How Personal Finance Management Systems Emancipate and Oppress Young People

In order to achieve financial well-being, individuals need to make sensible financial decisions. Personal finance management (PFM) systems help individuals with saving, budgeting, consumption, borrowing, and lending tasks. As much as these systems help individuals, they may also have unintended consequences. This study increases the knowledge of how PFM systems emancipate and oppress young people. We used an interpretive research approach and collected qualitative data. Our major finding is that PFM systems emancipate young people by promoting agency (the freedom to act) due to the efficient implementation of PFM tasks, for example. These systems also oppress users by hindering rationality (the freedom to think) due to stress and encouraging users to make decisions too quickly, for example. Based on the results, we offer implications for the development and research on PFM systems to reduce oppression and promote emancipation in young people.