There’s been a increase in the number of women who are regularly making financial decisions themselves rather than asking their partners for help.
According to new research by financial product comparison website RateCity, a survey of 1000 respondents found that only 22.4 per cent of women leave money decisions up to a partner, compared to the majority who do not, and just 6.6 per cent of men who rely on a partner.
This reflects a 27 per cent drop from the amount of women relying on their partner or family member to make their financial decisions, at the time of the last survey being conducted in 2014.
Of the survey, a further 29.5 per cent of women said they shared the main financial decision maker role in their household and 47.2 per cent said that they were the main financial decision maker compared to 65.9 per cent of men.
This suggests is that more women are becoming financially independent and confident with their financial decisions in and outside of the family home and on a daily basis.
It also suggests that there is a generational shift occurring because we know from past research that women from older generations, such as baby boomers, tended to leave the financial decisions up to their male partners.
Despite the findings Laine Gordon, spokesperson at RateCity.com.au said it was still “troubling” that many women are still not taking greater control of their own money.
“We want Australian women and men to feel equally empowered to make good decisions about their finances and take control of their money. But more needs to be done to make that a reality.
“The key to being in the best financial shape is good information. Our research shows that men spend more time per month researching and informing themselves about things like credit cards, bank accounts and superannuation than women do.
“We also know from previous studies that women are more likely to contribute a smaller amount to their savings each month and on average have a smaller super balance than men.”
When it comes to financial stress, women tend to battle with it more than men and this might reflect that they earn less and have less of a retirement nest egg – on average – than men.
A quarter of women reported feeling daily stress relating to debt compared to only 14 per cent of men. Of these women, 9 per cent felt the stress of having debt affected them all the time and the remaining respondents felt stressed most days.
Of the remaining women surveyed, a further 20 per cent said they only worried about their debt occasionally, while 50 per cent said had debt or none at all, but regardless were not stressed by it.
