Money Worries: Do You Have Them?
I experienced firsthand how much women worry about money during my first career as a professional investment advisor.
As part of my “getting to know you” questions, I would often ask new clients what their biggest money fear was. It was always interesting to me that the most common response from women, even those with substantial wealth, was the fear that they would outlive their money.
Not having enough money to sustain a long lifespan was the #1 worry.
Recently, I found a Gallup Survey from 2000 that corroborated this and I think it applies to 2023. It validates the work I am doing at “Money Talks For Women” to support women to become more money savvy.
Women’s Most Pressing Concerns
The survey asked American women the following question: “Thinking about your own life — what is the biggest challenge you personally face in your daily life today?”**
The results show that women have a wide variety of issues that challenge them as they go about their daily lives, but that several — particularly economic issues and family concerns — dominate. Additionally, these concerns vary significantly, particularly by age and life situation.
The Top Seven Concerns Are:
- Money: 26% of women are faced most directly by economic concerns today, including such things as the cost of living, meeting financial needs, and high taxes
- Family: 22% of women’s most pressing concern is their family
- Health: 15% of women’s most pressing daily concern is their health
- Time and Stress: 14% of women are most concerned about stress, managing their time, getting things done, and balancing their lives
- Job and Career: 8% of women are most concerned about their job and career
- Education: 7% of women are most concerned about education and schooling — both for themselves and their children
- Equality and Equal Rights: 4% of women are most concerned about equality, equal opportunity and discrimination.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the family is of greatest concern to women with children, while stress and time management are most likely to be mentioned by women who work outside the home, whether or not they have children.
Concerns over one’s job and career are generally equally likely to be mentioned by working women whether or not they have children. Health concerns are most important to women who neither work nor have children, primarily because they tend to be older.
What, Me Worry?
One of the most important underlying correlates of these personal concerns is age. The survey results show that life concerns vary dramatically as women move through the life course. The most dramatic variation by age relates to health: as women get older, the percentage who mention health in response to this concern question increases dramatically, far outdistancing all other issues for women by the time they reach their 70s:
Family concern speak in the 30-39 age group, and then decline after 50- Money concerns are remarkably stable across all age groups until the woman reaches 70, at which time health overwhelms everything else
- Health concerns begin to crop into the American woman’s thinking after age 50, and by age 60 become their number one concern. By age 70, health dominates women’s thinking as their major concern in life.
- Job and career concerns manifest themselves only minimally, and after age 30 drop into single-digit range
- Women are most likely to be concerned with time, stress and life balance in the 30-39 age bracket.
- Time and stress concerns drop as major concerns after age 50 but remain on the radarscope even into old age.
- Education, like family, is a concern to women under 50.
Family concern speak in the 30-39 age group, and then decline after 50
The Top 3 Concerns:
What role does money play in your concerns for 2023?
Do you feel confident about your ability to create lasting financial security? I’m here to help! You can put your financial concerns behind you, starting today!
Here’s what I believe: INSIDE, EVERY WOMAN IS AN ACE MONEY MANAGER! That’s right! And that means you! JOIN ME HERE TO GET STARTED TOWARD FINANCIAL EMPOWERMENT (Join the waitlist for my next Money Talks Event at Join the Waitlist for my next Money Talks Financial Clinic in MARCH 2023
DISCLAIMER: This material has been prepared for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to provide, and should not be relied upon for, investment, accounting, legal or tax advice. Investing involves risk, including possible loss of principal. Opinions and estimates offered constitute our judgment and are subject to change without notice, as are statements of financial market trends, which are based on current market conditions. We believe the information provided here is reliable, but do not warrant its accuracy or completeness.
**NOTE: Survey Methods
The results reported here are based on telephone interviews with a randomly selected national sample of 1,205 women, 18 years and older, conducted February 23-27, 2000. For results based on this sample, one can say with 95 percent confidence that the maximum error attributable to sampling and other random effects is plus or minus 3 percentage points. In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.