Men vs. Women: Financial Planning
October 8, 2009
Statistics show that men and women handle money differently. While there are exceptions to every rule, men generally are better prepared for retirement, are more willing to put money into savings, pay off credit card balances in full and are more educated about investing. Men are also more prepared for unemployment, which is fortunate because there are more unemployed men than women in the U.S. and the growth of the unemployment rate for men is currently outpacing the unemployment rate for women.
Would have been much more interesting what they spend their money on or what they say. This whole thing sort of ended on a note of anti-feminite
Comment by Bozley — October 9, 2009 @ 10:01 am
I didn’t know that.. I thought woman is more responsible..
Comment by Money — October 9, 2009 @ 10:05 am
Overall, when compared on Saving, Investing, and Unemployment Preparedness, Men are more prepared for future financial instability, according to Men.
Comment by Anony — October 9, 2009 @ 10:12 am
It’s really hard to generalize this, but I will say that the things men like to buy are a lot cheaper than the things women like to buy. For the price of a fancy dress I can buy a video game and eat over 20 quality hamburgers.
Comment by Manhattan — October 9, 2009 @ 10:16 am
Did anyone thought that we men have big egos and we think ourselves kings of the world, never accepting our mistakes? Maybe men in this info graphics said they know about things and are confident only to ensure that they do not sound weak.
Comment by Who knows — October 9, 2009 @ 10:33 am
The thing about these charts is that they go off people’s perceptions of their own financial stability. In my interactions with men and watching friends lose their jobs, they THINK they have more savings and stability, but that’s not always the case. This study is inconclusive because it only asks people questions about how they think they’re doing and behaviorally women often downplay their accomplishments when asked while men are more boastful. The conclusion that men are more responsible financially because they say they are is downright wrong.
Comment by Financial Responsible Lady — October 9, 2009 @ 11:19 am
@Boozley
If the statistics are accurate, it’s not the article that’s anti-feminist, it’s women that are anti-feminist.
Compare with Stephen Colbert’s saying, “Reality has a well-known liberal bias.”
Comment by wavenger — October 9, 2009 @ 11:21 am
This just shows that men think they are better prepared and informed. It says nothing about whether they actually are.
Comment by Carl — October 9, 2009 @ 11:26 am
Why are people attacking this article? “anti fiminiinte (sic)” – “….according to Men”. It looks like it was a survey and they tallied up the results, plain and simple.
Once again some people act as if women are supposed to be above criticism.
Comment by Justin Dowling — October 9, 2009 @ 11:40 am
One thing to consider is income in the first place. Man or woman, we all have the same overhead costs (and single mothers tend to have more). If men make a higher average income but have the same day-to-day overhead cost of living, then women, mathematically, are incapable of saving the same percentage of their income as men.
I’m not saying that’s the reason these results favor men for financial planning. My point is, a lot of times these statistics are compounded by social and economic factors that are neglected when you dump the end results into one category, such as “who’s better at financial planning.” Something to consider.
Comment by anon — October 9, 2009 @ 11:45 am
Interestingly, no one has observed that women generally get stuck with one of the most expensive things on earth – the kids. After a divorce (or if the father never helped out in the first place), women must support their children, while men do have some obligations to provide alimony (if the mother goes to court) this money is a finite amount and the mother is responsible for providing all the necessary funds to raise the kid, no matter how much alimony she receives. It’s convenient to leave out that huge expenditure in this analysis. How much richer would women be if they didn’t have kids to support, I wonder? I know my mom would be very well off!
Comment by JJC — October 9, 2009 @ 11:51 am
They don’t mention how they calculated these figures it’s useless to argue about men vs. women.
However, I could see how this could be true. Men usually have less spendings for their day to day activities.
Comment by Anonymous — October 9, 2009 @ 11:55 am
Well they used statistics to determine that men are more prepared for future financial instability. These are statisctics, if you’re a woman who is great with money and your boyfriend is terrible, then that’s still allowed by the last statement. Hell I’m a guy and I’m terrible with money. But for gods sake, women don’t have to get offended by every gender related statistic that shows them in a negative light.
