Thrive Money

I’ve always had an interest in finance and helping people with good money decisions; it’s one of the main reasons I joined First Wealth in February this year. So, when I heard about the relaunch of First Wealth’s financial education brand, Thrive Money, I jumped at the chance to be involved.

There is a growing interest in online financial information, and the current provision ranges from good to dangerous, with many in between. The Thrive Money brand is First Wealth’s social impact initiative as part of our B Corp commitment.

Thrive Money is aimed at Millennials (individuals born between 1981 and 1996) and Gen Z (born 1997 onwards), although much of the information we provide is applicable for everyone. The service is free, and our goal is to educate and inspire our community. The key benefit of Thrive is that our audience can have confidence that the education and information provided is of high quality, from a reputable source and a brand that they can trust.

Why now?

There is a clear need for good quality, easily accessible, basic financial education.

Being a millennial myself, I know first-hand how underprepared I was when taking my first steps into the working world.  Schools do not teach you about income tax or credit cards, and so like many of my friends, I found out the hard way.

I clearly remember the joy of getting my first payslip cruelly dashed when I realised that I had to pay Income Tax and National Insurance Contributions. What is missing from the curriculum is the basic financial understanding of tax, mortgages, credit, and debt, and Thrive is our way of redressing the balance and filling in those knowledge gaps.

The pandemic has made it even more obvious that money is not something that we can bury our heads about forever. We need a financial back up plan because we never know what is around the corner. Of all the jobs lost in the pandemic so far, almost 90% belonged to people aged under 35.

Not only did 2020 bring a pandemic, it also ushered in new money epidemics: emotional spending, and a new reliance on buy-now-pay-later, when the dopamine hit of the DPD delivery is the most exciting thing to happen all week. Along with the dubious trend of trying to solve financial problems quickly by trading or investing in risky assets such as forex or meme stocks or crypto. If it was that easy to get rich, why isn’t everyone?

Working with Laura

We are super excited to be partnering with Laura Whateley, author of Money: A User’s Guide, for this important project.

Laura is a friend of the business and an award-winning journalist and author. Laura has been writing about money and climbing a steep learning curve with her own personal finances, since she started her career at The Times in 2008, just as the economy crashed. With Laura being a typical ageing millennial, she shared all that she had learned in her first book, Money: A User’s Guide.

The book details what she wishes she had known about personal finance sooner, the things that could have helped her avoid some expensive mistakes. The book covers renting and mortgages, debt, saving, budgeting, investing and mindful spending. Laura also claims the accolade of it being the first book about how to start a pension that has gone viral!

As Laura happily admits, her own relationship with money is still work in progress!

We have launched the Thrive Money brand on Instagram (@thrivemoneyhq) and our goal is to build a community of like-minded people. We also plan to hold more webinars and live events in the future, allowing our audience to connect, network and share ideas and experiences.

I’m really excited to be involved with this project, along with my colleagues Frazer and Sam. I will look forward to providing updates as the project gathers momentum.

This document is marketing material for a retail audience and does not constitute advice or recommendations. Past performance is not a guide to future performance and may not be repeated. The value of investments and the income from them may go down as well as up and investors may not get back the amount originally invested.