As time goes on and technology changes, defining financial literacy is getting murkier and murkier, even for the most economically astute individual. In these days, where a single tweet can influence the stock market, cryptocurrency headlines promise bags of non-fungible riches and the old Chinese curse of ‘may you live in interesting times’ becomes more real by the day, being informationally literate is a tricky enough pursuit, let alone staying on top of what that means for your finances.
In Australia, measuring financial literacy is most commonly defined by someone’s ability to understand three concepts: interest rates, inflation and diversification. Based on this, a recent study found that only 48 per cent of Australian women are financially literate (the non-binary community was not represented), compared to 63 per cent of men. This is a worrying statistic because women are paid less, act as carers, retire with less superannuation, live longer and Codes presented by Optus. “And when you look at other intersections of women, the pay gap and super divide increases – there isn’t even enough research into the other communities that exist who experience more hurdles than others.” So however bad you think it is, it’s worse.
