Men Women & Money

That’s the title to the findings of Money magazine’s nationwide survey of a thousand coupons and it showed some pretty surprising statistics, at least to me. The vast majority of coupons split the financial duties along very traditional lines. Women handle the budgets and daily spending by the men do the long term planning and investing. Other parts of the survey they found surprising was what each side thought the other cared about. The men didn’t realize that the women cared about all the finances, including investing and retirement planning.

45% of men believe in the importance of an emergency fund, whereas 67% of women did. I know that I think an emergency fund is significant, but I did blow my entire fund to pay off my second mortgage a few months early (luckily without any negative ramifications).

Another interesting statistic was that the typical man earns 5% more than the woman thinks and has 10% more “wealth.” Hmmmmm….

There’s also the stat that 47% of women responded as being uncomfortable investing in the stock market compared to 30% of men. The article says that women are uncomfortable because they have more financial worries; I think it’s because guys are inherently cocky (there’s a stat on risk aversion too). You can feel entirely comfortable with investing as you lose your shirt.

I’ve linked to an article below and it expands on the survey a little more but those three points above were the ones I thought were the most interesting.

via CNN Money.