Women are making more money and with that more household financial decisions.
Updated: Mar 25, 2020
Chris Worby a Trusted Regina Financial Advisor talks about Decision Making Partnerships, Households and Financial Decisions.
We used to live in a world where the men made all the decisions and it was the rare birth-order situation that saw a female head of state. But who makes decisions regarding this in your average household?
In my experience, I’ve seen some interesting trends. While many might think that spouses in older households would have more male dominant decision making and younger households would have more equal partnerships, I actually find that the ages of the spouses doesn’t matter as much as the gender; men still start more of the investment and financial conversations than the women.
Don’t get me wrong, I have many appointments where both spouses attend and are engaged but often it is the men who are more interested and are more excited to go over investment options.
There is no study that confirms what I’m about to say and this is pure conjecture but I wonder if it is about risk.
There are two conversations I have with many households and one is about protection (insurance) and one is about future assets (investing).
Many times I have noticed that female spouses understand the need for insurance where the male spouses understand the need to take risk in the stock market to try to attain the assets for the future they wish to have.
The funny part is that neither is ‘right.’ The fact is that the future is a giant unknown so to be overly optimistic or pessimistic is an error – there are good and bad events awaiting us all in the future so good planning must take both into consideration.
But why does all this matter? I recently came across information on widowhood statistics in the States (Canada being pretty similar) and it shows that close to 90% of surviving spouses are female. Let’s take a second and let that sink in. This means that if you are a couple and know 9 other couples, only one will have a male survivor at one point where 9 of the survivors left making decisions and having to cope will be female.
And this is why it matters that both spouses be engaged in the relationship with their financial advisor.
I have two major recommendations for every 2 decision-maker household:
Find an advisor you both like and can work with a semi-annual financial meeting. The semi-annual meeting is important and we’ll talk about it in the next blog but why is it important that everyone likes the advisor? When we’ve both felt good about the person, we’ve never had issues but when one of us felt off, something was wrong. This points to the fact that we both bring different perspectives and skill sets to the situation and when something syncs for both of us as opposed to one of us, it has likely been examined more thoroughly. This is true for the advisor you work with, the plan you put in place and everything – as the saying goes; two heads are better than one.
The last issue I’ll touch on is that after the death of a loved one, the person left behind needs to feel that they are dealing with the person they choose not the person chosen for them. This cannot be done when only one spouse is making the financial decisions in a partnership.
Chris Worby is a Trusted Regina based financial advisor and Wealth Management services provider servicing local Regina households and businesses. Since 2001, Chris has been committed to providing a high standard of financial service to individuals, families and business owners. Chris listens and provides a personalized financial plan.