WE ALL FEAR BECOMING A BAG LADY...

I have the fear of becoming a bag lady. I have actually said those exact words to family and friends. I remember when I said it to my dad shortly after college, he just smiled, kissed me on the forehead and promised to always take care of me (he also promised to start charging me rent should I decide to stick around the house much longer). I don't know where this fear comes from, but image my suprise when I read that apparently I am not alone. A 2006 study found that many women, including 50% of those who make over $100,000 per year, have the same fear!

The Allianz Women, Money, and Power Study

Over the past several decades, women have shattered barriers in politics, the workforce, and family roles. However, the picture is far more mixed in the financial world. Women represent half of all stock-market investors, control 48% of estates worth more than $5 million, and by 2010 women will control 60% of the wealth in the United States. In 2003, almost two million women earned over $100,000, a four-fold increase in just a decade. No longer playing the role of secondary earner, 60% of women with business degrees and 75% of executive women working for Fortune 500 companies out-earn their husbands. Yet, at the same time, poverty rates among women remain far higher than men among all age groups. Despite great strides in almost every other arena, finance and investments have remained largely a male domain.

In fact, money and investing is in many ways the last—and perhaps the most important—frontier in gender equality. In the largest-ever study of women and money, Allianz Life Insurance Company engaged Age Wave in 2006 to design a landmark research initiative, The Allianz Women, Money, and Power Study, to better understand women’s relationship with money and investing. The study included a survey of over 3,000 women and men conducted by Harris Interactive. Some key findings:

- The security and freedom money brings is 15-20 times more important to women than the status and respect it affords.

- Only 10% of women say they feel extremely financially secure, and half say they fear losing everything they have and becoming a “bag lady” living on the streets.

- Money is almost twenty times more likely than sex to be the biggest source of conflict in their marriages.

- One in five women report having a "secret stash" of savings their husbands don’t know about.

READ MORE ABOUT THIS STUDY AT:

http://www.agewave.com/research/landmark_womanMoneyPower.php

http://www.allianzlife.com/MediaCenter/PressAllianzStudy.aspx