In recent years, the concept of "financial literacy" has undergone a curious shift—particularly within wellness, mentorship, and self-development spaces. Once rooted in rigour, accessibility, and structural understanding, it has increasingly been reframed as an emotionally charged lifestyle motif.
At the centre of this shift is a troubling contradiction: the aestheticisation of financial competence, especially when marketed to children. Here, the language of empowerment is used to advance practices that are often opaque, untested, and exclusionary.
This critique is not aimed at any single individual. Rather, it addresses recurring patterns across a growing industry that shape the cultural narrative around money, motherhood, and mentorship.
It often begins with gentle declarations: "Let’s teach our children financial literacy," accompanied by curated visuals—handcrafted piggy banks, pastel worksheets, soft-voiced reels about "sovereignty" and "conscious spending."
But look closer.
These messages frequently bypass structural literacy—no mention of inflation, interest rates, generational poverty, debt cycles, access to capital, or policy. Instead, we see personal anecdotes framed as universal insight, maternal intuition repackaged as economic expertise, and branding mistaken for pedagogy.
What emerges is not the spread of knowledge, but the substitution of substance with narrative.
When individuals cushioned by generational wealth claim to have "built" their financial acumen through self-experimentation and spiritual alignment, one must ask:
What financial risk are they actually confronting?
Their safety nets—emotional, social, economic—enable mistakes without collapse. This privilege is seldom disclosed. Instead, it’s repackaged as bravery.
Confidence is mistaken for competence.
And the audience—often mothers seeking genuine strategies—is left with a dangerous half-truth:
That financial resilience can be reverse-engineered through vibe and visibility alone.
It cannot.
Motherhood, at its core, is a profound practice of care and foresight. But increasingly, it is being instrumentalised—used to sanctify vagueness, evade critique, and market monetised offerings.
When financial literacy is presented as an extension of maternal intuition—through printable journals and spiritual affirmations—the message shifts from knowledge to performance.
And the real question becomes:
Who profits from this aestheticised care?
Because this is not merely misguided content. It is often a product—courses, e-books, memberships—sold to women already burdened with disproportionate emotional labour.
While personal exploration is always valid, claiming public expertise—especially when monetised—requires a different ethical standard.
Let us return financial literacy to its rightful foundation:
If one intends to guide others—particularly mothers and children—one must be:
This is not about tone. It is about ethics.
Financial wellbeing is not a vibe. It is a survival skill.
It must not be reduced to branding.