As part of our partnership, Xero presents ‘Future Finance’ a section dedicated to sharing information, regular interviews and insights that will help creative women take your finances to the next level. Tune in to keep up to date with the partnership as well as opportunities for creative women like you to learn about and grow your finances.
In this edition we chat with Bianca Hartge-Hazelman, entrepreneur, journalist and women’s money advocate helping women and business break the cycle of financial inequity that exists in Australia.
Bianca has had a longstanding career covering business and finance for some of Australia’s largest media companies. Her work has enriched publications – such as the Australian Financial Review and the Sydney Morning Herald, as well as programs – including Channel Nine’s Financial Review Sunday program. Over a 16-year period, she has also worked for ABC Radio, ABC’s Stateline, Sky News, The Weather Channel, WIN News and the Finance News Network in Sydney.
Inspired by the desire to help women make better money decisions, Bianca created Financy, a blog dedicated to improving women’s money matters and empowering women towards financial independence.
In March 2017 Bianca also launched the Financy Women’s Index, Australia’s only economic index that tracks the working life progress of Australian’s. The Index has attracted widespread media attention. Since then, Financy has continued to grow as a space that reports on the economic progress of women as well as a place that collaborates with experts and bloggers on all things women and money.
Bianca holds a Communications Degree, Master’s Degree in Journalism and Graduate Diploma in Applied Finance.
CURVY: Give us a bit of a background about who you are and what you do. Have you always worked in the industry that you’re currently in.
Bianca: I’m a Women’s Money Advocate and that means that I’m trying on a daily basis to promote the importance of women knowing more about their money, taking greater control of their money. Finding out how to invest it and becoming more financially independent. Finding out about gender pay gaps, what they can do to make a difference. All that, the economic progress of women, which is why a second part of what I do besides writing about women’s money matters, is I’m the founder of the Women’s Index, which is an economic benchmark on the progress of women in Australia.
CURVY: What led you to where you are in terms of what you do now?
Bianca: I’m a mom of three girls. I’m also a finance journalist, I’ve been a journalist for a long time. I found that after having my second daughter, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I felt like I lost a bit of purpose. Which sounds bizarre place to be after you’ve had kids and looking at this beautiful being, and you’re wondering, you suddenly thinking there must be more. I just want to be with this child, yet I’m going back to work into the grind and it just didn’t feel purposeful enough. I didn’t feel my heart was in it, so I had a big self-searching adventure and that led me to the discovery that I wanted to make a difference for women in this world.
For little women in this world and I wanted to write and better educate them around money, the economic fortunes and their ability to really succeed themselves financially. To hopefully break the stereotypes of certain economic disadvantages that women face when it comes to gender pay and retirement, poverty.
Statistics show that women are more likely to be in poverty when they’re single and elderly, than men. There’s a lot of things there that motivate me and make me fearful at the same time. And so when faced with all these things, and now having three daughters, I feel driven by this desire to try and make a difference by just educating and better informing women, and keeping the debate focused on this as much as I can.
CURVY: The content that you’re sharing with women, is it advice in nature? How would you describe the content?
Bianca: I describe it as newsy and educational, inspirational. So at times I write about anything from the budget. What was in the May budget, for women or lack thereof. What was in the budget that women could use. What’s in the tax system that women could use, what needs to be thought about in the tax system in terms of the greater gender lend, which I believe is needed. In the workplace, negotiating pay. I’ll talk about all these issues, but I’ll also interview experts to give their opinion about what women could be doing.
The Women’s Index, I have an economic advisory committee as part of that now, which is awesome. So some really smart brains now working on that to make it better on a quarterly basis. So hopefully we’re producing something that policy makers can start to look at in time, to formulate their decisions about how things can be fixed in terms of addressing that gender pay gap, super gap and all different things that affect the economic advantage, and disadvantage of women.
CURVY: Now the panel obviously it’s formed for creative women, by default, even if their good at this stuff, they say you’re not good at this stuff. That’s been an observation that we find. Very successful women will say I’m creative, not financial. What’s your take from having said that in terms of that audience, what do you think they should be doing? Given their say in their 20s, what do you think they should be doing?
Bianca: Be creative for as long as you can, be creative always, and be brave about it. And at the same time be mindful of your money. Be mindful of what you can be doing with your money, to facilitate your creative aspirations and pursuits. So keep them running parallel. Educate yourselves, by all means creatively, but do so at the same time, thinking about your money and thinking about how you can feed this creative goal and what you can do with it as a business, as a platform to fulfil your own dreams and aspirations creatively.
Learn more about Bianca, the Women’s Index and Financy here.
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Each month on the CURVY site, Xero presents ‘Future Finance’ a section dedicated to sharing information, regular interviews and insights that will help creative women take your creative business and finances to the next level. Tune in to keep up to date with opportunities for creative women like you to learn about how to take your creative business, career and finances to the next level.
Future Finance is presented by Xero
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