Comment by Luke — October 9, 2009 @ 12:06 pm
^^ agreed these stats show more how the respondents think of themselves or what they should be doing than of where the money is actually going
Comment by Anonymous — October 9, 2009 @ 12:47 pm
I’m not so sure about this set of graphs. Pretty much /all/ the men I’ve known in my age range are completely financially irresponsible. I was always the one saving and purchasing items wisely (not blowing my money on video games or insisting on name brand food items). I would even make suggestions to my male friends about how they /could/ be stretching their dollars, but often I was ignored and ended up watching them sink themselves further into debt and empty bank accounts.
On the other hand, most of my female friends are very good at putting money away or trying to spend wisely on their daily purchases. While it’s true that there are always exceptions to the rule (as in I have known a /few/ responsible males and irresponsible females), overall, my life experience has been the exact opposite of these diagrams.
Comment by Jen — October 9, 2009 @ 12:56 pm
Ever think that maybe statistics don’t lie, and just because one is skewed in favor of men doesn’t mean everything. Why is is that every time a statistic looks better for men then women all of a sudden it becomes a sexism issue?
Comment by whoever — October 9, 2009 @ 1:11 pm
Considering that women tend to be more under-employed than men, more likely to have to take time off for family responsibilities and get paid 75% per hour compared to men doing the same work – shows that women are suffering in how they can plan for the future because of the inequality of finances.
Comment by anvil — October 9, 2009 @ 1:27 pm
> I didn’t know that.. I thought woman is more responsible..
Whoa, I thought the same thing. So actually, WOMEN are the ones to blame…they’re the guilty party!
@Women Dirty liars.
Comment by Joshua Szanto — October 9, 2009 @ 1:39 pm
Yah, more responsible with mens $ (on average. ..for you fem-bots)
Comment by Harrison — October 9, 2009 @ 2:17 pm
It’s an infographic. It shows data that is collected and marginally analyzed. Biases are not taken into account here unless the data was intentionally altered. Conspiracy nuts.
Comment by Robert — October 9, 2009 @ 2:46 pm
This would be more interesting and relevant if it separated single men and women from married men and women because single earner homes would skew the numbers.
Comment by Anonymous — October 9, 2009 @ 3:27 pm
@Manhatan – I would disagree with you. My Aston Martin cost me a fair bit more than her dress.
@Who Knows – That’s the problem with these surveys. The answer you get typically reflects what the respondent thinks is the “correct” answer. Their answers frequently are not realistic.
Comment by Yea Man — October 9, 2009 @ 3:31 pm
Has anyone actually considered that this might be true? The two groups are never going to be equal in everything, no two groups can be perfectly homogeneous. Don’t be upset because men happen to be better financial planners, look instead to what you might excel in.
Comment by Sanel — October 9, 2009 @ 4:06 pm
this is just statistics :(
Comment by subcorpus — October 9, 2009 @ 4:48 pm
It’s all about teh doh!
Comment by Citizen — October 9, 2009 @ 6:55 pm
You have to take into account that women make less than men so they are unable to pay bills on time. It isn’t because women are not good at handling money. Women generally also are the ones who head single parent households have have more expenses than men.
But like all polls and statistics there are alot of confounds to consider. But since in this poll people are able to save money they must be pretty wealthy or at least above average. Poor people don’t have money to save, man or woman.
Comment by Ceecee — October 9, 2009 @ 7:41 pm
Maybe this just shows that, on average, women earn less than men and thus have less disposable income to save.
Comment by nicholas — October 9, 2009 @ 8:52 pm
Yeah, I would agree with most of you guys on the fact that we cannot really believe these results. Though, in a way, I kind of agree with this finding, and being a man, you might believe that I am bias, the truth is, it is impossible to generalize with this kind of data especially when we do not know how the study is done. There are many factors, like many people said prior to this post, the situations of the people surveyed, what type of person he or she is (boisterous or modest), as well as where and how they collected this data. We do not know how many people were surveyed, and if they taken account of all externalities and extraneous variables. And of course, without proper backing and sources, this data maybe invalid.
