Money decisions rarely happen in isolation. They are shaped by where we are in life, what matters to us, the responsibilities we carry and what we hope to achieve next.
The financial decisions that make sense when you are starting your first job will look very different to those you make while raising a family, preparing for retirement or thinking about the legacy you would like to leave behind.
What remains constant is the value of understanding your money and being able to make informed decisions with confidence.
“Financial literacy isn’t about knowing everything there is to know about money,” says Christine Swanson, Owner and Financial Adviser at Prominent Financial Services. “It’s about understanding enough to ask the right questions, recognise your options and make decisions that support the life you want to live. And those decisions naturally change as life changes.”
Recent research from the Financial Advice Association Australia reinforces the connection between advice, knowledge and confidence. Its 2025 Value of Advice Consumer Research found that 93% of clients of financial advisers said their financial literacy had improved through the advice process, while 98% said their adviser had supported them to make the best possible financial decisions.
Importantly, the benefits were not confined to one generation. The research found that across all age groups, people receiving financial advice reported better quality of life, financial confidence and financial satisfaction than their unadvised counterparts.
So, what should you be thinking about at the different stages of your financial life?
The Early Years: Build the Foundations
Your early working years provide something incredibly valuable: time.
The earlier you begin saving and investing, the longer your money has to benefit from compound growth. But building wealth at this stage is about more than simply putting money aside.
This is when financial literacy can establish habits that may stay with you for decades.
Understanding how to create a budget, manage credit, distinguish between good and bad debt, read your payslip, understand your superannuation and recognise the difference between saving and investing can provide an enormously valuable foundation.
It is also a good time to become comfortable asking questions about money.
Why is my super invested this way? What interest am I actually paying on this debt? What does that investment cost me? How much should I keep aside for emergencies?
You don’t need to have your financial life mapped out in your twenties. You simply need to start developing the knowledge and habits that will give your future self more choices.
Building Independence: Give Your Money a Purpose
As careers develop, financial priorities often become more tangible.
You may be saving for a home, travelling, investing, building an emergency fund or trying to balance enjoying life today with preparing for tomorrow.
This is also when lifestyle spending can begin to expand alongside income. Without clear goals, it can be surprisingly easy for additional income to disappear into additional spending.
Financial literacy at this stage is about moving beyond simply managing money to understanding how to use it purposefully.
Knowing how interest rates affect a mortgage, understanding your borrowing capacity, recognising the impact of high-interest debt and beginning to understand investment risk can all help you make more considered decisions.
Rather than asking, “Can I afford this?”, a more useful question might be:
“Does this decision take me closer to—or further away from—what I’m trying to achieve?”
The Family Years: Protect What You’re Building
For many people, the family years coincide with peak financial responsibility.
Mortgages, children, schooling, careers and everyday living costs can compete for every available dollar. At the same time, protecting the wealth you are building becomes increasingly important.
Your ability to earn an income may be one of your most valuable financial assets. Appropriate insurance, including life, total and permanent disability and income protection cover, may therefore become an important part of your financial strategy.
Estate planning should also enter the conversation. Having an appropriate Will, Powers of Attorney and beneficiary nominations can help protect the people who depend on you.
But financial literacy during the family years has another dimension: what are your children learning about money from you?
Children often form attitudes towards money long before they receive their first pay cheque. Talking openly and appropriately about saving, spending, budgeting and financial choices can help them develop their own confidence around money.
You don’t need to share every detail of the family finances. Simply involving children in age-appropriate conversations about choices and trade-offs can help build valuable lifelong skills.
Preparing for Retirement: Turn Accumulation into Strategy
The years approaching retirement can be some of the most important financially.
For many people, earning capacity may be at its highest, the mortgage may be reducing, and children may be becoming financially independent. This can create opportunities to direct more resources towards retirement.
But it is also a period when financial decisions become more complex.
Super contributions, investment strategy, debt reduction, tax planning, transition-to-retirement strategies, retirement income and the timing of retirement itself can all interact.
Financial literacy at this stage isn’t necessarily about becoming an expert in superannuation legislation. It is about understanding the implications of the decisions being made on your behalf and feeling confident enough to participate in them.
That becomes particularly important when markets or economic conditions are uncertain.
The FAAA’s 2025 research found that 96% of clients of financial advisers said having an adviser helped them remain confident in their financial strategy during market volatility and geopolitical uncertainty.
That confidence matters. Retirement planning is generally a long-term exercise, and making major financial decisions in response to short-term fear can have lasting consequences.
Retirement: Making Your Money Support Your Life
Reaching retirement changes the financial conversation again.
For decades, the focus may have been on accumulating wealth. Now the question becomes:
How do I use what I’ve built to live the life I want—without constantly worrying about whether it will last?
Your investment strategy still matters. Becoming overly conservative too early can expose retirement savings to a different kind of risk: failing to keep pace with inflation over what could be a retirement lasting 20 or 30 years.
Cash flow, Age Pension entitlements, investment income, superannuation pensions, healthcare, aged care and estate planning may all form part of the picture.
Financial literacy in retirement is about understanding how these pieces work together—and having enough confidence in your plan to enjoy the money you’ve worked so hard to create.
The FAAA research found that the benefits clients most commonly associate with advice extend well beyond growing wealth. They include greater peace of mind, help simplifying financial matters and greater confidence in financial decision-making.
Your Golden Years: Creating a Living Legacy
There is another stage of financial planning that deserves more attention.
For many retirees, the conversation gradually shifts from:
“Will I have enough?”
to:
“What do I want my money to achieve for the people I care about?”
A legacy doesn’t have to begin after you die.
A living legacy might involve helping children with a home deposit, contributing towards grandchildren’s education, supporting a cause that matters to you or simply creating experiences your family can enjoy together.
But perhaps one of the most valuable things you can pass on is your financial knowledge.
Sharing the lessons you’ve learnt about money, both the good decisions and the mistakes, can help younger generations build their own financial confidence.
Talk about how you made financial decisions. Explain why you invested, why you saved, what you learnt about debt and what you wish you had understood earlier.
These conversations can be particularly valuable when significant wealth will eventually pass between generations. Helping your family understand how to manage money can be just as important as deciding how much money they will inherit.
Of course, gifting and intergenerational wealth strategies should always be considered carefully. Your first responsibility is ensuring your own retirement remains financially secure.
A good legacy strategy finds the balance between enjoying your money, helping others and protecting your own future.
The Next Step
There isn’t one financial strategy that will work throughout your entire life.
What worked in your thirties may no longer be appropriate in your fifties. Your priorities in retirement may look completely different again.
That’s why regularly reviewing your goals, improving your financial understanding and having someone you trust to help you navigate important decisions can be so valuable.
“One of the things I love most about advice is seeing people’s confidence grow,” says Christine. “Over time, clients don’t just build wealth—they develop a much clearer understanding of their money, their choices and what matters to them. That knowledge can benefit them throughout their life and, ultimately, the generations that follow.”
Wherever you are in your financial journey, you don’t need to have every answer.
Sometimes the next step is simply having a conversation about where you are today, where you’d like to be and whether the decisions you’re making are taking you in the right direction.
At Prominent Financial Services, we’re here to help you make smart financial decisions throughout every stage of life.
Sources
Financial Advice Association Australia, Value of Advice Consumer Research 2025.
