Six Pathways to Wellbeing: CHASM Insights from Turin

CHASM’s Professor Adele Atkinson was delighted to give a keynote at the Turin Workshop on Financial Literacy 2025, exploring Financial Literacy and Pathways to Achieving Financial Wellbeing.

The event brought together researchers and central bankers from across three continents — all passionate about understanding people’s financial behaviour and tackling today’s personal finance challenges.

Discussions covered a wide range of issues: from how people balance work and saving, to retirement planning, gender gaps in financial literacy, and new ways to measure financial wellbeing.

Adele brought a distinctive perspective, drawing on CHASM’s qualitative research to highlight the human side of financial inclusion. She shared insights from our recent partnership with the Financial Inclusion Commission, as well as a three-year collaboration with Dr Leonore Riitsalu at the University of Tartu, which explored how people see financial wellbeing as a balance of security, freedom, and pleasure.

She concluded with six ways that future financial education could put wellbeing at its heart:

1. Help people frame their lives in terms of security, freedom and pleasure.
2. Recognise the importance of ‘peace of mind’.
3. Connect financial wellbeing with health and wellbeing more broadly.
4. Address the social and emotional barriers people face.
5. Be realistic about the limits of education for those in survival mode.
6. Signpost - or directly connect - people to trusted advice when needed.