Women stress more over financial matters, says report

Women find themselves more stressed about financial matters than men, reveals the fifth ANZ financial literacy report.

According to the survey, women generally claimed to know less about making investments than men, which places them at a higher risk during retirement. Across all age groups, women ranked dealing with money as more stressful, and most (60%) admitted that they did not keep themselves updated with financial news at all. But, women had slightly higher scores than men when it came to keeping track of finances.

Interestingly, the report also noted that while it is unable to quantify the observation, women have a higher propensity than men to give ‘don’t know’ responses to questions about financial topics.

Men and women had similar scores on average on financial self-efficacy. This essentially reflects people’s self-belief in the ability to change their financial situation and their level of association with the motivational trait of a short term ‘attitude towards the future’.

Both women and men with higher levels of financial self-efficacy were more likely to have investments in shares, managed investments and property and to have obtained advice from a financial planner in the last 12 months.

Approximately one in seven women had high scores on impulsivity (versus one in four men). Also, women aged 28 to 59 years had lower scores on average than men on financial aspiration. Amongst women of this age, lower scores on financial aspiration were associated with fewer assets, lower participation in paid work and lower levels of postsecondary education. Women with higher scores on this attitude were more likely to have set a target income figure for retirement and to have higher levels of investment in high interest cash accounts, term deposits and property.

The study is based on a telephone survey of 3,400 randomly selected Australian adults.