What is Financial Wellbeing?

Estimated reading time
 5 min

In this article

• What does 'Financial Wellbeing' mean?
• Where to get your Financial Wellbeing Score
• Ways to improve our financial wellbeing

Financial wellbeing is the extent to which someone is able to meet all their current commitments and needs comfortably, and has the financial resilience to maintain this in the future.

In other words, if 'wellbeing' is the state of being comfortable, healthy or happy, then ‘financial wellbeing’ is the state of feeling this way when it comes to our money. The more comfortable or confident we feel about our finances, the greater our financial wellbeing.

One of the key factors of financial wellness is how we feel about our money management. Whether we feel like we’re doing OK – or whether there’s room for improvement – our financial wellbeing forms an important part of our everyday life.

It’s really not about how wealthy we are. It’s about how comfortable and positive we feel about our money today – and for the future.

What does financial wellbeing mean?

While there are lots of things that can affect your financial wellbeing, research shows it can really boil down to three things:

• How easily you can afford everyday expenses (eg. bills and loan payments) 
• How prepared you are for an emergency (eg. large unexpected expense or fall in income) 
• How confident you are about your financial future (eg. retirement and beyond)

How do I find my financial wellbeing score?

You can use the ANZ Financial Wellbeing Calculator to analyse your attitude to money, your confidence in the future and your resilience. It’ll give you a financial wellbeing score out of 100 to help you gauge where you’re at right now, while giving you something to work towards over time.

Get my Score

How can I improve my financial wellbeing?

This can depend on what you need to improve – it could be building a budget from scratch, paying down debt, starting a savings plan or even looking for investment options. You’ve got to do what’s right for you.

Taking steps to strengthen your financial wellbeing is a whole lot easier with the right tools, guidance and resources to support you. Simple changes and practices built into your money management can set you up with a positive ‘money’ state-of-mind, which is why we created the Financial Wellbeing Program to help you work your way through money management best practices and get more confident over time.

But what does financial wellbeing affect? Everything! From smart budgeting tactics and using clever ways to reduce your expenses, to making sure you’re saving for a rainy day and for the next phase of your life, there are many ways to improve your financial resilience and feel good about the future. In fact, the act of making a plan can be one of the biggest things that you can do right now to feel more confident about your finances tomorrow.

What can I do right now to improve my financial wellbeing?

To help Aussies understand their financial knowledge and transform their attitudes and behaviours towards money, ANZ has developed the ANZ Financial Wellbeing Program – it’s free for everyone, whether you’re an ANZ customer or not.

Follow these practical steps to get started:

1. Get your financial wellbeing score;
2. Sign-up for the free 6-week email course to achieve simple goals each week; or
3. Start now by following these four useful steps in your own time
   • Plan your budget
   • Reduce expenses
   • Spend carefully
   • Save for a rainy day

The ANZ Financial Wellbeing Program

The ANZ Financial Wellbeing Program also includes ways to organise your accounts, tips to manage debt, a handy savings goal calculator plus ideas on investing to grow and protect your money for now and the future.

These downloadable PDF tools and templates are also useful to help you:

• Keep track of your Financial Wellbeing Score (PDF 3.2MB)
• Create a budget using this Budget Template (PDF)
• Reduce expenses with this Bills and Utilities Tracker (PDF)
• Identify your nice-to-have items on this Expenses Tracker (PDF)
• Set goals on this Dream Board (PDF)
• Create a Long Term Savings Goal (PDF)
• Use these 52 Tips to take your Financial Wellbeing to the next level​ (PDF)

Read more about ANZ’s Financial Wellbeing research here – it’s based on Professor Elaine Kempson’s work and underpins our evidence-based financial wellbeing program, which kicked off in 2002.