New research: an alarming nb of adults lack the basic financial skills to survive

A new research study covering 31 countries shows that an ALARMING number of adults lack the basic financial skills critical to survive in today’s world!

This is EXACTLY why “personal finance” is one of the 7 key pillars of my High Performance Coaching program.

Not knowing how to make money, manage expenses, balance budgets, and invest money is one of the biggest obstacles to people being happy in their lives.

We would all like to think that “money doesn’t matter”, but ultimately every piece of sociology research out there has shown that people with money are generally much happier than those who struggle to make ends meet.

Believe me, I’ve been on both ends of the spectrum. 

Not only is the lack of money a cause of frustration, but it’s a major source of DISTRACTION: 

being worried about making ends meet month every month, having to face debt repayments and credit card bills month after month are one of the main reasons people are not able to improve in other areas of their lives.

Money issues tend to “consume your full attention”, leaving no room (and no mental capacity) to do anything else.

In my High Performance Coaching program, I like to attribute equal weight to each of the 7 areas (health/fitness, personal relationships, social/professional relationships, career, personal finance, self-development, spiritual development/purpose).

However, my experiences in one-on-one coaching in the past 2 years are leading me to put more weight on health/fitness and personal finance because I’m realising that these 2 areas are those where people struggle the most.

The findings of this research (which covered 31 countries) are alarming:

Between 50% and 70% of adults in those 31 countries lack basic financial skills, skills needed to keep yourself out of debt, manage your finances properly, and invest for the future.

The “10 worst performing countries” were: Chile, Turkey, Greece, Italy, Israel, Spain, Lithuania, Ireland, Cyprus, USA.

The “10 best performing countries” were: Japan, Finland, Netherlands, Norway, Denmark, Estonia, Czech Republic, Belgium, Slovenia, Sweden.

Link to BBC article about the study: http://www.bbc.com/news/education-43384434