We started asking better questions

The beginning

Sarah Mitchell, our founder, spent fifteen years as a secondary school teacher in Bristol. Year after year, she watched seventeen-year-olds leave for university without understanding how student loans worked, what APR meant, or why a credit card minimum payment was a trap.

When she asked why this wasn't taught, the answer was always the same: no time in the curriculum.

So in 2019, she started running voluntary lunchtime sessions. Fifteen students showed up the first week. Within a month, she had sixty students giving up their lunch break to learn about compound interest and credit scores.

The demand was clear. The gap was enormous. And the solution wasn't going to come from the education system.

Why "Jaded Drift"

The name came from a conversation with one of those first students. She described feeling jaded about money, like it was something that just drifted away no matter what she did. She couldn't see where it went or why she never had enough.

That image stuck. Many people feel jaded about their finances, watching money drift through their lives without really understanding the currents. Our job is to show them the patterns, the flows, the places where they can intervene.

Growing beyond the classroom

Word spread. Parents started asking if Sarah could teach their younger children. Adults began requesting sessions for themselves. By 2020, what had started as lunch-break education had become something larger.

Sarah left teaching in 2021 to run Jaded Drift full-time. Not because teaching wasn't valuable, but because this specific gap needed filling and nobody else was doing it.

Our approach today

We now work with families across Bristol, from Southville to Stoke Bishop, Easton to Henleaze. Every age group, every income level, every level of existing financial knowledge.

What hasn't changed is the core philosophy: financial literacy is taught best when it's practical, personal, and immediately applicable. We don't do theory for theory's sake. Every concept connects to real situations you're actually facing.

"The best financial decision I've made wasn't an investment or a savings plan. It was learning how to think about money clearly. Everything else followed from that."

— Sarah Mitchell, Founder

Why Bristol needs this

Bristol is expensive. Rent is high, property prices are climbing, and the cost of living keeps rising. Yet financial education remains optional, scattered, inconsistent.

We've met adults who've lived here for decades and never understood how their council tax is calculated. Teenagers who got their first job and didn't realize they had a tax-free allowance. Parents who wanted to teach their children about money but didn't know where to start.

These aren't niche problems. They're universal gaps affecting thousands of people in this city alone.

What we've learned

After five years and over 400 families, patterns emerge. Financial confidence isn't about intelligence or income. It's about understanding.

A seven-year-old can grasp compound interest if you explain it in terms of growing sweets. A forty-year-old can master investment basics if you connect them to goals they actually care about. Age matters less than relevance.

The people who succeed aren't the ones who memorize formulas. They're the ones who understand principles and can apply them to new situations. That's what we teach.

Where we're going

Our goal isn't to become the biggest financial education provider in Bristol. It's to make ourselves unnecessary. To reach a point where financial literacy is so widespread, so normalized, that dedicated programmes like ours aren't needed.

We're not there yet. Not even close. But every family we work with is one step closer.