Ola Majekodunmi is committed to making financial literacy a key part of “adulting”, the humorous term used by young people feeling out of their depth in the grown-up world. During the UK’s first lockdown, to tackle the spread of Covid-19, the 24-year old Londoner decided to use her spare time to create the All Things Money website and social media channels, devoted to helping people learn how to handle their finances. The pandemic was creating an even more uncertain world and she wanted to help people with her newfound knowledge.
Learning the basics
Majekodunmi had begun teaching herself to understand credit cards, ISAs and investing when she was a business management student doing a placement at a car rental company. She realised how little she knew about personal finance when she was listening to the audiobook of Laura Whateley’s Money: A User’s Guide. She started investing with £1000 and now saves every month. “I had just learnt how to invest properly and so I wanted to teach others how they could do the same,” she said. “There are lots of young people like me who use social media pretty much every day, so I thought it would enable me to target people of a similar age and teach people the financial basics that are not taught in schools.” As well as Tweets explaining how inflation can affect your finances, and Instagram posts revealing the real costs of buying a house, Majekodunmi now hosts a podcast, offers online workshops and sells workbooks so people can do the homework they missed out on. “I think tackling financial literacy is crucial as it prepares people for the real world,” she said.
Keeping it simple
Her followers say her simple approach has inspired them into taking action to keep their own finances on track. Now, she is working with FLIC to narrow the financial literacy gap, producing content for use in schools and online. The one thing Majekodunmi wishes she had learnt at school is how to invest. “Had I known how to earlier, I would have started soooo much earlier!” she says.
