Australian women enjoy significant financial independence in their lives now. But despite our progress, we are still being bombarded by the message that women are bad with money.
We’ve already addressed all the reasons why this is wrong here.
This outdated and untrue stereotype is causing significant harm to all of us. Patronising attitudes from financial institutions, family, and friends means that many women are unsure about their finances or let their partner or spouse deal with it instead. Many also don’t know where to learn the right skills, or whom to trust when looking for help.
By allowing others to take care of their finances, women risk vulnerability in their lives and future. In one case, this led to a woman losing over $600k within a year before finding out what happened.
No one likes to think of negative occurrences like divorce or losing a job, but these can happen to almost anyone and can affect the rest of your life — so it’s important to be prepared for them, and part of that preparation is to have the skill to manage money.
As heartbreaking as they are, the stories that are emerging more frequently in the media are a wake-up call to the millions of women in Australia
In this video, the first of a series of 6, we’re exploring the stories of 3 women who are now homeless because of financial hardships. Each woman is able to teach us a different lesson, but what connects them is the same end message: learn how to manage and save your money to lower your risk of homelessness.
Whether you’re single, married, live alone, or live at home, knowing how to budget and plan will mean that you’ll reap the rewards in the future.
Don’t know where to start?
A great resource for learning how to budget, plan, and save is ASIC’s money toolkit for women.
This toolkit takes into consideration the unique financial situations and lives of women and provides tools, knowledge, and advice on how to handle your finances. ASIC’s Money Smart is a government-run website, which means the information you get on there is not misleading and there are no biases.
Our own blog is also a good starting point for getting ideas on which areas in your life you need to prepare for financially — as a superannuation company, we can’t hide our enthusiasm for super, and we think it’s one of the most important things you should be putting your money into.
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If you’ve been inspired to take control of your finances, you can register your interest in our superannuation fund for women here. We’re launching in June 2018, and are looking forward to helping women across Australia retire with more.
