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In the past 10 years, financial coaching has emerged as a best practice in helping low-income individuals to achieve greater financial security.
Financial coaching and other financial security interventions, such as financial counseling or case management, strive to help clients reach similar financial goals; but financial coaching is unique in several ways. First, financial coaching aims to be client-driven, thus requiring a significant degree of client empowerment. Second, financial coaching supports the development of broad behavioral changes in clients’ lives rather than more narrowly defined, explicitly financial targets. Third, financial coaching’s success has often been attributed to the content of the client-coach relationship, which is built upon mutual trust and accountability. Finally, financial coaching builds connections between emotional/psychological aspects of goal achievement and financial knowledge.
Many of these unique features of financial coaching that are often viewed as key to its success, are impacted by domains over which men and women have different outcomes or behaviors. Financial coaching should be tailored to build upon gender specific strengths as a foundation upon which to tackle gender specific challenges.
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