Learn money now and you'll never have to be rescued

There's a version of adult life where you always have to ask someone — a partner, a parent — before you can make a decision. Almost nobody chooses that on purpose. It arrives slowly, through never having learned the money part.

The way out of it's boring and it starts now.

Get a job, even a small one

A Saturday job, babysitting, coaching a younger team, a summer placement. The wage matters less than what it teaches you: that money is hours, that hours are finite, and what it feels like to be relied on by someone outside your family.

Split it the day you get it

• 50% to spend. Yours, no guilt.
• 30% saved for something named. A trip, a car, a laptop, a course. Saving for nothing never works.
• 20% long-term, untouched. This is the one that feels pointless now and turns out to matter enormously.

Move the 30 and the 20 immediately. Whatever is left at the end of the month is always nothing — that's true at sixteen and it's still true at forty.

Open an account in your own name

Then keep it, for the rest of your life, no matter who you end up sharing a life with.

This isn't about expecting anything to go wrong. It's that every adult should be able to act without needing permission, and that an account, a credit file and a clear picture of your own finances are what make that possible.

Women who have never had that are the ones who get stuck, and the ones who get stuck almost never saw it coming.

Three things to understand before you're eighteen

Credit is a tool and a trap, and it's the same object. A card paid off in full every month is free and builds a record that you'll need for a flat. A card carrying a balance is one of the most expensive things you can own. Same card.

Buy-now-pay-later is borrowing. It's designed to feel like it isn't. It goes on your record, it's easy to lose track of across four apps, and missing one matters.

Nobody legitimate asks for your bank details, a code, or a favour involving moving money. Not a boyfriend, not a "modelling agency", not someone offering a job that pays unusually well for very little. If someone wants you to receive money and pass it on, that's money laundering and it's you who gets the criminal record.

The future part

Whatever you end up doing — a trade, a degree, a business, a family, or several of those in sequence — the arithmetic is identical. Spend less than you earn, keep a buffer, start early, leave it alone.

Starting at sixteen rather than twenty-six is worth more than any salary difference you're likely to negotiate later. Not because the amounts are large now, but because of how long they get to sit there.