Turner has identified four top tips you can take in your teens to kickstart your personal finance journey.

1. Open a savings account
2. Start an ISA
3. Explore investment preferences
4. Look into available Government schemes

As you start to become more independent it’s a great time to start thinking about your options and how you can segment funds to meet your short-term, medium-term and long-term needs. This can cover anything from cash deposits into traditional savings accounts to ISAs and even your pension.

One 14-year-old client explained that his focus was on “knowing and learning how to use money as well as putting any savings away for the longer term”.

If you fail to do anything in your teens, you are potentially limiting your choices for your future. Most under 20s have high aspirations of what career they want to have, where they want to travel and what they want to buy and planning from an early age can help to realise these aspirations.

While at this age there is usually no need to implement any protection plans as there is often no debt, dependents, or income to protect, it is a very good time to start the discussion around future protection plans.

Our latest report, Changing Landscapes: Retirement is not just for the old, examines the importance of starting your financial journey early and key financial considerations for different life stages. You can download a copy here.

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The value of investments may fluctuate in price or value and you may get back less than the amount originally invested. Past performance is not a guide to the future. The views expressed in this publication represent those of the author and do not constitute financial advice.