There have been many studies come out in recent months highlighting the fact that a large number of Australians are not in a good place emotionally when it comes to their finances, which is why we think financial wellness matters.
Depending on the source, it’s currently estimated that between 24% and 64% of Australians are feeling stressed about their finances. This stress is negatively affecting their lives, including causing distractions at work, missing work hours due to personal financial issues and experiencing physical health problems as a result.
Based on the results of some studies (and there are many!) it seems that each generation is experiencing financial distress and concern, however the cause of the stress is a little different depending on life stage. Millennials are most focused on meeting their day to day household costs (especially given the rising levels of debt in the younger population). Generation X are most concerned about running out of money in retirement, and Baby Boomers are more concerned about when they will be able to retire.
So what do we mean by financial stress?
For some, it’s when you aren’t able readily meet your bills when they come in, don’t have sufficient savings to cover a financial emergency or lack the financial literacy to make sound decisions on your financial future. For others, perhaps you’re spending all of your salary just to live in the ‘right’ suburb and drive the ‘right’ car or don’t have enough in your superannuation to support yourself in retirement.
A large part of being able to take steps to financial wellness and freedom is education. Ensuring you have good knowledge around what different financial terms mean, how to set a budget, setting goals you can actually achieve and paying off debt. And many employers are now seeing that financial wellness matters in their workplace. They’re seeing sense and benefit in running financial wellness programs for their employees.
Financial wellness, it would seem, is a journey that we are all on. At different points in life we have different priorities and goals and how financially well we are is dependent on how we feel compared with our peer group.
And so, we are on a mission this year.
Financial wellness matters and we want to help open up the topic of money and chip away at the taboo that exists when it comes to talking about our finances. Many of us have skeletons in the closet that we prefer not to share – maybe it’s credit card debt, how much we spend on eating out or the car loan we got with a ridiculous balloon payment at the end.
We’re running financial wellness education workshops throughout 2018 for small and large businesses alike. If this is something you think would work well at your workplace get in touch – we’d love to share what we’ve created with your team. Whether your team are looking to buy their first home or growing their investment portfolio to generate wealth through property – Entourage have developed a financial wellness program to help get them there.
Just get in touch here and we can have a chat about what we can do to help your workplace or join our Financial Wellness Challenge here.