Have you had your Financial 5-a-day?

Way back in 2003 when government and health officials were worried we were not eating enough nutritious food they borrowed from a US public health initiative to come up with the 5-a-day campaign. The idea being to use behavioural science, nudges, campaigning and other forms of persuasion to get people living in Britain to eat more fruit and veg.

It was adopted by industry and along with the traffic lights eating campaign, became a commonplace sight on products, supermarket shelves and ad campaigns.

Despite all this effort, when you look in the shopping trolleys of others (and perhaps even your own) you often see red and amber warnings.

This is backed up by evidence that the average person in the UK eats only 3.5 portions of fruit and veg per day. Maybe when you take into account our evolutionary drive to consume salty and sugary foods calories this is not surprising. There is also the fact that around one third of food advertising is spent persuading us to buy unhealthy products. So maybe the fruit and veg 5-a-day and traffic light campaigns are pushing our nutritional intake in the right direction. Slowly traveling in the right direction. To keep in the fight the health lobby need perseverance, patience and persuasion.

What lessons might those of us working in financial education and wellbeing learn from the fruit and veg 5-a-day campaign? There are a number of interesting similarities: many of us demonstrate buying habits influenced by instant gratification, (what psychologists call temporal discounting) and we inhabit an economic environment heavily shaped by marketing and advertising. To give some idea of scale, one estimate is that £42.6bn was spent on UK advertising in 2024. This is nearly £800 per adult. Then of course, there is the financial services industry, which is eager and willing to lend. In fact the Bank of England estimates that there is around £1bn of new unsecured debt most months.

So, there are important and real parallels between our food nutrition and our financial nutrition – due to internal and external drivers we have a tendency to manage our physical and financial health in ways which don’t serve our future selves.

As we work towards improving financial nutrition we’d have to start from a humble position. In full awareness that we are fighting human nature as well as big industry and big finance. We also need to factor in life circumstances: some individuals face life challenges which are difficult to surmount.

But, as with improving nutritional habits, changing our money habits and mindset is possible. And it would bring many benefits: less worry and anxiety around money, the ability for small changes to compound over time and the potential for individuals to improve their financial health. In short, we may develop a more conscious and purposeful money mindset.  

What might a financial-5-a-day campaign look like? A useful starting point is to think in terms of broad categories and general principles. So, the focus might be on daily spending, budgeting, planning ahead, having meaningful conversation about money and being conscious about daily, weekly and monthly spending.

I would like to invite you to join in the conversation about improving our financial nutrition - what might be your own financial 5-a-day recommendations? Please send me a note through LinkedIn.

I’ll be posting more on the idea of financial 5-a-day and financial “nutrition” shortly.