By Aneesa Razack
According to Statista, women have increasingly become key financial decision makers of households; with approximately 40% of households currently headed by women.
They also makeup 53% of credit active consumers and often make trade-off decisions between running their households and saving for their future.
FNB insights highlight that both male and female customers do save for short-term goals, like emergencies and more so in cash products where capital is guaranteed.
However, our insights also reveal that on average, 67% of male investors have a higher risk appetite compared to 33% of their female counterparts. This may also indicate that male investors are more confident in investing than women.
Highlighting the need to save and invest cannot be overemphasized in the current context. While women may find it reassuring to have surplus cash saved for emergencies; inflation, or the general rise in the price of goods and services often limits their ability to realise their longer term-goals. Women generally feel financially uncertain with investments vehicles other than cash. This unfortunately doesn’t contribute to their personal wealth, better retirement or financial future for themselves and their families.
Women live longer than men and this also means that they would need to have even more money saved toward their retirement. Furthermore, women's liquidity and retirement savings are often affected by career interruptions due to childbirth, maternity, high rates of single mothers taking on most, if not all the expenses of raising children and running households. The little money that women invest, is invested conservatively on cash heavy instruments and therefore they are unable to ‘Sweat their Asset’ making a better financial future an elusive goal.
Opportunities exist to help women on their long-term investment journey as they will benefit from capital growing over time and building generational wealth for their children and themselves.
Whether you are married, a single mom, working full time or working part time, it’s important for every woman to start planning and managing their finances.
The current pandemic has meant that we have access to wide range of financial resources whether it’s through weekly financial webinars, weekly education podcasts, news articles as well as advisors who are a call away to help. These resources and assistance will help in building our financial knowledge and controlling our financial journey.
Creating a savings and investment culture among South African women will not only help us in building financial security, but it will go a long way in increasing the household savings ratio within our country. As South African women we are resilient, strong, and exceptionally capable of taking the finance world by storm and controlling our own destiny.
The need to save and invest cannot be over emphasized. While financial experts encourage women to save as much as they can, the onus however lies on us to take charge of our finances; and be fully equipped and responsible to manage our finances on our own.
Aneesa Razack is the CEO share investing at FNB Wealth and Investments
PERSONAL FINANCE