Women and Money- Lets JOIN HANDS to empower and encourage women investors
POSTED BY ON January 3, 2013 COMMENTS (25)
Do you know that only 1% of world wealth is owned by women , while women constitute 40% of the global workforce ? – World Bank . This is a little disturbing fact, and question now is, when women are working so much, giving a lot, have equal capability, then why they have so much less owned on their name ? When it comes to the area of money, Men are so much involved in personal finance, but women are not and that creates a big imbalance. Here is a small example to show how women suffers in her financial life because of this imbalance in understanding and knowledge of money
We at jagoinvestor want to start our 2013 with a vision of increasing financial literacy among women in India and we are looking at how we can reach 1 million women and teach them importance of financial literacy in their life. Now how is this related to you ? When we say “women” here, it also includes your wife, sister, mother, daughters and if you want to increase your financial life quality, you need to make sure that they learn about money. 2 years back, when I wrote about women and their personal finance knowledge, it was shocking to learn that 84% of educated, urban women dont have any knowledge or very minimal understanding of personal finance concepts.
Lets see why Women are not interested in personal finance matters
- From decades and generations, it has been dominated by men and only men, women are not even consulted or informed ever
- Women feel that their income is secondary to men, hence whats the use of managing it
- Women are so involved with children, cooking and other household work , that they don’t get time
- Women feel personal finance is complex and do not like numbers
But what happens when Men is not around ?
The best way to make you imagine what happens to women life if she does not have any idea about managing money is to ask you to imagine about your own case, Just imagine in your absence what is going to be the scene ? You have never encouraged women at your home to learn about money , neither they took any interest, but someday they might have to take charge and that day it will be very frustrating experience for them. We are trying to do some work in the area of financial literacy for Women and once we create something useful for women investors, we would like to share it with you all, so that women at your home can use it and take the first step towards financial literacy, but we need some help from you on this.
We have created a small survey which needs inputs by women, we want to know what they feel about this subject, how much ready are they and what is stopping them to learn about money. If you are a women reader of this blog, please fill up the survey. However if you are a male reader, we need your support, please ask your wife, mother, sister and daughter to take up the survey and spend 5 min on this, tell them they have to do it for you and their future. Just carry your laptop to them and insist them to spend 5 minutes and complete the survey. And if they complete take them out for dinner on our behalf (Bill paid by you of course) … Following is the survey questions
And Happy New year to all the readers !
Hi,
I am regular reader of your blog. I am a working married woman and i am taking all financial decisions myself. Being in the field of accounts and finance i do tax planing for myself and my husband both.
Few months back i was active in share market also but now due to my job i stopped share trading, I feel its very risky and i can not take that much risk. So nothing keeps me away from personal finance, even daily i spent at least 1-2 hours to study about personal finance, so please add one more option in your survey.
Thanks
Juhi
Glad to know that :). That survey is already over now 🙂
Hi Manish,
I can say my dilemma most of the time is that whatever savings/ surplus I have at the end of 2-3 months, I am not sure about where to invest.
Moreover there is a dependency on husband’s monthly income which should inflow regularly 🙂
We are planning to buy a house next year-end in the budget of 40 Lac. And presently I have 1.5 Lac to invest.
Have 16k worth SIP (both me and husband),
Have Term Plan,
Have 2 lac lump-sum in MF (both me and husband),
Have active PPF account
Have 2 Equity ULIPs
Have Bank FD worth 2 lac
I was thinking of parking the full surplus in Debt MF. Please let me know if I am wrong.
Regards
Sanghmitra
Yes ,you can do that .. how ever I feel even a simple Recurring Deposit will work for you.
RD might not give better returns than Debt MF …what you think?
Women especially married women should be trained about basics of personal finance like retirement plan, inflation, children higher education, This will help husband to take the decision about managing money
wht abt the females like me who handle their finances themselves,,, we have no option to click on in your survey 🙂
Hi, Perhaps you can offer some special discounts for your women clients :-p
Smitha
The first thing we teach our clients is to stay away from words discount 🙂 .. it will just not add up ! 🙂 . Discounts are just a myth !
Great work Manish, it was good to see this blog and survey! I think conducting one day session would be great idea!
All the best to you for this survey!
Regards,
We actually do 1 day events 😉
Excellent reading Manish..
Very insightful. Ironically, most of my clients wives handle the personal finances, since their husbands are too busy and caught up with work.Another reason maybe, because, I being a woman as their financial planner, they are comfortable interacting with me, (lady to lady talk) since we discuss things beyond money too…
What I agree with Manisha whole heartedly is that woman take better investment decisions and are less prone to loosing their savings. Their risk adjusted returns are also much better. The same holds true for loans taken by them. Woman are more keen to pay off loans when compared to their spouses..
I suppose the category of woman I interact with are educated working professionals, who feel the need to be independent, whose parents have imbibed the importance of being independent and standing on one’s feet, without having to depend on any source of income. I fall in this category too, and thats why gel well with my lady clients/ wives of clients.
I would however, like to understand and would be interested in the outcome of what is it that holds the woman from being involved with financial matters, besides the belief of being scared with numbers. I think, if the man of the house invites the woman into discussions on finance, the woman will automatically embrace the situation and sometimes even have a better understanding of the discussion and provide better feedback!
All the best to you in this survey!
Thansk for your long comment . We will surely share the results with you all
Dear Manish,
I want to see the daily history of NAV of L.I.C. Money Plus. Can you please give the link to see the same.
Thanks & Regards,
Veer
You can get it from LIC website . But I am not sure if you can see full history
Good one, Manish…
One more important point here is to change the thinking of society as a whole, which is dominated by men. We have to start putting our trust in our women starting it from our home. We should start asking inputs from our wife, sister, mother which would make them more comfortable with the terminologies used or some basic concepts about money and how the investments work!
– Aman
True Amandeep. It starts from how. Yesterday, I sat with my mother and helped her fill the survey and it was a great experience. Most of us never entered into women’s personal finance world. This survey gave me an opportunity to enter and see how they feel and think around money.
Hi Manish,
Good one @ Year Starting!! From some days I am sharing /teaching My spouse about Personal Finance. Now she knows My Life Insurance, Mediclaim, In which MF and Shares I have parked my money and Why, Nominations Etc… on last day we watched “One idiot” movie together and I felt She enjoyed movie as much as I do. I will ask her to take this survey:-)
Manish, Why Dont you Plan a seminar/Training special for womens and brief them about Personal Finance and about why should they know it. This will be very beneficial for womens dont visit here..
Jago Investor Team, Wish you a very Happy New year!!
Regards,
Amol
Amol
Good to know about all this , very nice ..
We will plan some event around this for sure !
Manish
Great to see this post of yours though I think you should add one option in your question ‘What is your biggest constraint that keeps you away from personal finance ? ‘. My answer would have been nothing keeps me away. Now I hope we can see some women related posts!
I agree with Mona. I am IT professional & very much into managing the personal finance. So I believe there has to be an option stating “nothing keeps me away”.
I agree too. Nothing keeps me away from spending time on Personal Finance
Great 🙂 .. you ladies are exeptions 🙂
Chitra
Ok , I will consider your answer to be like that 🙂 . Please add your answers for other questions
Done. 🙂 I selected ” household work keeps me away”; as the selection of answer was mandatory. Please do not consider it though 🙁