Join the Club – Financial wellbeing for Women

Despite the fact that research shows that Women are engaged with budgeting, saving and investing. The key findings of the report were that over 80% of women rate their financial wellbeing moderate, low or very low and 60% rate their investing literacy low. Further, 62% of women don’t feel prepared for retirement and 60% of women worry about money daily, weekly or monthly. According to the FSC, both global and domestic research has highlighted some common challenges facing women: they have lower confidence and financial wellbeing compared to men, they have lower incomes due to pay inequalities, and are impacted by loss of income through life stages where they are the primary carer. So what’s the solution? Whilst it’s going to take time to overcome the social constraints, there are some things we can do today to help offset these drawbacks and raise our game. 

After a brief flirtation with being a Barrister, I switched careers in the mid to late 1980’s into financial services and ultimately into funds management. My passion has always been advocating for the benefits of saving and investing. More specifically though, I want women, to benefit from the financial independence, freedom of choice and feeling of security that having a savings buffer gives you.

The NZ retirement structure with NZ Super and KiwiSaver, is a very good platform for dealing with retirement savings. It is straightforward and free of tax complexity, however it doesn’t deal with the particular hurdles that women face in terms of lost earning years through childcare, family support, living longer than men, or the gender pay gap, which all manifest themselves in the form of a smaller pot of savings to support a comfortable retirement.

The financial services industry has an obligation to encourage women to engage with this seemingly dry topic and spend some time thinking ahead about how to optimise and/or supplement the spending power created by investing early and regularly. Several strategies can help mitigate the impact of the “lost years” but the worst thing you can do is to put this off. Time is your greatest asset in terms of the number of years you save, followed by saving more when you can afford to put some extra money away.