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We’re now approaching the final parts of  “The Series: Women & Finances”.  Our Part IV theme is “Women & Managing Finances”.  I know that after the first three posts it seems as though women are being vastly neglected and underserved in the financial arena.  That is changing as we speak. 

My research indicates that more and more financial advisors are targeting women as potential clients.  More and more financial advisors are directing their marketing towards the women’s market.

The problem with this marketing has been that the vast majority of financial advisors are men.  And they don’t fully understand how to market to women.  Women approach personal financial matters differently than men and this is where the financial advisors need to do their homework.  Fortunately, they are for the most part.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has shown that the number of women in the workforce has nearly doubled in the last fifty years.  Statistics indicate that the numbers have gone from 32% working to 62% working.  And the best part of this is that the number of women earning six figure incomes or more has quadrupled, with no end in sight.  Some experts are saying that by the year 2010-that’s less than 2 years from now-almost 60% of the wealth in this country will be controlled by women.

The statistics also tell us that more and more women are getting involved in their family’s financial management.  That is the good news. The bad news is that most women, almost 90%, don’t feel financially secure.  A lot of those feelings have to do with what we have discussed in the previous posts where women are left out of their family’s financial matters and management.  Again, that is changing slowly.  Women today need to be more aggressive in their family’s finances. 

Education is the key.  I’ve mentioned taking classes, reading books, and staying in touch with your “trusted financial advisor” in the last three posts.  It must be the teacher in me because I truly believe that if you can read and put forth the effort to educate yourself you can conquer almost any problem.  And the financial literacy problem that permeates this country is unacceptable.  Women have to put in the time, effort, and discipline to fix this problem. Like most things it won’t go away by itself.  What do you want to do about your financial future?

Did you know that today over 50% of this nation’s wealth is controlled by women-and remember we said that would be almost 60% by 2010-yet 25% of women have no retirement savings.  It doesn’t seem possible but that unfortunately is the case.  This is the old “the rich get richer” scenario in which a select few control vast amounts of wealth.  This is just as true on the female side as it is on the male side.

A recent study done in 2006 showed that women, age 65 and up, represented 70% of those living in poverty.  This is shocking, especially since we give away billions in foreign aid.  Ladies you are not on your own any more. It’s more important then ever that you work at getting yourself up to speed on financial literacy.  Here are several more books that I am recommending along with the books from the first three posts.  Check out The Money Therapist: A Women’s Guide To Creating A Healthy Financial Life by Marcia Brixley and Easy Money: How To Simplify Your Finances And Get What You Want Out Of Life by Liz Pulliam Weston.

This financial literacy problem along with women taking more control of their financial futures is there for the taking and making.  Just like the Nike commercial says. “Just Do It!”  What are you waiting for?

Our fifth and final post for The Series: Women & Finances for tomorrow will discuss a question that many of you have asked.  Tomorrow’s theme will be “Women & Your Trusted Financial Advisor.”  We will discuss who they are and how women should chose one and many more answers.  Don’t miss it!  See you tomorrow.

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Part three’s topic for “The Series: Women & Finances” looks at the conservative nature of women and saving and investing. Most of my posts are based on surveys that I have researched through financial magazine articles, the Internet, financial newsletters, print newspapers, and financial shows on television. Most have been right on the money with accuracy and agreeing with each other. This particular topic of the conservative nature of women was no surprise to me.

When I was a stockbroker/financial advisor, the majority of women that I dealt with as clients were, in fact, very conservative in their financial thinking. Part of that thinking, I believe, was that the husband should be putting more into his pension plan, usually a 401k, while the wife should use her wages to support the family. This was and is baby boomer thinking because of the way many of us were brought up. Today, this thinking is changing but according to many surveys we all have a long way to go.

But it is changing. More and more successful women are looking at their own retirement plans and discussing retirement strategies with their spouses. They are starting to think like investors instead of savers. A major difference in retirement strategies.

What retirement strategies are we talking about here. These successful women are doing their homework and saying to their partner that we both have a retirement plan, let’s say it’s a 401k, and we both need to take full advantage of this. How we do this is not by maxing-putting in the maximum allowed by law-one spouse over the other but by maxing each retirement plan first to take full advantage of our employer’s matching contribution.  An employer’s matching contributions gives us upwards of 100% return on our money immediately.  It doesn’t get any better then that. This insures us we are making the most of our retirement contributions.  This will be a separate discussion in a future post.

