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My Baby, She's Got Money All the Time
We women are getting richer. It’s forecast that in the United Kingdom, in less than 20 years women will control 60% of all personal wealth. Surprised? I’m not. This reflects the situation in my own household perfectly. My husband K— is forever short on cash, while I am amassing a small fortune in laundered money…literally. Any time I need some dough, there’s a place in my house where I can find it without fail: the washing machine. Every woman knows that a washing machine through which her husband has recently run a load of laundry is the domestic equivalent of an ATM. You may not be able to select how much it gives you, but there’s bound to be money there, and it doesn’t even leave a paper trail of withdrawals.
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Recently, Redbook magazine conducted a poll of 1000 men and women on the topic of money management. Responding to the question, "Who has better financial judgment, you or your spouse?" 59 percent of women and 68 percent of men said that they themselves do. Statistics, fellas, say you’re wrong. Your wife does.
Survey after survey shows that women investors outperform their male counterparts. And we’re not talking chump change here. On average, individual investment portfolios managed by women increase by 54% to 66% more than those managed by men.* One reason given for why men do so, well, poorly is this: “Men…have greater confidence in their own opinion.” At this point I would like to refer readers back to paragraph one.
On the other hand, there is some good news for men where money is concerned. According to a poll conducted in 2005, South African men spend money more responsibly than South African women. Fully 83% of them prefer to spend spare cash on “long-term investments.” Reading the poll more deeply, however, it would seem that the definition of “long-term investments” in this case includes such reliable and respected investment vehicles as…the lottery. Long-term, indeed. Like, never.
Here’s a joke that pretty much sums up the subject of men, women and money better than any real-life example. The original, which appears in roman type below, has nothing to do with money per se. It was intended to show how women are stiff and humorless, while guys are easy-going, how-can-you-help-but-love-‘em kind of people. That, of course, is a pile of guff, but when I read it, I knew it had potential. With two additional sentences, which I’ve added in italics, it perfectly illustrates the truth about the differing money management styles of men and women (as well as the latter's superior sense of humor):
If Gloria, Suzanne, Debra and Michelle go out for lunch, they will call each other Gloria, Suzanne, Debra and Michelle. But if Mike, Phil, Rob and Jack go out for a brewsky, they will affectionately refer to each other as Fat Boy, Godzilla, Peanut-Head and Useless. When the check comes, the guys will each throw in a $20 bill, even though it’s only for $22.50. None of them will have anything smaller, and none will actually admit they want change back. When the ladies get their check, out come the pocket calculators. Years later, the women—including the waitress—all retire comfortably while the men live out their old age in an abandoned boxcar behind the bar where they once had enough money to drink. And when the ladies get together for lunch, they refer to their long-disappeared-and-assumed-dead husbands Mike, Phil, Rob and Jack as Fat Boy, Godzilla, Peanut-Head and Useless.
But wait—the joke’s not over yet! True story: One night around the time I was writing this, my husband K— came home and started telling me about his experience waiting in line that day at the coffee shop. “There was this woman,” he griped, “and her coffee came to something like $1.52, and she pulled out a dollar and then started fishing around in her change purse for 52 cents. She counted it out exactly, it must have been 52 pennies, and it took forever. The whole time I was thinking, ‘Can’t you just give them $2 and tell them to keep the rest as a tip? You don’t have $2?’” I was so awed at this queer convergence of fact and fantasy, I just stared at him until he snapped in annoyance, “What?!” I just didn’t have the heart to tell him.
So, in conclusion, although there are some men with a head for money, in general men and money are like speeding trains traveling in opposite directions. A wife’s job is to keep them off the same track. And even though I sometimes wish my Sir Spendalot were Sir Makealot or just Sir Keepalot, at least I can be thankful he doesn’t belong to that erroneous 68% of men who think they’re better with money than the women they married. His recent self-assessment of his skills as a money manager (uttered as he perused his red-lining portfolio) was brutally honest: “I suck at this.”
That’s why, the other day, he asked me to take care of an important long-term investment transaction. “Hon,” he said to me over morning coffee, “there’s something I really need you to do for me today.” He paused for emphasis and gave me a look of utmost seriousness before continuing. “Could you work on winning the lottery?”
* So why, you might be wondering, if women are so much better than men at investing, are most of the richest people in the world men? It’s not too hard to understand when you consider that prior to 1974, a married American woman—presumably the most liberated female on the planet at the time—couldn’t even get credit in her own name.
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