Our latest poll centres around the issue of whether females should be taking a greater role in financial decision making, focusing in particular on women who are married or in long-term relationships. In order to explore this issue, we need to know about your own experiences when providing financial advice to couples. We are asking:
When delivering advice to couples, who, in your experience, is usually the primary financial decision maker?
This poll question links in to the final round of judging earlier this week for the 2012 AFA Female Excellence in Advice Award (see: Female Advisers Believe Women Need to Step Up). Speaking to riskinfo during a break in the judging, one of the finalists, Catherine Robson (Affinity Private, Victoria), suggested that married women often take a back seat when it comes to financial decision-making: “There’s a really surprising abdication of responsibility among women. Regardless of education and intelligence they seem to get married and then check out of that (financial) responsibility.” Ms Robson added that she believes this abdication can potentially lead to relationship issues.
There also exists a broader belief that females, irrespective of whether they are single or in a long term relationship, need to take more responsibility for financial decisions: “Women don’t take risks, and I’m not just talking about investment risk, but about what they perceive as risks. If they don’t feel they know or understand something, like an insurance strategy for example, then they perceive that as a risk,” said another finalist, Anne Graham (McPhail HLG Financial Planning, Victoria). “But once they digest the information, and understand it, they’ll make the decision and they tend to stick to it,” she added.
In your own experiences when dealing with couples, is it usually the male partner who takes responsibility for financial decisions for the couple and/or the family? How often is it the female partner? Or do you find that responsibility for those decisions is usually shared?
In the ever-changing social, cultural and economic environment in which your clients live, tell us how you see this question…
I think it’s really the other way around. I find it generally is the females who are making many of the financial decisions, and the men are tagging along like lost puppies. I believe it’s the men who really need to step up and take some ownership of their finances.
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