What is Financial Wellbeing?

Financial Wellbeing will quickly become the fundamental essence for future financial advice. Essentially it is about helping clients to realise and understand their own motivations and ambitions, and really getting to the bottom of what they would like to get out of life.

The Initiative for Financial Wellbeing (IFW) is dedicated to helping people use their money to lead happy, healthy lives, and its accreditation and training programme supports the financial coaching community to help clients to become happier, not just wealthier.

According to the IFW, Financial Wellbeing is having a feeling of control over your finances. It is about having confidence in the financial decisions you make and a sense of security in the face of difficult or unpredictable circumstances.

Our four-step programme – the AiMS Discovery Journey – has been developed in line with guidance from the Initiative for Financial Wellbeing. The approach aims to empower our clients, helping them to achieve greater financial freedom, purpose and resilience.

Our managing Director, Dylan Tomkins, has worked in personal finance since 1994. In 2019, like so many of us, he took the opportunity to reflect on his own goals and ambitions and realised that his ethos, practice and methods were far more than financial products and advice. Dylan realised that happiness and wellbeing goes hand in hand with financial control.

Since 2019, Dylan has undergone a journey of his own having joined the Initiative for Financial Wellbeing. He is one of the first members of the Initiative to have successfully completed their Financial Wellbeing Certificate.

Financial considerations are a major driving force behind a person’s overall wellbeing and have a big influence on their mental health. Like physical health and mental wellbeing, you can take positive steps to improve your financial wellbeing, allowing you to enjoy life to the fullest, both now and in the future. In fact, many studies closely correlate financial wellbeing and mental health. AiMS can help you to take these steps.

Health for your wealth

The better we feel about our financial position, the more confidence we have; the more secure we feel about our tomorrows, the greater our sense of wellbeing today.

But it’s not all about how much money is in the pot. In these uncertain times, we want to help our clients to live happier, not just wealthier lives. We work with our clients to look at the emotional impact of finances, how to make choices that allow life to be lived to the max and how to control finances to cope with unexpected expenses or a change in circumstances.

IFW research finds that firstly, “money itself does not make us happy; it is how we use it that matters,” and secondly, that “the largest contributor to our wellbeing is the quality of our social relationships.” The initiative acknowledges five main factors which contribute to an overall sense of financial wellbeing: