Family First’s Fair and Balanced Sex/Abortion Youth Poll

Votes

Family First ordered a poll (something they subsequently left out of their press release) on young people’s views on sex and abortion, and apparently most of them agree with Family First.

The poll

The poll was conducted by Curia, David Farrar of Kiwiblog’s market research company. The sample size was 600 15 to 21-year-olds from 6,000 nationwide phone numbers.

“Based on this sample of 600 respondents, the maximum sampling error (for a result of 50%) is +/- 4.1%, at the 95% confidence level.”

Of course, it isn’t actually independent at all because Family First got to choose the wording of the question and options.

Sex education

Do you think sex education in schools should teach values, abstinence and consequences such as pregnancy, or just teach safe sex?

  • Values, abstinence and consequences – 34%
  • Just safe sex – 19%
  • Both – 42%
  • Unsure/refuse – 5%

Safe sex gets ‘just’ put in front of it, but values, abstinence and consequences doesn’t. Did the 34% know they were choosing just values, abstinence and consequences?

Chief executive of Family Planning, Jackie Edmond points out that no organization actually advocates safe sex by itself.

Family First’s spin on this result:

“This is a direct rebuke from young people to the ‘use a condom’ and ‘everyone’s doing it’ messages being pushed by groups like Family Planning, AIDS Foundation and Rainbow Youth,” says Bob McCoskrie, National Director of Family First NZ.

Except, at least 61% support education involving condoms. And ‘everyone’s doing it’ isn’t a message safe sex groups send.

Parental consent for abortion

Provided it won’t put the girl in physical danger, should parents be told if their school-age daughter is pregnant and considering getting an abortion?

  • Yes – 59%
  • No – 34%
  • Unsure/refuse – 7%

Without a crystal ball there’s really no way to be sure that it “won’t put the girl in physical danger”. Why not trust the girl’s own judgment? The question suggests that physical danger is the only significant danger. There’s other considerations to be made. Emotional and financial harm, or being chucked out of home are all significant, but none come under physical danger.

“Parental notification laws in Texas, Michigan, Minnesota, and other US states have seen a drop in both the pregnancy rate and the teen abortion rate – a win-win situation for all concerned.”

I’m guessing that quite a few of these abortions have just moved to states with more liberal abortion laws.

Abortion in general

Do you believe an unborn child or foetus has a right to be born?

  • Yes – 56%
  • No – 28%
  • Unsure/refuse – 16%

Slightly more young women than young men agreed – 58% to 55%.

The conclusion based on gender is misleading. Slightly more young women than young men disagreed too, 28% to 27%.

 

Sex education, parental notification, abortion poll results (doc)

Here is Family First’s article on the results (if anything, you should read it to see the words cock, wank, orgasm and clitoris censored with asterisks).

Image credit: Democracy International

Financial Advice

Money

Here is a New Zealand Herald article that contains some shitty and some good advice about money.

Thumbs down

Buying over renting

Buy property young, preferably in your 20s. Move heaven and earth to get the deposit. Rent is wasted money.

Buying a house is not for everyone. Sometimes it doesn’t make financial sense for a particular person. Insurance, rates, money spent on repairs (~$5k~ a year) etc. sometimes make renting a better choice. Run the numbers.

Avoid fines

It’s moronic to incur fines. Like the maniac driver in a big red American-style pickup truck who overtook me on State Highway 2 on December 17, just to be pulled over and fined.

Yes, you shouldn’t speed etc. etc., but this doesn’t contain any useful advice if you do get a fine. Actual advice would be to set up an automatic payment account to a ‘Stupid mistakes’ savings account so you have money to pay inevitable fines.

NEVER SPEND MONEY EVAAAA

Every dollar is precious. Think before you spend it.

I regret frittering money on coffees and unnecessary eating out. It would be better to direct that money towards savings.

Needs and wants are often confused. This is perhaps the biggest financial mistake that people make.

If you enjoy a coffee a day, buy a coffee a day. If you enjoy eating out, eat out. There’s no point earning money if you don’t spend it on stuff you love. Cut back on the stuff you don’t care about, optimize existing spending (subscriptions and phone/internet/TV/power etc. plans) and/or earn more money.

Have a budget!!@@111

Track your spending. You can’t budget if you don’t know what you’re spending.

Perhaps the most popular piece of financial advice ever given out. How many people who write this actually do in it in practice, I’m not sure. Tracking your spending by typing into a spreadsheet or basically anything with mainly manual entry is doomed to fail. Xero with BNZ and ASB by itself both offer spending tracking services within online banking. Or, Xero allows the import of other bank’s transactions. Do mainly electronic transactions (because they can automatically coded into categories) and use these.

Credit cards

Credit cards make you look rich. Anyone can live well for a few years, but the debt catches up.

Credit cards with benefits that are automatically paid off each month are excellent.

Thumbs up

Judging people

People are too quick to judge others’ financial decisions, me included.

1) No one wants unsolicited advice. 2) You have your own problems to worry about.

Pay bills

Pay your taxes on time. The IRD has a big stick.

Pay all bills on time. Automate them. The IRD and other companies are always up for negotiation around deadlines.

Experiences

Spending money on experiences is good spending. I am eternally grateful that I sold all but one of my shares at age 22 (by coincidence in August 1987) and went backpacking through Latin America. It’s good spending if the experience enriches life.

Yes. Also, give experiences as presents instead of physical things.

Save for things. Automatically.

Save before you buy. A bit of a radical concept in 2011, but it can change people’s financial future.

Enter into interest-free deals cautiously

Interest-free hire purchase deals are for suckers. You still pay ad establishment fee and the majority of people fail to clear the debt on time and pay interest anyway.

These places invariably have great clauses such as charging you if you pay anything over the set monthly amount. Once you’ve finished paying the item off you get mailed offers from the company for ever and ever.

Avoid interest

Interest payments on personal loans, credit cards and HP are “idiot tax”. Why throw money away unnecessarily?

Work out how much something will really cost when interest is added before jumping into these. There’s calculators online that will help.

KiwiSaver

KiwiSaver is good.

Get in it.

Advice

Take your advice from people who have been through several cycles. Johnny-come-latelies going through their first financial cycle underestimate the risks.

Ask older people what they would have liked to have known at your age. What would they save for if they could turn back the clock?

Read a book

You can learn more about money. The easiest and cheapest way to improve your knowledge is to get a book out of the library.

Image credit: 401k/401kcalculator.org