Skip to main content

Women Prioritize Immediate Needs Over Long-term Goals



According to a new survey from Edward Jones, “Female Financial Empowerment,”while women have made significant strides in gender and income equality in the workplace, one of the biggest obstacles they continue to face is the tendency to “prioritize immediate family needs” over saving for their own future.

That certainly helps explain what the financial services firm acknowledges is an inherent conflict in the findings: Although seven out of 10 women polled say they feel “confident” in their financial knowledge, all too many have actually done little to generate their own long-term wealth.

“Only 25 percent of women surveyed consider saving for retirement as their most important goal over the next three to five years,” says Nela Richardson, an investment strategist at Edward Jones. “That tells us that female financial empowerment should be next on the list of barriers women have broken over the past few decades.”

The two other biggest challenges women need to surmount, according to the national sample of 1,004 adult women ages 18 and older, is waiting for the “perfect” time to invest (something men do as well), or something else to motivate them.

Some examples: A big raise or other windfall (49 percent). A financial emergency (20 percent). A significant life event (20 percent). A market correction (12 percent).

“Waiting for a raise or a significant life event, by definition, isn’t a financial strategy,” Richardson says, “and they’ll always have competing priorities. The key is to anticipate both tailwinds and headwinds in life, and be flexible enough to adapt to changing situations so you can meet your long-term financial goals.”

Edward Jones lays out a female-centric approach to handling your finances on its website. But here’s a quick cheat sheet to get you started:

• Make yourself a priority by starting to invest now in order to give your money time to grow – never underestimating the power of a wondrous thing called compound interest.

• Begin small with modest investments.

• Develop a goals-based financial strategy.

As for how much better women are doing financially, here’s one notable sign: Forbes’ list of the world’s 100 richest people featured just four females in 2000 compared to 10 this year. The richest woman – and fifteenth overall – is the L’Oréal heiress, Francoise Bettencourt Meyers ($49.3 billion), who is chairwoman of the family’s holding company.

But she inherited her wealth, you say? Well, the youngest billionaire ever, according to Forbes, is 21-year-old cosmetics wunderkind Kylie Jenner ($1 billion).

Thanks: NewsUSA

Its time to think about SEO services in Singapore, HURRY!!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Surprisingly, Older Americans Are Coping Best During the Pandemic

( NewsUSA ) – Older Americans have actually been coping far better than younger ones during the coronavirus pandemic, according to new research.The Edward Jones and Age Wave Study goes where few have ventured before in focusing exclusively on how different generations have held up emotionally and financially in the months since all the lockdowns began. And some of its findings are at least as startling as how quickly even 70-year-olds came to love Zoom."COVID-19’s impact forever changed the reality of many Americans, yet we’ve observed a resilience among U.S. retirees in contrast to younger generations," said Ken Dychtwald, Ph.D., the founder and CEO of Age Wave, a leading research think tank on aging, retirement and longevity issues.While acknowledging upfront that the virus itself disproportionally struck aging adults, the five-generational sampling of 9,000 people age 18 and over revealed more than a few surprises. Among them:* While 37 percent of Gen Zers, 27 percent o...

Audiobook Service Helps Blind Vets Recover Independence

In December 1967, a young soldier lay in a hospital bed after sustaining severe eye injuries from a land mine in Vietnam. Tom Miller, now executive director of the Blinded Veterans Association (BVA) in Washington, D.C., was blind, and his mind raced over all of the things he’d never be able to enjoy again. “I’ve spent the past 44-plus years erasing that list, or finding new things I can do.” Miller says he owes many thanks to the talking-book program of the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (NLS), part of the Library of Congress. “The program is a godsend,” he says. Veterans—and any U.S. resident or citizen living abroad—are eligible to become NLS readers if they are blind, have low vision or have an illness or disability that prevents them from handling a book or printed material. According to a 2011 report by the National Alliance for Eye and Vision Research, 16 percent of the wounded soldiers evacuated from Iraq and Afghanistan battle zones have suf...

Take Time for A Moment That Matters: Tire Safety

Have working batteries in your smoke alarms? Done. Has your oil been freshly changed in your car? Done. Is there a new water filter for your refrigerator? Done. But when it comes to regularly checking your tires? Like most people, there may be some room for improvement. As fall travel and winter weather loom, taking a moment to check your car tires can make a difference in keeping you safe on the road. This year, Cooper Tires is encouraging drivers to mark Labor Day weekend on their calendar (and the first of every month) as a tire check safety moment, to make a habit of checking tires, especially as seasons change. “Just as we regularly take a moment to check our smoke detector batteries when we change our clocks in the fall and spring, we need to designate a moment to check tire safety as well,” says Jessica Egerton, Director of Brand Development at Cooper Tire & Rubber Company. Ensuring the overall condition of your tires is easy and important for your safety on the r...