The article Mars, Venus and the Handling of Money, in The New York Times on Sunday, February 22, represented, for me, a Finally! Finally, someone is talking about the financial elephant in the living room—that women and men approach money differently and that it’s not because women are “bad at math,” that ridiculous dismissive catch-all.
The essay, by M.P. Dunleavey, asserts that even though women have moved into arenas of earning, owning, and inheriting “real money” and control most of the buying decisions, they are still not taken with the data-driven, “performance-only please” approach to financial management. In other words, the way many men make decisions about money doesn’t work for women.
I am not invalidating the data-driven view (how could I since numbers don’t lie!), but I am championing la difference—women want a more holistic, simpler, how does this investment approach fit in with my life, goals, and intuitive sense? Yet the article asserts a harsh reality: studies show that the average retirement account balance for women is only $58,000 compared to men’s average of $95,000.
Now, how do we marry the two money decision styles: men’s data-driven and women’s need-to-ask-lots-of-questions-before-I-bite styles?
My answer? More blogs like this so we can pry open the conversation, aka real talk, about money: what it’s for, what it means to me, what scares me about it, what joy it brings, instead of pretending we’re supposed to know this stuff. If we could educate each other openly, without the shroud of shame, secret, or competition, we’d be on the road to financial health and heftier returns.
I often think how the fall of the American economy in 2008 could’ve been averted if more women had been in the crow’s nest of the wayward vessel, saying “hey, fellas, wait a minute. Something just doesn’t feel right.”
There are some good books to help educate women. Smart women finish rich by David Bach would be a good start
Thank you for a great suggestion!
I do believe woman and men approach finances differently. However, the fact that there is a big disparity in the retirement account balances may have more to do with women’s salaries being lower than men’s.
Thanks, Diane. Definitely. 79 cents on the dollar is a big gap.
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