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My name's Sophie. I've moved from Brisbane to Sydney and I find it really important for
young women to become financially independent and look after their financial health.
I think that women in particular are more likely to have broken careers due to having
children and raising families and also we're expected to live longer, so it's especially
important. I don't think young people talk about money
very often because they don't have a lot of it. I think that people, I mean obviously
while we're younger, we're not earning as much as people in their 30s and 40s. But there's
also a lot of the 'keeping up with the Jones' that happen with young people so you're spending
pretty much the entire pay packet. And I think the people that aren't spending their entire
pay packet are kind of being pressured by those who are to be like "Go on. You've got
money. We can go out. We can go do this. Let's go on a holiday". Whereas I think it's important
for young people to make the right priorities. I definitely want to save to go traveling,
but I also don't want to come back from traveling to an empty bank account.
I found out about the first home saver account through a friend who was using one. And I
decided to Google it to find more information as there are some restrictions around it.
And the top link that I found through Google was the MoneySmart website. Which gave really
easy to read advice on what the product is and gave me a really good indication of whether
it was suitable for what I was looking for. The MoneySmart website has a specific link
for women. So I think it's definitely directed more towards financial issues that affect
women more, like taking time off work, making sure that your superannuation's in place.
I found it very useful, as a young woman, to use the tools on the website. The MoneySmart
website is a government website, so it's not partial to one particular financial product
over another, or a provider I should say. Which is really important that's where you
want to be getting your education about finance from.
I found it really useful to use the savings calculator. It gave me a realistic idea when
I'll be able to achieve that, to buy my own home. Ideally you'd be like in the next couple
of years but it's realistically about four or five years away until I can accumulate
a deposit that's significant enough to buy a home.
I mean at the same time we are young. We have to have a balance there between saving for
the future and enjoying our youth. The MoneySmart website really gives people
the tools to understand what the impacts of debt is. And that's why I think it's important
for young people to have a look at the website now. If you're building that knowledge young
and then you're applying it all throughout your working life, you put yourself in such
a good position for retirement and just to support a family.