FatCat's MoneyConfessions - helping you save (& make) money, one click at a time

Women & money

Found this info about women & money:

"Women and money
Compared with their grandmothers, Australian women are generally better educated, better paid and have many more career opportunities. This financial independence means women today must also make financial decisions their mothers and grandmothers could never have imagined.

Many women also take time out of the workforce at some stage to meet caring responsibilities. This affects not only their income-earning capacity and career options, but also the amount of super they will accumulate over a lifetime. Most Australian women can now expect to outlive men, and need to think about how to support themselves in their senior years.

The different lives women lead and decisions they make can have a big impact on everyday money management, not to mention how much they'll have to support themselves in retirement.

Recent research also shows some differences between the way men and women manage and think about money. For example, women are generally confident about everyday money management issues like budgeting, but less confident than men when it comes to investing, understanding financial language and ensuring they have enough money for retirement.

What research tells us about women and money

A 2008 Financial Literacy Foundation research report found that women are generally highly confident in their ability with money, especially when it comes to everyday money management issues like budgeting, saving, dealing with credit and managing debt.

But they’re less confident when it comes to investing, understanding financial language and ensuring they have enough money for retirement.

Among other findings were that women think it’s important to learn more about money management issues such as planning for the financial future, understanding rights and responsibilities when dealing with money and ensuring enough money for retirement.

However, many women were found to hold attitudes and beliefs that can get in the way of them managing their money better – from thinking it doesn’t matter to finding it stressful, uncomfortable or boring.

For instance, 52% said that dealing with money is stressful and overwhelming (men 43%), 42% reported that thinking too much about their long-term financial future makes them uncomfortable (men 37%) and 34% found dealing with money boring (men 29%)."

I'd really like to know what the women on this forum think about this. Is it true for you? Men can chime in too, but I want to hear it from a female's perspective.

Tags: money, women

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Louie on September 9, 2008 at 5:32pm

I only discovered this thread today & found it interesting n fun to say the least.
From the time prior to us being engaged & now married for some 21yrs, I have always been the one to handle the money. It was never discussed. It just came to be whether I wanted the job or not. I do get frustrated having to do the research & do get afraid that I'll make a bad decision that will affect our family but somehow we get there. He gets bored (you can see the eyes glaze over if I discuss money matters or budgets :0)) They light back up if it's sport tho' :D
I too started off in admin roles, did temp work when the kids were babies/young un's, worked in universities, local govt & now in retail. I love retail. It is so much more fun being able to be creative. We bought a shop together that our kids now work in too. Hubby is still a blue collar worker & I don't think that will ever change. He went back to driving trucks 18mths into us having this shop. Guess who gets to run this too? I've done the 3am "walk the floor" quite a few times in the past couple of years - it's amazing how strong you can become when you keep meeting n beating some challenges!
All things aside tho', I still seek out information & look for ideas to make our life more comfortable. Our firstborn has a disability so we learnt very quickly to use our radar to drill down to what's important & I suspect this is what helps me when I do go searching for answers.
On the gender side, our roles were reversed early on. He cooks, does the dishes, used to bath the kids, etc. Hey, I'm not going to waste my time fighting over it if that is what he wanted to do :0)) It's just a kitchen after all. . but I still do the house cleaning - ugh!! A fair trade off I s'pose.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Vonny on September 10, 2008 at 9:51pm

In a couple situation, I believe it depends on who has more interest in investment, budgeting etc and then usually one takes over and the other just imagines that it's all taken care of and their learning in that area slows down or stops.

In my situation, we are a young couple with no current mortgage, no kids and both earn similar salaries. So we pay half-half for most expenses (bills, rent, groceries etc). We also keep separate bank accounts for both transaction and investment type accounts so if we make personal purchases like clothes we take that out of our own separate accounts. So with this in mind, I run the investing for my money and my partner runs it for his. We're both pretty responsible with money so we've never had to bail each other out from tight situations.

I have never had a problem with money; never been scared of it, stressed about it or bored of it. I think it's fair to say that most females on this forum are interested in money or their financial future to be here in the first place. I am still not 100% confident with investing but that will just come with time when I acquire more knowledge and experience.

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by jacquesk on September 11, 2008 at 3:21pm

Has anyone on this list read :Nice Girls Don't Get Rich: 75 Avoidable Mistakes Women Make with Money by Lois Frankel. She also wrote Nice Girls Dont Get The Corner Office.

http://www.amazon.com/Nice-Girls-Dont-Get-Rich/dp/044657709X

▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by LS on September 15, 2008 at 6:48pm

Well, I've got to say, while I thought this would be an interesting thread to start, I had no idea what a great response it would get. Thanks for all your great responses - keep them coming!
LS