But overall, assuming that it could be right, I would say that this data somewhat reflect spending behavior and savings in general. Though, I would have expected the findings to be a little closer nowadays, men usually save more and is better off in their finances. For those who argue spending, spending for both men and women should somewhat be equal. As a guy, we always believe that women would spend more overall than men. This is so because we base our arguement on the fact that women tend to spend money more frequently than men (clothes, makeup, shoes, etc…) However, if you look at how men spends money, though we may buy things less frequently, we purchase big-ticket items more than women (cars, computers, homes, etc…). So it is really hard to say who spends more. However, because this is arguing finances, I believe that men should have a bigger advantage. Though we may be purchasing big-ticket items and so on, we need to save in order to do so, therefore, men usually have more in savings, and therefore, a little more prepared for the future. Though you may argue this by stating that you don’t do this, all I can say is, yeah, I agree, you could be a different type of consumer, therefore this generalization would not apply to you. But overall, I’m arguing that in general, spending should be equal, and men usually have more in savings.
Other than that, its just too bad that these researchers did not include how they conducted this study. As far as I know, they could have randomly generated these numbers.
Comment by Randy — October 9, 2009 @ 10:27 pm
This doesn’t show who did the study, nor does it provide a margin of error. If the margin is 5%, then many of these results are not statistically significant. Also, includes no information about the sampling. Interesting, but doesn’t meet criteria for a meaningful set of data.
Comment by Michael — October 10, 2009 @ 5:26 am
Why don’t you women just shut up about it already?
When statistics come out that more women are seeking higher education, live longer, are less often incarcerated, etc.; us men don’t get defensive about it. THEY ARE STATISTICS! Get over it.
Just like if you don’t like your job, don’t complain about it or state that you are hitting the glass ceiling, look at yourself and how you can improve your own situation.
My wife is an attorney and I work in construction. I made my own decisions in life as did she. If you are not making enough money, or feel that “you” are better at managing money than your man then good for you.
Don’t blame it on things such as womens’s clothes are more expensive than men’s things.
Statistics are unbiased, but apparently not all of you who are getting upset over this article.
Comment by Sean OC — October 10, 2009 @ 10:10 am
Most women I feel are better money wise then men. I was reading an article on this Online Dating site where women actually control and budget money better then most men. They were found to be way better at judging what should and shouldn’t be spent you though there are a million studies for everyone online stating that this is and this isn’t there is always something to say this study is wrong and this one is right and vise versa.
Comment by Trevor — October 10, 2009 @ 1:41 pm
This article is entirely based on people’s perception of their situation and their own replies to questions and not the reality behind it.
Men tend to feel very self-confident about their knowledge and financial skills and state so whereas women tend to feel less positive about their choices and decisions.
But the bottom line should be: are they assessing their real situation correctly or are men simply overconfident and less prepared than they think and women pessimistic but much better prepared than they assume?
Comment by AndieR — October 10, 2009 @ 8:21 pm
This data being factual wouldn’t surprise me. Sure, there are reasons that there could be such a discrepancy such as women earning less, more women in single parent households, men saving more for their bigger ticket purchases, etc… While some of those statistics may reveal a little more, I believe the purpose of this was simply to demonstrate which sex seems more financially prepared or knowledgeable.
Comment by Leslie W — October 10, 2009 @ 9:22 pm
This seems very accurate to me and the statement about divorces being about financial.
My ex-wife was spending about $1000+. a month on crap and partying and when the money got low, she blamed me. Mean while I was the one at home with our newborn son. Then we get divorced and I get stuck with $40,000 debt from her.
Comment by Michael — October 11, 2009 @ 9:20 am
heyyyyyyyyyyy thats just wrong we women disereve the same rights as men becuase we get hurt more then men and you know what womens are forced to give there bodys out because they dont get paid enuff to feed there family and thats just wrong and more importantly a singel parent women her and her family have to go throw lot of trubble just for money i think there should be a law saying every person in the world should get paid the same amount of money no matter by there raise there sex or the color of skin becuase we are all humans and we all go throw the same thing so yeah womens should get paid the same amount of money as a men
Comment by Guadalupe — October 14, 2009 @ 10:11 am
I provide women only financial planning seminars for this exact reason. To better educate women so that they can make educated decisions about their money. I am stepping up so that women are aware of the statistics and can make a change in their financial plans.
Comment by JB — December 1, 2009 @ 9:26 pm