Lili Sussman* says women can create better money habits in 2023 by leaning into their spending decisions to learn more about what makes them financially tick.
Australian women are going out of their way to cultivate better money habits but it’s largely happening in an environment of economic inequality.
Here’s how we can turn this around in 2023 by leaning into our spending decisions!
The latest Financy Women’s Index report FWX shows the time frame to achieving economic gender equality stands at 23 years, just as research by ASIC shows that over 85 per cent of young women under 35 years of age are failing to identify and understand fundamental financial and investment concepts.
What’s needed is an investment in 3 critical areas of your life in 2023:
- a greater investment in your individual financial health, which basically means having healthy money habits
- creating a healthy mindset
- ensuring your money decisions align with your life goals and personal values.
Healthy money habits start with psychology and being empowered in our lives.
But when we are increasingly time-poor and busy, we get caught up in these existing habits and behaviours and let hyper-capitalism, environmental marketing, and triggers dictate our behaviour, our finances, and our stress levels.
If I can encourage women to do one thing it’s to better understand your own money psychology and you can do this by simply asking yourself: ‘why’ before making your next emotional or environmental triggered purchase.
We’ve also developed Wisr Today, which is a money app that disrupts the status quo and uses psychology and proven behavioural science to help users build smarter money habits.
It’s designed to train the mind and rewire habits and beliefs in just 5 minutes a day – it’s worth checking out.
Women may not have access to costly financial advisors, psychologists, or a lot of time, so it’s imperative to have a way for women to build financial health through psychology combined with financial hand-holding to improve their money through genuine behaviour and mindset change.
We cannot improve our financial health without making intentional changes.
And financial exclusion and inequality happen when women don’t take charge of their financial health.
We have to combine psychology and finances to unlock our financial health.
Applying research-proven science-based interventions, such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), enables us to use our smartphones and tech to support behaviour change, specifically to help money habits and our financial lives.
The bite-sized coaching on the areas of our money is particularly useful for women with the most significant gender gap, from creating an emergency fund and building superannuation (recent research suggests the gender gap in superannuation balances is approx.
Sixty per cent to cultivating better habits around saving, investing, earning and career progression.
Systemic inequality persists, but we are not powerless.
Psychology and behaviour changes are the root cause of money and the critical lever we can pull to improve individual financial health and our relationships with ourselves.
To make fundamental changes in financial health, close the gender pay gap, reduce cultural and hidden institutional bias, and support women to become leaders and into professions that are disproportionately male today; we need to recognise that as women, our financial, mental, and physical health is worth investing in.
Let’s start making financial behavioural change more accessible by cultivating better, lasting financial habits in 5 minutes a day, one day at a time.
It’s time to build a better, fairer financial future for all by taking action.
*Lili Sussman is an author at Financy.
This article first appeared at financy.com.au
