Sound finances give women true freedom of choice, it is the key to giving women options in life.

When @fibendall approached me about supporting the ANZ Bank’s Febusave campaign I was interested because I have first hand experience of the challenges raised by poor money management skills.

I met with the ANZ people and asked why they wanted to run this campaign.  Our conversations revealed how secret and underground women’s financial lives remain. We share openly about relationships and other personal stuff but finances remain a taboo subject. I saw that there was a genuine desire to raise awareness about these issues and to use social channels to reach women. It was clear that if ANZ gets more women customers that is a good byproduct of the campaign. But it was also clear that this was not a direct aim of the campaign. And it was on that basis that I agreed to support it.

I met with Fi & the ANZ team and we talked about the kind of issues I would like to write about.  My focus is on sharing some financial lessons learned over the years. Some of the other bloggers were interested in focusing on different aspects of women and money.  It’s been really helpful to talk with the amazing group of women who are also supporting this campaign. The open sharing of real life experiences by these women is resonating with many people.

This campaign interested me because, while ANZ has clearly identified women as a target customer segment and they have a commercial interest in more women becoming customers, they have also been running their Be Money Confident site for several years. The Febusave campaign combines the social good of breaking a taboo about women talking about and taking action on their finances with the Bank’s goal of raising awareness in a key customer segment.

Febusave is a tool in raising awareness of the importance of good financial health for women. One of the reasons I support this initiative is that it sits under the be money confident banner.

Women face different financial issues to men.  Men are already well served by financial information and spaces to share information. Some key facts about women’s ability to store up financial resources remain:

• Women have not yet achieved pay equity with men & thus their baseline earning rate is lower over the course of their working lives.
• Women often have gaps in their key earning years due to time out for childcare, either not working or working part-time, and thus they do not amass sufficient superannuation for old age.
• Women often undertake elder care responsibilities in their later career, again impacting on full-time workloads and ability to add to their superannuation stores.
• Almost 50% of marriages fail and in 2006 87% of single parent families are headed  women & the ability of these women to participate in full time work is limited.

My pledge for Febusave is to catch public transport & save the money from not using my car. What are you going to do? Why not go sign up now?