The second strategy is to meet with our “trusted financial advisor” and look at the way we are both “investing” in our retirement plans and making sure we are accomplishing our “joint” retirement goals.  Ask yourself such questions as:                                           

1. Are we both too conservative in our investments?
2. Are we both too aggressive in our investments?
3. Are we in the “right” investments?
4. What are the costs of our investments?
5. Are there investments we could combine to save money?

This is not an all inclusive list but you get the idea.  Your trusted investment advisor should be able to help you with this but “you” must take the first step.  Get on the phone and set up an appointment now! 

In most cases, my experience has been both spouses have been too conservative in their investing with too much money being used as savings, even in their retirement programs. Again, it has been the women who have been guilty of this more often than not. My personal opinion is that the women just didn’t understand enough about investing so they stayed savers.  That’s was okay but it’s time to re-think your strategy.

Now in a perfect world, we would have both spouses “maxing out” their retirement plans and coordinating their investments and also using their “catch-up” provisions-you can put extra money into your retirement plans after age 50-of their retirement plans, if they qualified. If they could do all these strategies then they would live happily ever after in Camelot and not have any retirement worries.

Since that’s not reality for most couples, then I would recommend, as I have in the previous posts, that women educate themselves through formal classes, talking to their trusted financial advisors on a regular basis, reading such books as Rich Woman: A Book on Investing for Women-Because I Hate Being Told What To Do by Kim Kiyosaki and A Man is not a Financial Plan: Investing For Wealth and Independence by Joan Baker and asking questions on websites like In Simple Language.

The Series: Women & Finances Part IV will discuss “Women & Managing Finances.  I know you won’t want to miss it.  See you tomorrow!

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Welcome back! I hoped you enjoyed “The Series:  Women & Finances”- Part 1.  We move into the second part of the series with the blog theme: “Women’s Unique Concerns”. These unique concerns move beyond the concerns of financial literacy and into the concerns of retirement and health care issues.

It seems, based on recent surveys, that women worry a lot more than men when it comes to the value of their investments keeping pace with inflation. Studies have indicated that women earn less than their male counterparts. About 23% less on average of what men earn. It’s tough to fund your retirement sufficiently to keep up with inflation when you are making a lot less money. That is changing but very slowly.

Because of less earnings and less time in the workforce, less retirement money is at work compounding over less years meaning a smaller amount at retirement. This will directly impact women’s lifestyles at retirement. You may argue that women will have their husband’s pension monies to make up for that difference. Maybe? Maybe not?

With divorce rates hovering above 50% and marriages lasting less and less time, will these women be entitled to any of their husband’s pension? And with job loss at record numbers and so many people tapping their pensions to live off of what will these pensions actually be worth?

The other unique concern of women is they spend about 12 to 15 years less in the workplace then men. This is due primarily with caregiving responsibilities. Not only with children, but with “their” parents and long term care needs. These caregiving responsibilties really take a financial toll on the amount and time women have to “properly” fund their retirement plans.

Unfortunately, I saw this caregiver scenario too many times as a stockbroker/financial advisor. Many times I heard stories from people sitting across from me about how they were taking care of their elderly parents. Sometimes the elderly parents had enough money to last a couple of years if they needed long term care. But more often then not, it was the person sitting across from me who was going to foot the bill for their parents. And in every case that I can remember, it was always the woman who became the caregiver to the parents. Even when the parents were her inlaws.

I don’t want to paint a doom and gloom scenario but we need to be aware of these things and address them the best that we can. The financial experts say that women need to save more. Well, let’s see. Women make 23% less then men, work less because of family responsiblities and pay the same costs as everyone else. Under these circumstances, saving more is a pretty interesting trick if you can pull it off.

Part of the solution for women should be to become more financially literate. Because of their unique situation, women have to work that much harder at securing their financial futures. Knowledge is power when put into action could fix a good deal of this issue.

One of the ways to become more financial literate, as I mentioned in Part 1, was to take some formal financial classes at the local community college or where ever you can find them. You should read financial books that are timely and informative. I recommend such books as On My Own Two Feet: A Modern Girl’s Guide To Personal Finance by Manisha Thakor and Sharon Kedar and Great With Money: The Women’s Guide To Prosperity by Melissa P. Burke and Ellen S. Rogin.

Also, you need to talk with and stay in touch with your “trusted financial advisor” today and on a regular ongoing basis. Let your advisor suggest seminars, websites, workshops and financial magazines that you should be aware of and taking advantage of.

