OpinionJun 12 2014

Why is personal finance given less airtime than farming?

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Getting up unfeasibly early in the morning opens up a whole new world of information. Many years ago I wrote one of these pieces on the apparent similarities between the issues facing farmers and financial advisers following prolonged exposure to Farming Today.

The programme airs for 14 minutes every weekday and 25 minutes on Saturday.

Clearly not everyone who listens to this programme is a farmer or employed in any way in the farming industry, and it is arguable that everyone should listen to such programming, because each and every one of us has a material interest in the issues surrounding the production of the food that we all eat.

Front Row, Radio 4’s “flagship arts show” (their words, not mine), broadcasts for 30 minutes every weekday, presumably because there is sufficient content and public interest to deliver so much coverage during the course of a week.

On a holiday to San Diego, that one city of 1.3 million residents, I chanced to tune in to one radio station’s one-hour personal finance programme, broadcast seven days a week. So who decides that personal finance gets a rather measly fifty-four minutes of weekly coverage on Radio 4?

Who could argue against the premise that money and financial matters affect every life just as much as food and farming? And Philistine that I am, they both affect every life more than the latest film preview, book launch or album release.

Someone will argue that there is a “certain type of person” who listens to Radio 4, although independent audience statistics make this assertion unsustainable. With 11 million listeners that is roughly a quarter of the adult population of the UK. And every single one of them has money, either too much of it or not enough.

They have bank accounts, savings and investments, credit cards, loans and mortgages. They pay tax and national insurance contributions, and contribute to auto-enrolment or other pension schemes. They have families and property, which need insurance protection and wills, and they have entitlements to benefits and state pensions.

They are increasingly responsible for their own financial futures. My mistake: we are responsible for our own financial futures.

And maybe it would be a good investment in the financial future of the nation to campaign for a significant increase in personal finance coverage, to ensure the public is as educated and engaged with personal finance as it is with food and the arts.

Maybe it would be a good investment to campaign for a significant increase in personal finance coverage on the radio