Boys beat girls in financial know-how

Well, we've been found out. A lot of us find finances boring in the extreme and if our partners are at all proactive in that area we will leave it up to them because frankly we'd rather watch paint dry.

Unfortunately along with this cavalier attitude comes a dangerous ignorance which is doing women a disservice as many enter old age alone.

Women are less knowledgeable about a range of financial areas than their male counterparts, according to research conducted by the Retirement Commission and ANZ Bank.

Women fall down in many areas of finance, according to the ANZ-Retirement Commission Financial Knowledge Survey carried out among New Zealanders generally. They asked their research company to go back and find out how women fared in comparison to men.

Across the board, women got the answer wrong 10 per cent more than men. For instance women were less likely than men to know that paying their mortgage off fortnightly rather than monthly makes a real difference (60 per cent of women knew versus 70 per cent of men). They were also more amenable to putting unwise payments on their credit cards.

Women seemed confused about fixed-rate home loans, the way they could pay off floating rates on home loans and how revolving-credit loans work. The idea of retirement income leaves many women in the dark. Just 36 per cent of women surveyed mentioned concerns about retirement income compared with 50 per cent of their male counterparts, when asked about preparing for retirement.

Joan Baker, author of Smart Women Smart Money, says she is not a bit surprised at the survey's findings.

"Finance is full of jargon. Car finance is full of gobbledegook, for instance, and men like jargon. Women hate it," she says.

From her experience, Baker says women still manage the household budget. She is the one who makes sure the kids have lunch money and the power bill is paid. The men, however, still lead the way on the larger transactions such as the mortgage and the investments.

Although you would think the traditional patterns of money management were changing because more women are working fulltime, it is simply not the case.

Says one mother of two, who works part time: "We discuss money but Mike will do all the research. I can't be fussed with it - it's definitely his domain. He did try to get me to do all that but I just wasn't interested. All I do now is figure out when the Visa will be paid."

This kind of attitude is why women are less knowledgeable about the minutiae of their debt, savings and investments.

The varied topics men and women talk about when they're together are an indicator of women's attitudes towards finances, says Baker. While men are quite happy to talk about how they are making money, women won't be "seen dead talking about finances", other than bemoaning the state of their credit card after buying that pair of boots.

They are more likely to talk about children and fashion while the men are holding forth on interest rates and mobile-phone charges, she says.

The financial expert watches couples in cafes on a Sunday and notices that nine times out of 10, he has the business section of the paper while she is engrossed in the lighter colour supplement.

"I know that it has become almost girls can do anything, but still a lot of these attitudes go a bit deeper than that. It is still not a bit sexy for girls to be good at money.

"This is a real problem. Boys are brought up to make money because they are supposed to, girls are brought up to meet a boy who makes money," says Baker controversially.

And Baker points out that when men make purchases, they are often assets rather than entertainment and clothes - a common failing in women.

"We buy things of no value - men spend the money better," she says.

Lucy Tomlinson, a reformed shopper, leaves all the main financial decisions to her husband, largely because she has no interest in it and he seems enthralled by the subject.

A consultant, she is perfectly capable of managing finances and takes over when her husband is away, but it's a chore she is happy to do without.

Like most other women, she is not tempted to talk about money when among friends although they will talk about property.

"We talk about financial excesses like who's bought what recently."

If the couple went down to one income would things change?

"No, he is the financial police and would ever remain so. He reads our mortgage statement with more delight than you would believe and I'm very grateful. He's missed his vocation. I smile and wave and let him get on with it and I reap the benefits. He keeps me on the straight and narrow."

On the other hand Tomlinson is a mean communicator. She negotiated on their two house purchases. As she puts it: "We all have our part to play."

Even high-income-earning women will do anything to get out of thinking about their finances.

Top-selling Ray White real estate agent Lesley Hawes, who has made a fortune out of her career, is honest about her approach towards money.

"Money is not what drives me at all. The pay-off for me is the look on people's faces when they have found the right house and to be privileged to be part of that experience."

The only thing she has ever bought with her own money is her car.

"The biggest thing I have ever bought on my own is my yellow Mini Cooper. I had never bought a new car before. I fell in love with it."

Hawes who works with her family - she, her daughters and husband are setting up the new Ray White Kingsland office next week - says that she and husband Chris do sit down together to talk about investments.

"He is very financial - he does all the research. I rely on my gut feeling," says Hawes.

"Security is the issue, not money."

Hawes says when she and her friends sit down for gossip they do not talk about the deals they have done that week.

"We talk about Desperate Housewives, Dancing with the Stars, a sale up the road, our children." But not about how many houses they've sold.

"There is a group of four or five saleswomen at the top of Ray White and we are all the same. We are in it for the fun and thrill of it. The people come first, not the money," she says.

Successful women like these can, to a certain extent, get away with avoiding financial headaches, because they can afford to hire people to do these tedious tasks for them.

For less well-off women there is some help out there, but more needs to be done.

According to the Retirement Commissioner, Diana Crossan, more women than men use its sorted.org website, which has a number of tools for helping people to organise their finances.

For them to get on in the world, women's financial literacy must improve, says Crossan.

They have more to lose as they are likely to live longer than men and still tend to be paid around 15 per cent less than men.

Working with ANZ on the survey, she says banks acknowledge that they need to change the way they talk to women.

To Baker's dismay the next generation of women do not seem to be breaking barriers.

They rarely come to her workshops on women and money unless their mothers drag them along, she says.

Young women especially are pretty oblivious about the reality of being middle-aged or older, says the wealth coach.. And single women often operate on the premise that their marital status is a short-term condition and they often put off financial decisions until it is too late.

"By the time the girls start to learn to take financial stuff more seriously they are already in trouble, in debt, having babies, developing a career.

The boys get that a lot earlier," she says.

Women show little initiative in creating wealth as opposed to saving.

"Even if women are improving on the way they save, very few are actively and aggressively managing their money, investing it and growing it," says the wealth coach.