Financial Wellbeing For All
Financial Wellbeing refers to a state of being wherein a person can fully meet current and ongoing financial obligations, feel secure in their financial future and is able to make choices that allow them to enjoy life. It means being able to live, plan and adapt in changing times while having the financial freedom to make choices contributing to life enjoyment.
When we’re in control of our money, we’re in control of our lives, and this can help bring us happiness. No, money cannot “buy” happiness, but we feel less stress and anxiety when money is not an overbearing issue, and then we are more secure.
Having Financial Wellbeing means having control over our day-to-day, month-to-month accounts and sets us up for success. We have the latitude and financial freedom to make many choices and that ability frees up our spirit to enjoy life.
The operative term in my explanation is “control”: there are people whose income may be far greater than others, but whose jobs and industries are highly volatile and a strong case of right place, right time. So Financial Wellbeing doesn’t necessarily increase incrementally with your salary. It’s about the stability of your job rather than the salary it comes with, and whether you spend accordingly with what you earn.
What shocks me is that, as a society, too many still are not able to spend accordingly with their earnings, because their earnings are not nearly basic enough. Why have we not made better progress as a society to lift people out of poverty and destitution?
In a country like the U.S. where I have lived since the 80s, how is it that we allow the top 1% of the population to avoid certain taxes and live off their stock trades and inherited wealth, while the middle class erodes as it fights for decent wages, grapples with inflation, high housing costs, student debt, and other diminishing returns, and the lower rungs? The situation of those struggling to make rent — or worse, living in RVs, in the streets, and in abject poverty — feels positively Dickensian in magnitude.
Not everyone has overcome the disturbing effects of the 2008 financial crisis and COVID times have obviously made things much worse. Financial shocks happen to people with alarming regularity, too: it could be a car accident, a severe illness for a person without insurance, or the need to help a disabled elder.
As I observe these various aspects of the financial world that affect us all, and wish I had a solution for everyone; a way of changing the system so it gives people the opportunity to choose Financial Wellbeing for themselves.
While I may not have the power to change policies or alter the social fabric of America (or indeed elsewhere), what I can do is increase access to Financial Wellbeing by pushing for stronger financial literacy at a grassroot level. Knowledge is power and your financial wellbeing is at the core of who you will become in life, how you will live, and how — and if — you’ll be able to retire. We need to make financial literacy an educational priority if we want Financial Wellbeing for all.
Educational charities like My Bnk in the UK have already begun this push by pioneering financial literacy programs for young people aged 5 to 25, within schools and organizations. These financial education workshops help form positive habits like saving and delayed gratification, connecting the dots between public and personal finance and equipping young people with practical money skills, from budgeting, banking and borrowing to student finance, tax and pensions.
We now need to enshrine and institutionalize financial education in a wholistic and democratic way, to put society on equal footing when it comes to financial literacy.
