Pamonim Says Financial Guidance Is Needed by All Israelis, Not Just the Poor
At Pamonim’s fifth annual conference, CEO Tzvika Goldberg told Channel 7 that financial knowledge must be made more accessible, especially to young people, to prevent households from sliding into crisis. He said that shifts in Israel’s social, security and global environment quickly affect family income, savings and spending across all income groups.
Goldberg explained that Pamonim’s long-running “Pamonim Index” measures households’ economic resilience, including how families cope with sudden income changes, unexpected expenses, and their level of financial knowledge and confidence. According to the organization’s accumulated data, Israeli families have been in steady decline in recent years, but the new figures presented at the conference show that the sharp drop has now stopped. “There is a very clear trend of deterioration, and today we presented the change,” he said. “But the meaning of the change is a halt in the deterioration, not a recovery.”
A major focus of this year’s conference was the financial world of young Israelis, who are entering the workforce and starting families with less experience and greater exposure to credit traps and costly mistakes. Goldberg said Pamonim is directing targeted efforts at them because “everyone in this period is confused, makes financial mistakes, takes out the wrong loans,” and young people have a weaker starting point and face a higher price for errors. The goal, he said, is to help them “start right” and build stable family lives.
Goldberg rejected the idea that financial counseling is only for poor or heavily indebted households. He said some families need deep rehabilitation, others are already beginning to deteriorate, and some can still be helped before the slide starts. He also argued that modern households need financial literacy comparable to business management, because they must deal with mortgages, pensions, insurance and banks without formal training. Pamonim, he said, bridges the gap between the huge need for this knowledge and the fact that many people see it as inaccessible and avoid opening bank notices because they fear they will not understand them.
