Getting Started
There are many different actions that can be taken to improve financial wellbeing. These actions are designed for practitioners and decision-makers working in organizations and governments in a wide variety of sectors. Learn more about who should use this website.
To help get you started, we have grouped actions by some common topics related to financial wellbeing.
Why Action on Financial Wellbeing is Critical Now
- People in Canada are living with a growing affordability crisis. This situation is a result of deteriorating social safety nets, increasing poverty, and under/unemployment. Every day, more and more people are not able to make ends meet.
- People’s health and quality of life are being harmed by their financial struggles. Â
- Populations at risk of poverty (e.g., single-parent families, youth, Indigenous populations, immigrants) have been impacted the most.
- Financial stress can be lasting (e.g., poverty) or episodic (e.g., can occur alongside life transitions such as the birth of a child or retirement) so can impact people of all ages and socio-economic backgrounds.Â
- Financial struggles are not only a result of people’s poor money management knowledge, skills, or behaviours. Politics, social systems, the economy, and culture are the main factors behind people’s experiences of poor financial wellbeing.Â
The Framework presented below provides actions – at different levels – that you can take to prevent and reduce the negative consequences of financial strain and promote financial wellbeing.
What is Financial Wellbeing?
A person’s state of financial wellbeing consists of both their objective financial status (e.g., their wealth) and their feelings about their ability to manage daily expenses and save for the future (e.g., financial stress, financial security).
Poor financial wellbeing includes terms like financial hardship, financial strain, financial stress, financial toxicity, poverty, and financial struggles.Â
The Framework
The selected topics above are a few from the Action-Oriented Public Health Framework on Financial Wellbeing and Financial Strain. This Framework provides concrete actions that can support design, implementation, and assessment of initiatives on financial strain and financial wellbeing led by government units and organizations.
