An MP has called for a greater effort in schools to teach children about personal finance.
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Jerome Mayhew, the Conservative MP for Broadland in Norfolk, told MPs that a good financial education was for many just "a middle class secret".
He revealed that a recent survey for Parliament suggested that 62% of young people had no recollection of being taught about finance in school.
The schools minister said financial education was part of the curriculum.
Mr Mayhew was previously a successful businessman, but he told Parliament that when growing up he was taught nothing about savings, pensions, mortgages or borrowing money.
And 40 years on he was horrified when over the summer his teenage children told him that they had also received no financial education.
"This is a real and present issue," Mr Mayhew told a special debate arguing that better financial education would help young people make better choices with their money - which could improve their mental health and even benefit the economy.
And he had a string of statistics to back-up his argument.
A Cambridge University Study had found that most money habits are embedded in a child by the age of seven.
"It is difficult to reverse those early learnt approaches later in life," said Mr Mayhew.
"If you haven't got it by the age of seven then you're already on the back foot."
