Students at Nelson and Colne College have been building their financial knowledge, skills and confidence during Barclays Money Skills Week.

Barclays Money Skills Week takes place nationally and is aimed at helping young people to build their awareness of money management issues and provide them with the tools they need to stay in control of their budget.

Students have been participating in entertaining and informative money management activities. With budgets and cash flows being a highly publicised topic in the media today, it is vital that young people learn to control their finances early on in life, and continue to practise restraint and a sensible approach to spending if they are to become financially stable adults.

During the week, students were asked to submit their own money saving tips and they also took part in a taste challenge, where they had to guess the supermarket ‘no fills’ brand, from the branded products and they were often amazed at the price difference! This activity was aimed at helping them to see that they did not need to buy the expensive branded product, which was often considerably more expensive than the non-branded version – the taste difference was almost impossible to tell between the two products!

In order to choose a winner of the ‘Top Tips’ competition, the College sent the top ten tips submitted to local MP Andrew Stephenson who picked the winner.

Bethany Morley who is currently studying Level 3 ICT, submitted the overall winning money tip –“Buy yoghurts at the start of the month and freeze them, putting one a day in your lunch box.  By the time it is lunch time it will have defrosted and it will have kept your sandwiches cold too.” Her top tip won her an IPAD Mini! Runners-up Tom Smith and Beth Proctor both won Love to Shop vouchers for their top tip submissions.

Pendle MP Andrew Stephenson said, “I was really impressed to see some of the top money tips which were put forward by the young people at Nelson and Colne College Sixth Form. It is clear that many of them have firm grasp on their finances and understand how important money-saving is! I was particularly impressed by the tip which I picked as the winner – I have never heard of doing this before and it also has the dual purpose of keeping the rest of your lunch cool – An excellent idea!”