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Morning to you both. Yeah, I've been working with Skipton Building Society and it's something quite
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close to my heart because I feel like we don't get taught about money at school, do we? You know
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and it's so, so important. And I went to work at 10. I mean, I started on Albert Square
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10 years old, and I was surrounded by some really fantastic adults. I was very, very lucky
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I received financial advice from Steve McFadden, for instance, who told me to buy a flat and the
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lovely, late, great Wendy Richard, who played Pauline Fowler. And she sat me down at 15 and said
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you need to get a pension. You know, you need to think about these things. So I was really fortunate
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to be surrounded by those people. But I think it's really, really important that we are open
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and we do talk about money, especially to our children. I think a lot of people as well, Natalie
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would have been shocked if they actually realised what the interest rate is on the credit card they
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use every day pep maps every week they don realise they may be paying nearly 30 interest rate absolutely and as you say some of the worst advice we get with the research skips and did you know is from friends
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where you're having a chat and a laugh with your friends and they say oh don't worry you know
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chuck it on the credit card you know so it's really important to be able to walk into somewhere
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and have a sensible conversation and even if it's a pound or 10 pounds you don't need thousands of
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and a lot of people think you need hundreds of thousands of pounds
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to get financial advice. But even if you've got £10 and you can halve that
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and squirre a little bit of it away, it's a start, isn't it? That's the thing
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And, Natalie, it's so important to learn the very basics of household management and budgeting as young as you possibly can
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I mean, you know, the very act of making sure you've got money to pay those bills at the end of the month
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Of course it is. And, I mean, I've got a 9-year-old girl and a 15-year-old girl
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and I try my best to say, yeah, right, this is 12 pounds do you realize that would be an hour work when you start work you know you need to try and teach children the value of money um and don really you know I spoil my children Christmas birthdays but I not one to be frivolous throughout the week just sort of buying loads of stuff I think it really important that they learn
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you know mum and dad work hard you know you need to earn your money and you need to be sensible
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with it and I've learned the hard way I've had large tax bills before now that have crept up on
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me and I've had to do say big brother to pay it I've been very open about that which is why it's
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really important. You mentioned schools earlier. I know when I was at school, there
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was never any conversation about managing money and I had to learn. I started work
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on a newspaper, living in a bedsit two weeks after I left school, so I learnt the hard
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way to manage my money. But do you think schools should, it should be almost part of
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the curriculum, something to do with... Absolutely. Absolutely it should. I'm sure
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they should be having half an hour a day. You know, mortgages
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tax bills, it's so important. It's crazy that they don't do it
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And Natalie you mentioned you did Big Brother to pay off a tax bill I did How worried were you when you were in that situation that you got this huge tax bill because they don treat people kindly a lot of the time
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Extremely worried, you know, and again, it's about learning and I learned the hard way. And I think
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it's really, really important that people know, you know, especially being freelance, it doesn't
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come out of a wage packet. So it's, you know, very, very different, you know. So, yeah, I learned
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the hard way and I'm much more sensible now. I've got a lovely fiancé. He's very good with money
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So, yeah, I'm learning all the time. Learning all the time. Now, we've got lots of EastEnders fans watching
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and listening to this programme. Natalie, they're going to ask me to ask you, is there any
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chance of Sonia Fowler returning to Albert Square? Well, you never know, do you
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I've been very, very fortunate. I haven't been killed off. Sonia's sort of living it up at the moment in Bali
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So, you never know what might happen. Never say never. It's a
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lovely place to work and I've been back and forward over the years so you never know
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Maybe another tax bill Natalie. Absolutely, let's hope not
