Three People, Three Definitions, Same Word
Picture three case managers in three different offices, each trying to do right by their clients.
One works from the OECD’s definition of financial literacy: knowledge and understanding of financial concepts, applied to decision making (as cited in Lusardi & Mitchell, 2023). She refers her client to a program built around conceptual financial knowledge.
Another works from the U.S. Financial Literacy and Education Commission’s definition, centered on managing resources effectively over a lifetime. He refers his client to a program built around long term resource management.
A third has never seen either formal definition. She’s only ever encountered the budgeting workshops that dominate the field, so that’s what she defaults to, regardless of what her client actually needs this week.
Three well-intentioned professionals. Three completely different referral decisions. Same starting word: “financial literacy.”
Nicolini and Cude (2022) add yet another layer, framing financial literacy as a form of human capital involving knowledge, skills, attitudes, and confidence, which is accurate and also doesn’t resolve a single one of these three case managers’ dilemmas.
None of these definitions are wrong. That’s actually the problem. Multiply this scene by every case manager in the country and you get a field where client outcomes depend less on need and more on which definition a practitioner happened to encounter first. Genuinely asking: in your field, is there a term like this, one everyone uses confidently but means something different by?
Author: Sandra Roussel
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