NARIS­SA FRAS­ER

Aman­da Jar­dine be­lieves fi­nan­cial in­de­pen­dence pro­vides women with pro­tec­tion, choice, dig­ni­ty and long-term re­silience. And she is cham­pi­oning the cause to help pre­vent them from ex­pe­ri­enc­ing un­for­tu­nate sit­u­a­tions that can arise with­out it.

Jar­dine holds a mas­ter’s de­gree in mar­ket­ing and a bach­e­lor’s de­gree in man­age­ment plan­ning, and is the founder and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of event man­age­ment and cus­tomer ser­vice com­pa­ny Im­age Mat­ters Ltd. But she told WE that in ad­di­tion to these pas­sions, she has al­ways had a strong in­ter­est in ac­count­ing.

“From A-lev­els, and through­out my stud­ies, my strength was al­ways fi­nance,” she ex­plained. “I just felt like every­body needs to know the ba­sics—in­come and ex­pen­di­ture, bud­get­ing…”

She added that this com­ple­ments her work in event man­age­ment as she let out a chuck­le while say­ing, “I kind of pride my­self on main­tain­ing my bud­get or even over bud­get­ing.”

Gen­er­al­ly, she be­lieves fi­nan­cial in­de­pen­dence is es­sen­tial for main­tain­ing au­ton­o­my, se­cu­ri­ty and pre­pared­ness “in the face of life’s un­cer­tain­ties.”

“Whether that’s the loss of a part­ner, di­vorce, or tak­ing on care­giv­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ties for par­ents or sib­lings. It al­lows in­di­vid­u­als to make de­ci­sions from a place of sta­bil­i­ty rather than ne­ces­si­ty.”

But when it comes to women, she added that it is “par­tic­u­lar­ly crit­i­cal” since they are of­ten the pri­ma­ry care­givers of the house­hold. “And in the event of sep­a­ra­tion or di­vorce, they are more like­ly to as­sume re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for chil­dren. This can sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­crease fi­nan­cial pres­sure, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en the un­cer­tain­ty around child sup­port or al­imo­ny.”

Over the years, she wit­nessed women face many chal­lenges as a re­sult of not be­ing fi­nan­cial­ly in­de­pen­dent. As she ad­dressed the 700-plus-mem­ber au­di­ence at AM­CHAM’s 2026 Women’s Lead­er­ship Con­fer­ence over a week ago, Jar­dine re­called that it even hap­pened to her moth­er af­ter her fa­ther died. Her mom lost their fam­i­ly home. “She was a busi­ness­woman, but she did not know any­thing about the fi­nances in the fam­i­ly,” she said.

Asked what oth­er sit­u­a­tions she has wit­nessed from women over the years who were not able to at­tain fi­nan­cial in­de­pen­dence, she told WE, “Stay­ing in un­healthy re­la­tion­ships, loss of be­ing able to be the sole cus­to­di­an of chil­dren, hav­ing to work way past re­tire­ment age and jug­gling sev­er­al jobs, un­able to care for el­der­ly par­ents at the lev­el de­sired.”

And so she re­alised that many women were not hav­ing these sorts of con­ver­sa­tions. And she is now urg­ing them to be­gin do­ing so.

“Know your num­bers. Don’t be afraid to have that con­ver­sa­tion about fi­nance with your part­ner. You need to know joint in­come, ex­pen­di­ture, what in­vest­ments are be­ing made.”

She al­so sug­gest­ed women en­sure they have their own bank ac­count and save, even if they al­so have a joint one for house­hold ex­pens­es. “(It) en­sures au­ton­o­my and con­trol.”

What is al­so im­por­tant, she said, is to keep an or­gan­ised file of key fi­nan­cial doc­u­ments in case of emer­gen­cies.

In­vest­ing was an­oth­er top­ic that arose as she spoke on the pan­el. She asked women who had ever in­vest­ed in the stock mar­ket to raise their hands. Very few hands went up.

“That’s less than one-tenth of the room,” she said as she ex­plained that women in­vest less, and lat­er, than men.

“Ed­u­cate your­self on in­vest­ing. If you’re un­sure where to start, seek pro­fes­sion­al ad­vice. Many fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions of­fer guid­ance and can help you build a plan aligned with your goals. Start small—but start.”

She al­so urged women not to be afraid to ask as many ques­tions as pos­si­ble to fi­nance pro­fes­sion­als, whether they’re buy­ing a car, tak­ing a loan or get­ting a mort­gage.

“I re­mem­ber ask­ing a banker to cal­cu­late how much in­ter­est in to­tal I’d be pay­ing over the course of my mort­gage, and he said no­body had ever asked him that be­fore,” she re­vealed.

“It’s re­al­ly just un­der­stand­ing the ba­sics, es­pe­cial­ly around your ma­jor ex­pens­es of life. So ask. Al­ways ask.”

Jar­dine said speak­ing on the top­ic at the con­fer­ence was re­ward­ing, and she re­mains grate­ful that the in­for­ma­tion she shared could add val­ue to women’s lives. “I es­pe­cial­ly ap­pre­ci­at­ed the op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­nect with so many in­spir­ing women I hadn’t met be­fore. It was al­so an eye-open­er to see how many women are still not in­vest­ing, which re­in­forces just how im­por­tant these con­ver­sa­tions are.”

She con­clud­ed, “Every­body needs to re­alise there’s a gap. And I think when peo­ple tell their sto­ries — for in­stance, me shar­ing that about my mom or peo­ple who have been in sit­u­a­tions — it helps… Women need fi­nan­cial in­de­pen­dence.”

Guardian Me­dia Ltd, 95.1FM and Free­dom 1.06.5 FM, were the of­fi­cial me­dia part­ners for the Women's Lead­er­ship Con­fer­ence which took place on March 13.