ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic, due to its prevalence, has affected all spheres of socio-economic life, in particular household finances. The aim of the article is to present the impact of the pandemic on the financial situation of Poles and Slovaks who use robo-advisory services, including their financial behaviour and investments. The methodology of the article involves literature analysis, statistical data and the author's own empirical survey. The empirical study aims to verify the research hypothesis: the COVID-19 pandemic influenced the personal finances of Poles and Slovaks who use robo-advice, although this impact was not the same in all areas of personal finance, nor in relation to investment plans after the pandemic. During the pandemic, most of the respondents had lower expenses, but in the future more than half of the respondents did not plan to change the amount of their expenses. Most of the surveyed people increased their savings during the pandemic. Poles more often admitted that they invested more during the pandemic, while more Slovaks than Poles invested the same amount during the pandemic. On the other hand, the Slovak respondents declared that after the pandemic they intend to invest greater sums than Poles indicated.
ABSTRACT
Mass vaccination of the population in some countries of the world and the advantage in these countries of the number of people who recovered over the number of those who fell ill slowly allows them to divide the time before and after the COVID-19 syndrome. This dualism strengthened the social division into real and virtual reality. Many people feel that the balance between these realities has been disturbed. The aim of the study is to indicate the mechanisms leading to permanent hybridization of our everyday life ("new normal"). In the introduction, the authors systematize the context in which the division of humanity into the vaccinated and unvaccinated is taking place. In the first point, they refer to token engineering as a method of transferring assets from the real to the virtual world. In the second point, they recall financialization as a way for the financial world to gain a lasting advantage over the real economy. It is also a departure from comprehensive social ties in favour of remote ones, including those realised through money. In the third point, the authors indicate block-chain technology as a bridge (infrastructure) to the two-way interaction of both realities. In the fourth point, we show how gambling vs. gaming with the use of prestigious goods ensures the transfer of assets acquired in the virtual world to their use in the real world. The conclusion resembles the thesis of the study that blurring the boundaries between real and virtual reality during a pandemic has led to a permanent hybridization of our everyday life.
ABSTRACT
The aim of this article is to determine if and to what extent sociodemographic factors are related to how home budget management applications are evaluated. The authors attempted to verify to what extent applications supporting personal finance management are beneficial and popular in Poland via a CAWI online survey. The architecture of the research covered the following areas: the name of the application used, its method of use, the level of complexity of the software installation process, evaluation of the application's transparency, intuitiveness, functionality, if it meets financial needs, the technical and substantive faults of the application, degree of satisfaction with the application as well as recommendations for further development, the advantages and disadvantages of the application, the use of PFM during the SARS-CoV-2 era. The study showed that users tend to use non-banking applications more often than financial managers offered by banks. A PFM benefit analysis shows that the applications are highly transparent, structured, intuitive and that the respondents have positive approach towards using them. The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has given grounds to finding gaps in remote customer service, such as better adaptation to the needs of current settlements and payments, the incapability to scan documents, and the lack of advice and ongoing contact with a consultant.