How Australians’ finances are hurting their mental health
March 11 2019Many Australians are facing an uncertain financial future with new research revealing one in three adults are not on track with their money.
And one in four people admit they don’t enjoy life because of the way they are managing their finances.
The new benchmark measure of financial wellbeing, released by Commonwealth Bank and the Melbourne Institute today, shows putting enough money aside is weighing on the minds of many Aussies.
The CBA-MI Financial Wellbeing Scales (Scales), based on an online survey of 5,682 CBA customers in August 2017, found nearly a quarter of people are struggling with money management and 37 per cent said they couldn’t handle an unexpected expense.
9Finance editor Ross Greenwood said the findings should be of concern to the Federal Government in an election year.
“If you’ve got a situation where people are just not happy, that mental health comes into this, that’s a very significant issue,” he told TODAY this morning
“We’ve always known that people who don’t have control of their finances, other problems happen in their lives. Marriages bust up, there can be substance abuse. So really it is about that control.”
Mr Greenwood said the research highlights it’s not how much you earn that matters.
“It’s not how much money you’ve got or how much you earn, it’s the way you manage it that determines if you’re happy or not,” he said.
“What they’ve shown is that people … who earn lower incomes but who manage their finances better, have got a budget, feel like they’re saving money, feel like they’re going forward, are actually doing better than people who feel like they’re out of control with their finances even though they might earn even more money.
Commonwealth Bank’s executive general manager of digital, Pete Steel, said financial wellbeing is a complex issue.
“We have an ambitious purpose to improve the financial wellbeing of our customers and communities, but we know there’s no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to financial wellbeing. This is the challenging part when it comes to measuring - and helping to improve - their financial wellbeing,” he said.