In the last year – and especially in the last weeks and months – “financial wellbeing” has suddenly become the new darling of studies, panels and PowerPoint decks.
Per se, this is not wrong. We welcome every bit of tailwind for a topic that has been ignored for far too long.
But there is something much more serious going on here.
When finmarie’s founder and CEO Karolina, started this journey almost seven years ago, she did not wake up thinking: “I’d love to add another academic study to the shelf.”
What she wanted – for herself and for other women – was real change:
- fewer nights lying awake because of money worries
- more savings and investments, even with imperfect careers and broken CVs
- more freedom to stay or leave: a job, a city, a relationship
That is why, while others are now starting to talk, research and preach about financial wellbeing, our team has already been working in the field for years.
We knew a lot – about finance, about being a woman in Europe (and especially in Germany), about the gender wealth gap through our work with Mind the Gap. But our instinct was not to stand on a stage and explain the problem to women.
Our instinct was: get to work. And that is exactly what we’ve been doing.
Please, take a close look: Who is teaching you about “financial wellbeing”?
Whenever a new trend appears, it’s healthy to ask a few honest questions:
- Who is explaining “financial wellbeing” to me? Is it, once again, a group of men in suits telling women what their lives look like?
- How much lived experience, competence and empathy do they really have for the specific challenges women face – career breaks, care work, part-time traps, divorce, unequal pay?
- Am I in danger of being mansplained again – just with more refined slides and a more elegant vocabulary?
We believe you deserve better than that.
We don’t just analyse women’s lives. We work with real women, every day.
Once you’ve reached your first savings target and put aside your six net salaries, it’s time to take the second step towards financial independence for women: create stability!
First of all, this requires you to take care of your liabilities. There are good debts and bad debts. Good debts result from investments that create a revenue or gain value over time. That’s, for instance, when you pay for an (expensive) advanced training or build up your own business.
Bad debt is when you’re currently holding installment loans or financings, paying back liabilities or credit card bills. Hence, it’s the sort of debt that can easily spiral out of control. If you have bad debts in your life, think of a strategy to get rid of them as soon as possible, maybe by converting a debt or by raising your installments.
After you have successfully dumped your liabilities, you may now proudly pat yourself on the back. You’ve saved up a small nest egg and transformed your financial minus into a huge plus by settling your liabilities. This provides security and stability. You’ve come a long way and have made headway on the road to financial freedom for women.
It’s not an “opportunity for providers”. It’s a broken system.
Some recent reports describe the current situation almost cynically as an “opportunity for financial service providers”.
We see it differently.
The fact that so many women have lower pensions, less wealth and more financial stress is not a “business opportunity first”. It is a systemic failure – and then, yes, a call to action for those willing to do the hard work.
We choose to be among the pioneers doing that work.
Financial freedom also means: you define what it is for you.
For us, financial health is not about yachts, status symbols or someone else’s version of success.
It is about:
- sleeping better at night in challenging times
- having the option to say no – to a job, a project, a relationship
- being able to support the people and causes you care about
- feeling at home with your own numbers
We’re here to help you take care of the numbers that really count: the ones on your accounts and in your life decisions – not just the ones in glossy industry reports.
