How Financial Literacy Can Empower Women?

India is perceived to be the fastest-growing country in economic terms. However, the biggest question that emerges from the current scenario is whether women in the present era have equal power to take their own and their family’s financial decisions. In my opinion, across the strata of society, the much-needed financial quotient and freedom are still not available. On the occasion of International Women’s Day, let’s dig into a case study that highlights the amazing story of Savita, who got empowered and transformed due to financial literacy and planning.

A story of financial empowerment

Savita of 35 years is married with two kids – Rohan of seven years and a girl, Divya of 10 years. Her husband, Rahul who was the bread earner of the family, died in a car accident at the age of 40. Savita is an educated woman, who ensured her kids were on a phenomenal academic graph and managed the house in an organised way. However, she missed out on a critical aspect of being involved in taking the financial decisions for the family. She relied on her husband for this aspect of life.
Post her husband’s demise, she was clueless about managing the finances of her family, which left her emotionally as well as financially broken. Her sister Radha entered her life to bail her out of this situation. Radha’s high financial literacy helped Savita’s family, as she took charge of the situation,
• Insurance policies for the whole family
• Fixed Deposits
• Mutual Fund Investments
• Shares or Stocks Investments
Savings Bank’s statements confirmed that she was the nominee, holding the right to access the funds.
Radha helped her understand everything about these investments. This helped Savita take stock of all the current financial records. She understood the nature of the products and the modus operandi to invest in them. And in no time, she became phenomenal in managing her financial resources.
She did the following:
• Kept funds aside for her kids’ education considering the time horizons and the required corpus.
• Allocated the funds to create a corpus for purchasing a house.
• Deployed funds for two objectives – for retirement and emergency.
She opted for the organised and systematic way of investing the funds, assuring a certain percentage of growth in the funds, as well as liquidity, whenever needed.

The author is the VP-Investment Advisory -Capital Quotient