YES WOMEN ARE BETTER THAN MEN…AT INVESTING

Vicky Parry 7th Mar 2024 No Comments

Reading Time: 4 minutes

In celebration of International Women’s Day, I chat to our ferocious leader Jasmine Birtles and ask her how to become a successful female investor.

Jasmine Birtles set up MoneyMagpie.com in the teeth of the Great Financial Crash of 2008 and has been offering great advice for people ever since. Privately Jasmine is a highly successful investor and someone who many of us could learn from.

To start we ask her how she thinks women should celebrate this International Women’s Day? She says that “the best way we can celebrate International Women’s Day this year is to open an account on an investment platform and set up a monthly standing order to pay into it, even if it’s just £25 a month. “

“They say that ‘women save and men invest’” says Jasmine, “and that’s still very much the case as so many women still don’t have the courage to invest, particularly as, on average, they still tend to earn less than men and, therefore, feel they have more to lose.

“But study after study has found that, when they have the same level of knowledge, women actually make more money than men with their investments. They tend to do well because they are likely to ‘buy and hold’ their investments for a long time and tend not to ‘gamble big’ like many men do. In fact, they generally behave more like top investor Warren Buffett who, as we know, ‘invests like a girl’.

“I’m not advocating that women just pick the first thing they like the look of and stick some cash in it. When it comes to investing, knowledge is power, so it’s a good idea to take a look at our articles, sign up to our free investing newsletter and make the most of the investing tips and resources that are elsewhere on the net.

“There are lots of easy-to-use investing platforms around now, such as AJ Bell, Interactive Investor, eToro and Charles Stanley. And now there is a new one called Trading212 which is not only free to use, but they give at least 5% on any cash sitting in your account waiting to be invested and they’re even offering £100-worth of free shares right now. So it’s a great time to be investing if you’re a woman or a man!”

Jasmine’s 6 top tips for new, female investors are:

Max out your pension. If you’re employed you should have a pension offered to you by your employer. Grab it and see if you can put more money in each month. The great thing about pensions is that the tax you would have paid on the money you invest is added in so you’re instantly in profit.
Start small with other investments. Open up an ISA account on one of the platforms mentioned above and put what you can in each month, even if it’s just a few quid. Over time you can add to it but starting small will take away some of the fear of losing money.
Leave it. Investing can be very exciting, particularly when you first start, and you might want to keep checking in to see how yours are doing. Don’t. Try not to look at it for six months at least and, even if they’re down at that point, don’t rush to take your money out. Investments tend to go up and down in the short term and most of them need to be given a couple of years at least before you do anything with them.
Don’t imagine that you don’t need to put money aside now as you will be ‘saved’ by a rich man later. There aren’t many rich men around and those that exist are often not nice guys. Not only that but it’s likely that whoever you end up with will be hoping you will save him! Best to make sure you have the money to support yourself whatever happens in the future.
Don’t stop putting cash away for yourself when you have children if you can manage it. Mums are wonderful for putting their heart and soul and money into the family, but you need to keep investing for yourself too, even if it’s just a small amount each month, so that you can be financially independent when you retire. If you stop working for a while make sure you get National Insurance credits and, ideally, get your partner to put money into a personal pension for you. You can invest up to £2,880 per tax year into one if you’re not working.
Never think it’s too late to invest. Read ‘Help! I’m 50 with no savings. What shall I do?’ . Everyone wishes they had started investing earlier, but it’s never too late to do it. In fact, if you’re retired right now you should have extra time to learn more about it so you could become a really good investor quite quickly, making extra cash from the money you already have!