In a fiscal battle of the sexes, who wins? Men, women or me who right now has uhhhhh
four dollars in her wallet. Make it, can make it sprinkle can't really make it rain. For
round one let's go ahead and knock out what is probably the most contentious finance and
gender issue which is income. Why is it so contentious? Because I have to use the phrase
gender wage gap and bring up the often cited statistic that women in the United States
make about 77 cents for every dollar a man in the United States makes. Some people are
now commenting no, no, no Cristen. The gender wage gap is a total farce. There are all kinds
of factors such as type of job a woman wants to get, whether or not she has kids, negotiation
skills that can help close that gender wage gap but if we are looking at the median weekly
income of full-time employees in the United States men you be making more money. On average
it adds up to about 431,000 more dollars men are bringing home over the life term. Now
that we've got some cash in our pockets, lets talk about spending it. Regardless of whether
women have that stereotypical uncontrollable shoe-shopping habit. What shoe habit? It often
costs more to be a woman. Products and services for women tend to cost a little bit more than
products and services for men. Marie Claire magazine did an in-depth analysis on this
and found that American women every year spend about 151 billion extra dollars on these kinds
of things, stuff as basic as women's haircuts, dry-cleaning and even razors. And ladies beware,
consumer research also suggests that we tend to be more emotionally impulsive shoppers.
In other words we have a bad day and so we want to go out and buy a new lipstick to make
us feel better. Not to say that men don't spend plenty of money especially on bigger
ticket items like consumer electronics and automobiles, but when it comes to the fact
that men are making more money and it costs more to be a woman, ladies we're losing on
spending too. Which brings us to round three, of who's better at saving money and it's pretty
straightforward. Men. When it comes to retirement savings men are way, way better at saving
then women are, even though hello, ladies we outlive men by average of like a bajillion
years. In the United States alone only 45% of salaried women are enrolled in retirement
savings plan. One study compared men's and women's retirement savings and found that
guys had stockpiled 56% more retirement funds than women. Women, we cannot forget that at
some point we will be old and will probably want to be able to have money to go play bingo
or something. I still only got $4. One thing that's certainly not going to help men or
women with retirement savings is a four letter word called debt. Surprise surprise ladies
despite the stereotype that we run up massive credit card debt with our shoe-shopping habits,
women actually tend to have slightly higher credit scores and slightly lower credit card
debt loads then men. Finally. If you want to turn your $1 into $2 without barely lifting
a finger, you're going to want to invest. Who's better at investing? Not necessarily
the wolves of wall street but perhaps the lady wolves. Many financial studies have found
that perhaps due to our lower levels of testosterone women tend to be more risk averse with investing
our money which might sound totally boring but actually reaps us greater green rewards
over the long-term especially in more financially turbulent times as we have recently been in
#recession. For our sixth and final round let's take it down a notch to just household
budgeting, who's better with this day to day kind of spending for a family. There's an
oft-cited statistic that women are responsible for 80% of household spending which at least
suggests that a lot of us think that women are more responsible with household money.
Some statisticians say eehhh 80%, that sounds a little inflated. Guys are probably more
invested in household finances. But if you look at studies in the developing world, when
you give women and particularly mothers control of household finances, they are usually better
at reinvesting it into the household. That's why you often hear about women in particular
being the key to developing nations rising GDPs and economic profiles. What does this
all add up to, who wins the fiscal battle of the sexes? It's a tie. So audience, I can
only turn it over to you and ask who's better with money, what do you think? Men or women?
Let me know in the comments below.