Young New Zealanders Ongoing Personal Finance Journey:  A Longitudinal Study – Stage 2

The report presents findings from the second stage of the Fin-Ed Centre’s 20-year longitudinal study, which tracks the financial knowledge, attitudes and behaviours of a group of New Zealanders through different life stages. The longitudinal study is unique in New Zealand. The first stage occurred in 2012 when the cohort was aged from 18 to 22 years. Now, five years on, the participants are aged from 23 to 27 years. The study will repeat again in 2022, 2027, and conclude in 2032. At study termination, the participants will range in age from 38 to 42 years. Of the original 350 cohort, 232 participated in the second phase of the study – a 66 percent retention rate. The study undertook interim updates in 2014 and 2016, which dealt with the topical issues of economic inclusion and housing affordability. The current focus is to determine how attitudes and behaviours have changed over the past five years as participants move into new life stages. The study finds young New Zealanders still rely on their parents for financial advice, despite many harbouring doubts about parental advice. Nearly half the participants said they had learned “everything” or “almost everything” from their parents. While this was down from two-thirds in 2012, the reliance on parental advice was surprising, given only 35 percent felt that their parents knew what was best for them in terms of their finances. When asked about how they expected to learn about money management in the future, parental advice still featured highly, but the dominant source, at 39 percent, was “life experiences.”

Keywords

Financial literacy, Longitudinal study, Financial well-being

Citation

Matthews C, Reyer M, Wood P, Stangl J. (2019). Young New Zealanders Ongoing Personal Finance Journey: A Longitudinal Study – Stage 2. Fin-Ed Centre.

URI

https://mro.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/70349

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