Women are often referred to as the most complicated topic to understand, adding money to the topic could make even fiction writers scratch their head. If you think this is just another gender biased article, let us assure you, by the time this article ends, your opinion will also have changed. Money is always a complicated matter not merely because it is difficult to earn, but precisely due to the challenges arising in saving it. Whenever a financial advisor is approached by men and women, their response to both of them differ, even though their requirement might collide. Before we begin on financial planning of women there are certainly a lot of myth which needs some bursti
- Financial planning what is that? All women care is shopping: The biggest myth of all, is women do not understand financial planning. This is because they do not interfere in finance matter unless they think the need to do so. However if you go by their daily routine or shopping preferences, you will understand that women are rather best in buying things cheaply and pay things true to their worth. Not just that, they time their purchases to perfection, just like in stock market, ‘buy low sell high’. They are the perfect manager of your house, which remains inflation free (due to bargaining) most often than not.
- Women are expensive spenders: This is because of their frequent habit of shopping, however one fails to notice that their spending might still be lower than men. Men usually buy stuff every three months or more, but these stuff are usually comprise of electronics, cars, luxury items such as watches etc. in addition to that daily habits such as liquor or cigarette make men more spending expert than women.
- Women are poor decision maker: Give women a budget for month and they will append more wisely than men. This suggest that, women work on extremely tight budget be it working or household, even then they can accommodate everything right from child education to festival celebration and medical expenditure of parents to family vacation. They understand their needs well and have their objective clear in their mind. Thus when it comes to financial planning, they may create the ultimate portfolio keeping their in view of their crystal clear objectives.
Does this mean women are perfect? Sorry ladies but you aren’t, there are some areas where you can improve and make your life as perfect as your shopping!
- Build an emergency fund: Women are often dependent on their spouses for house or retirement savings. However in doing so they totally ignore the bitter possibility of separation or death of spouse. In such unfortunate event, they might be exposed to heavy financial requirement in a short period of time. Therefore building an emergency fund is very essential in order to cater such emergencies and to have your future sorted. Above that women are prone to taking frequent breaks from work on account of maternity leave or spouse’s job switching or even raising children, this may stop income for certain time and may affect liquidity.
- Take calculated risk: Women are known by their risk averse nature, therefore any investment they make, are always least risky. This is because of the security of receiving the amount back when the same matures even if the return is minimal. Wealth creation is subject of long term investment with mixture of moderately risky and low risk instrument. Investing only in low risk instrument may leave you well short of your desired objective. Low risk equal to low gain, therefore when the time comes you may end up significantly short in your wealth creation. Further low risk will provide a leverage in case of poor performance of high risk instrument and safeguard your investment.
- Save more than your spouse: Today in many sectors still, there is a huge pay gap for same work, due to gender bias. Women often earn less than men and this creates an additional burden in saving money. Imagine a woman earning 30000 per month and saves 10%, whereas a man of same qualification earning 40000 per month but saving only 8%. In the given scenario, man saves 3200, while woman saves 3000 only. This 200 at the beginning might look negligible, but considering the power of compounding every month, the figure might look incredibly high.
- Higher life span: It is needless to say that women live longer than men, this raises their retirement savings. A higher retirement corpus might be ignored by many women, however they must understand longer life span would mean longer requirement of funds. Life span of women might be higher but retirement age for all humans remains the same, hence the income age is fixed for both men and women. Considering this fact women should start saving early and stay invested for longer period.
- Understanding your husband’s finances & debts: Men are more responsible here than women, as they don’t feel women should be a part of financial planning. However human life is subject to various uncertainties, any mishap can happen leaving everything unplanned. Women are the next person after husband’s inability to handle all the finances of the family, hence she must know what all investments are active and debts incurred and pending. Therefore staying in touch with your spouse’s finance is necessary and monitoring them is also equally important.
Women are God’s most precious gift to mankind, without which no man is complete, let alone his personal financial planning. Everything important decision is routed through women in the family, then why not financial planning? Every women must have health, wealth and happiness as their motto of life and what better day to adopt it than women’s day. So this women’s day invest not only in health care program and stress free life but also in long term investment options to create wealth not only for you but also for your family.
