Money advice from parents and grandparents we wish we’d listened to

dailyrecord.co.uk:

Children don’t always take older generations’ advice on board, but new research suggests more than a third (37%) of adults wish they had listened more to their parents or grandparents about saving money for the future.Among those who regret not heeding their elders’ views on saving, two-fifths (39%) don’t have as much money saved up as they thought they would.A quarter (25 per cent) say they got into debt by spending too much money when they were young, while a similar proportion (24 per cent) didn’t travel or go on holiday as much as they had imagined they would.

More than 2,100 people across the UK in September 2023 were quizzed for the survey, on behalf of the Pension Attention campaign.

The pensions industry-funded campaign is co-ordinated by the Association of British Insurers (ABI) and the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association (PLSA), with the aim of raising awareness of the importance of people understanding their finances for their future.People in Northern Ireland (50 per cent) and Scotland (43 per cent) particularly regret not taking advice on saving from older generations, the survey suggests.

This was closely followed by people in the North East of England (41 per cent) and South East (40 per cent).The research also suggests people have other financial regrets, with just over a fifth (22 per cent) wishing they had taken the advice from parents or grandparents to not spend all their pay at once, and one in six (16 per cent) wishing they had taken advice to get on the property ladder as soon as they could.Of course, the realities of managing finances, particularly when times are tough, are often very different to people’s best intentions.