Leverage your Financial Equity
A recent study found women are accumulating wealth at a faster rate than men but invest almost a quarter less of their wealth than men.[1] Many factors contribute to this disparity, including stereotypes about female investors having a lack of interest or comfort with financial terms. This can translate to female investors being underserved and points out the need for financial advising services specifically to meet women’s goals. Maxwell Financial Management’s Women Investing practice is specifically designed to address the needs of women, at any phase in their lives. Our approach always begins with listening to understand the challenges our women clients face.
We offer personalized, in-person service, with discussions and planning and education to empower our clients. We listen to them and begin by developing a plan together to help work toward their goals. We listen to their hopes, fears, dreams, concerns and aspirations. We view ourselves as partners on their path to financial security.
Women face challenges such as wage disparities which remain an obstacle. Even before the pandemic women were only making 83 cents on the dollar compared to men, and women already made up the greater share of low-earning jobs within occupations.[2]
We’ve been in a cycle of uncertainty for the past few years, and are settling into a “new normal.” Here are tips for certain investing in times of uncertainty:
1. Get into the mindset of saving. Outlining goals and a plan to work toward them is the first step. We recommend setting up direct deposits into high-yield savings accounts. Decide on a household budget and check progress regularly. Work with us to make turnkey savings solutions part of your plan, such as 401K contributions, Roth IRA or SEP IRAs for self-insured. We also recommend additional savings like a brokerage account to again get into the mind set of savings.
With this foundation, we recommend investments that will continue to grow over time.
2. Make a proactive plan for retirement. Regardless of one’s financial situation, the first step is making a plan to achieve goals. We starts with asking our clients what they want to accomplish, and to outline their current financial situation. We stress the importance of developing a plan first and foremost, to help them understand what assets or liabilities they have. Most importantly, we review the opportunities AND gaps that we identify.
3. Listen. When we meet with new clients especially, women, we LISTEN first and foremost to learn about how they are feeling and what they are trying to accomplish. We know financial jargon and the amount of information coming at clients in a meeting can quickly be overwhelming. One of the biggest assets we bring to our clients is LISTENING to them and taking it step by step!
For example, when talking with a 40-year-old woman who was recently divorced, we learned her husband was pretty much in charge of all “investment planning” as she would call it. We know major life changes like this can take time to adjust to and we realized her biggest worry was financial security. Her goals included planning for retirement, and providing for her children. We worked with her to determine how best to allocate her assets, and keep her at ease, and started with moving her old 401k to an IRA.
We also decided to open a Roth IRA in the next year to take advantage of her after-tax savings. Overall, our goal is to have her saving in some capacity moving forward. In the end, she felt like she had a PLAN for the future and understood all the moving parts which is extremely important when doing a plan and working with clients.
Women account for 50.5% of the US population, and in 2019 hit the milestone of outnumbering men in the U.S. college-educated labor force[3]. They are accumulating wealth at a pace that is 180% faster than men between 2016 and 2021[4]. With women also representing the majority of college graduates - nearly 60%[5] women hold enormous financial power. Using this progress, it’s important to work with an advisor who has their needs top of mind.
As your financial advisor, we take the time to explain to opportunities and gaps so you can understand the process. From there, we can decide to make changes to our plan, but the entire process is understanding WHY we are making those changes and how those changes will impact the overall financial picture.
[1] https://www.simon-kucher.com/en
[2] https://budget.house.gov/resources/reports/when-women-succeed-america-succeeds-investing-women-s-return-workforce
[3] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/09/26/women-now-outnumber-men-in-the-u-s-college-educated-labor-force/
[4] https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20221025005745/en/
[5] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d21/tables/dt21_318.10.asp