How financial well-being has changed
People’s financial well-being has changed since the start of the pandemic. Here’s how and how to improve your financial well-being. Meanwhile, start improving your financial well-being by improving your credit score here.
What’s financial well-being?
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) defines financial well-being as “a state of being wherein a person can fully meet current and ongoing financial obligations, can feel secure in their financial future and is able to make choices that allow them to enjoy life.”
Capital One says financial well-being is “the ability to spend wisely, build savings for the short- and long-term, manage credit and debt, and handle things life may throw at you while planning for the future.”
We say that financial well-being is “the capacity to meet current and future needs and enjoy your quality of life today with cash.”
At its simplest, financial well-being is your short-term and long-term financial security.
The state of your financial well-being is important because your financial well-being affects your stress levels, more specifically, your financial stress. The American Psychology Association (APA) has determined that financial stress is a leading cause of unhealthy behaviors, the same as smoking, unhealthy eating, and alcohol and drug abuse.
Hear more about Capital One’s Financial Well-Being Survey:
The Pandemic’s Impact on Financial Well-Being
The COVID-19 pandemic forced us to rethink what’s important to us. And put a spotlight on taking care of our mental health.
So, how do those factors influence the way we think about money? Has your view of what financial wellbeing looks like changed through the pandemic?
Mili Mittal is Vice President of Product and Head of the CreditWise Initiative at Capital One. On this episode of Queer Money, Mili joins us to share her top takeaways from Capital One’s recent survey on financial lessons learned during the pandemic and explore how our perception of financial wellbeing has changed.
Mili explores the gap between setting the intention to save and actually following through, discussing what the survey data revealed about making impulse purchases when we’re under stress and where to access tools that can help us prevent overspending.
Listen in to understand how emotional wellbeing impacts your financial decisions and learn where to go for resources to help manage both your mental and financial health.
Topics covered
- The top takeaways from Capital One’s recent survey on financial health and the pandemic
- How the survey data connects back to Capital One’s financial well-being efforts
- How COVID changed our perception of how much emergency savings we need
- The gap between setting the intention to save and actually saving more money
- Where to go for support in setting and sticking to a budget
- How often people made impulse purchases during the pandemic (and how they felt about it afterward)
- Capital One’s top tools to stay on budget and prevent overspending
- How men and women responded differently to questions about their financial health and what qualifies as healthy spending
- How our mental and emotional wellbeing impacts the decisions we make around money
- What Capital One does to help its community at large manage our mental health