Report authors: Beatriz Gallo Cordoba, Lucas Walsh, Catherine Waite, Blake Cutler and Masha Mikola

In 2021, The Centre for Youth Policy and Education Practice conducted a nationally representative survey of 505 young Australians and interviews with 30 more aged 18-24. The way young people think about and manage their finances is changing with 25.2% of young Australians self-reporting having experienced financial difficulties often or very often during the last two years. This paper presents a ‘deep dive’ into these findings.

The 2021 Australian Youth Barometer provides an overview of a range of factors that affect young people in Australia today. In this new series of papers, we offer a more detailed exploration - a ‘deep dive’ - into particular issues and cross-cutting themes that have emerged from the research.

This paper explores the financial experiences of young people and how these are deeply interconnected with other aspects of their lives. Saving, going into debt, and experiencing financial difficulties do not happen in isolation but are linked to family, housing, work and wellbeing.

Lead author of the report, Dr Beatriz Gallo Cordoba, said: “Young people are navigating an ever-changing world of online financial products and services. We need to provide better digital financial literacy support to account for these new realities of young people’s financial lives.”

Research into the financial lives of young people often presents them as vulnerable to risk and struggling to manage their financial worlds.

The report’s co-author, Professor Lucas Walsh, said “a quarter of young people told us they are struggling with debt, and this was before recent inflationary pressures and rises in the cost of living. Our report shows that this is having a serious effect on their mental health, which we know to be at crisis levels.”

He added, “On the other hand, research suggests there is a new generation of savvy investors, but is this just for the privileged?”