Also remember you have In Simple Language to ask questions along with a lot of other financial sites on the Internet. This all sounds like work. And guess what? It is! Remember, and I don’t mean to preach, but I will anyway, it is your financial future. Take charge of it today so you don’t regret it tomorrow.

Tomorrow we will address the conservative nature of women’s investing.  Don’t miss it!  See you tomorrow.

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Looking for a financial speaker or financial writer?  Contact Rich today at rsowa@insimplelanguage.com or call Sowa Financial Media now at (502) 569-1714.

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Welcome!  Thank you for joining us for our beginning week long series of posts on “Women & Finances.  If you are a woman, thanks for dropping by.  I hope you leave with some of your questions answered today and throughout the week. If not, please use the comments section and your questions will be answered In Simple Language. If you are a guy, stick around and learn something about the love of your life.

Let’s get started with out first post theme-”Women and Retirement:  Is The Confidence There?”  If you are anything like me when I was growing up, only one person in my family handled all the finances.  That was my mother.  My father would come home from the shoe factory with an envelope full of cash, his paycheck, and he would hand it to my mother.  My mother then would pull out whatever allowance she gave my father and the rest of the cash was used to pay the bills, buy the food and whatever else was necessary for us to survive. 

Our family did not have a checking account for the first 30 years of my life.  I think my parents may have had a savings account at the credit union but that was about it.  My father had no pension to “worry” about other than social security.  I wonder how many families where like this?

It’s pretty amazing when you think about paying everything in cash in this “plastic” world we have today.  Although my mother paid all the bills neither she nor my father new anything about saving, let alone investing.  I know they had a friend who was a stockbroker but it was just on a social basis, nothing more.

This situation still persists today, especially with the baby boomer generation, in which only one spouse handles all the finances.  From my own professional experience, outside my immediate family, it has usually been the husband who handles the finances.  This is a nightmare in the making. 

When I worked as a stock broker/financial advisor, I saw time and again how women, usually in her late fifties or early sixties,  would come into my brokerage office-because some relative or friend said that was what they should do-looking for help on what to do with their deceased husband’s pension money or IRA accounts or investments that her husband always took care of.  The usual comment from the widow was, “George didn’t want to worry me with all the bother of finances”.

These unfortunate widows didn’t have a clue about finances or investments or anything financial.  This trend of unknowing and lack of a financial education and financial knowledge is still with us today.

A recent study by a major financial institution has shown that there has been no signicant change in women’s level of confidence when it comes to acheiving their financial goals. Even with all  the women working and having their own retirement plans, they still were not handling their own financial affairs. These women were still not making the decisions on how to invest.  Or why such and such investments should be part of their investment and/or retirement plans.

One such recent study showed that approximately 80% of the women surveyed felt they wanted to maintain their lifestyle in retirement but did not feel confident that they could do it.  This included women in the 25 to 68 year old range with incomes in excess of $50,000.  This is a disturbing fact because women generally live longer then men and need to know how to handle these financial issues, yet this is not happening.

These surveyed women agreed they need to get a better handle on their financial situations and become better educated in finances.  There is an enormous amount of information available today and I would suggest that women begin by educating themselves through financial classes at the local community college.  Or, because of time constraints, taking the time to read books such as Women & Money: Owning The Power To Control Your Destiny by Suze Orman orThe Financially Confident Woman: The Least Every Woman Needs To Know To Manage Her Finances and Prepare For The Future by Mary Hunt.

Or contact your “trusted financial advisor” and spend some time talking with her on what she might suggest. Also use free financial education blogs like In Simple Language to help.

The sources of financial information are endless. So is the complex and confusing terminology of finances. Please don’t let that stop you from finding your way through the maze of financial confusion. I don’t work as a stockbroker/financial advisor any longer and I hope that those that do will see less and less of the “financially confused widow” sitting across from their desks.

It is your financial future. What are you going to do about it? Tomorrow, we will move into another area of financial concern and discuss women’s “unique” concerns. Don’t miss it! See you tomorrow.

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Thank you for taking the time to visit In Simple Language.    Copyright 2008

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Just a reminder that tomorrow, Monday, July 28, 2008, starts The Series: Women & Finances which will post for the entire week. Don’t miss it!

In Simple Language looks forward to your questions, comments, and suggestions regarding this series.

If you like what you read, In Simple Language  would like your suggestions and ideas on future series. Let In Simple Language know by posting in the comments section at the bottom of each post.

Thank you for taking the time to visit In Simple Language.  Copyright 2008

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