Financial secrets and fears

Money is the last taboo. People are more comfortable talking about their sex lives than about their finances. People would rather get divorced than tell their partner about their savings.

Those expressions were common when I first started writing about financial education. Except the last one. I just made that up. It's based on sound evidence, though. If you count a press release as sound. Post Office Savings, whose interests lie in encouraging people to save, reckons 10 million people have a hidden savings account. Or, at least, they cover up how much they have stashed away. That's well over a quarter of UK savers.

A lot of those secret savers are keeping their cash hidden from partners. That, says Post Office Savings, causes tension in relationships. In fact, it causes 16 per cent of married couples to break up. It's odd that a financial institution is so well-informed about precise reasons for marital breakup. What kind of survey did they do? But let that pass.

A moment's thought reveals that this isn't about embarrassment. People don't regard what's in their savings account as a bit too delicate to discuss in public. Though, according to the poll, 13 per cent of savers don't mention their dosh because don't want to make their non-saving friends and family feel "uncomfortable". Very sensitive of them. But back in the real world, people don't tell their friends and family about their money because they don't want them to know about it. And that's because they're afraid if they did know about it they would have to give them some of it. Or lend it and risk not getting it back.

This is all very sensible and realistic. It's also sad that it leads to relationships falling apart. The root cause isn't secret savings accounts, though. It's having different approaches to money and lacking the skills, knowledge and confidence to air those differences and work at resolving them.

Which is just one more reason why financial education rightly belongs in sex and relationships education, not in maths or citizenship.

PJ White is editor of Youth Money