Jasmine Birtles
Your money-making expert. Financial journalist, TV and radio personality.
A survey conducted by Focaldata for award-winning investment service Hargreaves Lansdown has found that on average, women tend to worry more about money than their male counterparts.
The survey questioned 10,000 participants and was conducted in June 2021. It found that 29% of women worry about their debts compared to 26% of men. Similarly, 28% of women often worry about not being able to pay their bills, compared to 20% of men.
When it comes to mortgage and rent payments, 19% of women worry about this often. However, 16% of men say this is also a regular worry for them. Finally, results show that over a third (37%) of women say they are either just getting by or are struggling financially. This is in comparison to 29% of men.
Hargreaves Lansdown have created five steps, named the ‘5 to Thrive’ initiative, which highlights five building blocks to help people build their financial resilience.
Sarah Coles, Senior Personal Finance Analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, says:
“Millions of women lay awake last night worrying about money. Around one in ten worry about debt and savings every day. More than one in 20 agonise about how they’re going to pay the bills. Across the board, women were far more likely to be concerned about all aspects of their finances than men. And while the half of the population on lower average wages is always bound to face a bigger share of money worries, the pandemic has made life even harder.
The most common concern is that they haven’t been able to save for emergencies during the crisis, which 41% of women say they often worry about and 11% said they worry about every day. They have every reason to be concerned, because while everyone should have enough savings to cover 3-6 months’ worth of essential expenses in an easy access savings account while they’re working age, 28% of women say their savings would last less than a month if their income stopped, and half of women would last less than three months. It means women’s finances are far less resilient to unexpected shocks.
They’re also worried about how much debt they have, with 29% of them saying they agonise about their debts often and 9% saying they do so every day. This owes much to the fact that women have been hit hard by the pandemic, and many of them have had to borrow during the crisis. ONS statistics at the end of last year found that women were more likely to have borrowed during the crisis, they were more likely to have borrowed over £1,000, and those who already had debt were more likely to have borrowed more.
For much of the crisis, more women were on furlough for longer, partly because the industries that employ large numbers of women were hit so hard by the pandemic, but also because separate ONS research found they were doing the lion’s share of the additional childcare. Having lower incomes for longer severely dented their resilience.
Lower income levels mean that significant numbers also worry about not being able to cover the essentials, including 28% who often worry about paying bills and 19% who worry about covering the rent or mortgage.”
Very true and some useful tips.