It started with a payslip
A few years ago, one of my daughters started her first proper job. Within a week she was on the phone: “Dad, I don’t understand my payslip. What’s National Insurance? Why have they taken this much tax? And what’s a pension auto-enrolment?”
Fair questions. She’d done well at school, got good grades, and was sharp enough to land the job in the first place. But nobody had ever sat her down and explained how the financial side of adult life actually works.
Then her sisters started asking the same things. How do student loan repayments work? How do I budget when my income changes every month? Should I get a credit card? What’s the deal with renting — why do I need a guarantor and a deposit and the first month up front?
I started answering each question as it came up. But it quickly became clear these weren’t isolated queries — the same gaps kept appearing, and they weren’t unique to my family.
The jigsaw problem
My daughters could search online as well as anyone. But here’s the thing: it’s hard to Google something when you’re not quite sure what you’re looking for. And even when you do find information, it arrives in fragments — a TikTok here, a blog post there, a Reddit thread that may or may not be reliable.
It’s like having the pieces of a jigsaw thrown at you without knowing what the picture on the box looks like. You’ve got bits of sky and bits of grass, but no idea where they fit together. What was missing wasn’t more information — it was context. A way to see how all the pieces connect.
The numbers behind the problem
As I dug into it, the scale of the issue became clear. The FCA’s 2024 Financial Literacy Survey found 40% of 18–24 year olds rated their confidence in managing money as “low”. A 2023 study from Compare the Market, MyBnk and CEBR found only around 40% of young adults are considered financially literate. Other research has put the figure as low as 30%.
This isn’t because young people are careless or lazy. The school curriculum simply doesn’t cover it in any meaningful way. Most young adults leave education knowing how to solve quadratic equations but not how to read a tenancy agreement.
From kitchen table to manuscript
What started as conversations with my daughters turned into notes. The notes turned into chapters. The chapters turned into a manuscript of several hundred pages covering everything from student loans and payslips to investing, property, pensions and financial wellbeing.
Every scenario in the book comes from genuine questions my daughters and their friends have asked, or from my own life experiences. It’s grounded in real situations, not textbook hypotheticals.
I wrote it as a parent who happens to be a chartered accountant — someone who can explain compound interest without making you want to leave the room. The aim was to be the smart friend who knows about money: not patronising, not preachy, just clear and practical.
What Money Sorted is now
Money Sorted has grown beyond the original manuscript. It’s becoming a platform — this website, free guides, courses, tools, a newsletter and more — all designed to help young adults in the UK get their financial lives sorted.
Most of what we produce is free. Some things (like in-depth courses and eBooks) have a price tag, because running a platform costs money and I’d quite like to keep the lights on. But the core mission hasn’t changed: take the financial knowledge that should have been taught in school and make it accessible, practical and — where possible — not boring.
Why it matters — and why now
Today’s young adults face a financial reality that’s fundamentally different from the one their parents grew up in. House prices sit at eight or nine times average earnings. Graduate debt starts north of £40,000. Rents swallow a third or more of take-home pay. The cheap housing and gold-plated final salary pension schemes that quietly built wealth for previous generations simply aren’t there any more.
The answer isn’t going to come from speculating on crypto or following the advice of the latest finfluencer on your social media feed. Real, lasting wealth is built differently — and the single biggest advantage young people have is the one most of them are ignoring: time.
Time is a genuine financial superpower. Someone who starts putting away £50 a month at 18 will accumulate more by retirement than someone who starts at 32 saving twice that amount. Compound interest rewards patience and punishes delay — and every month you wait is a month of compounding you never get back.
That’s why financial literacy for young adults isn’t just nice to have. It’s urgent. We need to turn today’s young adults into a nation of investors — people who understand that building wealth isn’t about getting lucky or earning a fortune, but about starting early, being consistent, and letting time do the work.
That’s the story. It started at a kitchen table with three daughters who had questions. With a bit of luck, it’ll help a few more people find the answers — and start putting them into practice before the clock runs down.