Financial wellness does not have to be down to luck on St Patrick's Day if you can empower individuals with the right tools and information to take control of their money.
This is the message behind a nine-year-old boy's strapline for a St Patrick's Day marketing leaflet for Float, the financial wellness company.
Creating the line: "This St Patrick's Day, wellness does not need to be down to luck", nine-year-old Luca Gardner has been getting his own taste of the world of work, after his mother, Anne-Michelle Gardner, business development manager for Float, took him into the office after Covid restrictions eased.
Gardner, who has been home-schooling Luca throughout the pandemic, brought him into London so he could see where his mother worked. While he was there, he met one of the co-directors.
Gardner said: "He kindly engaged with my son, and said 'You could come to work for us when you are a bit older'.
"The co-director mentioned a one-pager that I had some input with for Valentine's Day, and challenged Luca to see what he could come up with.
"Well, that was it. On the way home, all my son spoke of was what he could do and what things he could cover. He got to working out some catchy lines, drawing attention to the financial wellness that Float offers to companies' employees, and started to try teaming these up with different yearly events.
"He asked me if he could use the computer to look for photos online to go with his themes. He started to learn how to use some of the basics on PowerPoint, with my help, and before I knew it, he had completed his first piece of work."
The co-director was so pleased he gave Luca some pocket money, which has inspired the young lad to come up with more ideas and concepts, understanding how work is valued in the 'adult world' and gaining confidence using new skills.
For Gardner and Float's directors, this sort of encouragement sends exactly the right sort of message that Float aims to promote, with its focus on providing solutions to help people get to grips with their finances.
Gardner added: "The co-director said to me: 'We are a wellness company, and it is important for us not just to look to the companies we help and their employees, but this also starts at home'."
Float has a suite of technological products that aim to promote financial wellbeing and inclusion.
These include salary advance, a tool by which employers can give their employees an advance on their monthly salary to cover unexpected costs, for example, or to help new employees who need to pay the bills and travel expenses ahead of their monthly pay date.
It also works through registered IFA partners to help provide credit union loans to employees, enabling them to consolidate existing debt without being subject to penurious rates of interest that can apply to other methods, and helping them with easy-to-access credit union savings products.
