Depending on where and how you were raised – your first few conversations surrounding money may or may not have stemmed from a place of lack or abundance.
Most people pick up cues on how to deal with money from their mothers. Sometimes children misinterpret those cues, and the lessons kids absorb aren’t what mothers intended. LXME, being India’s 1st Financial Planning platform for women, was intrigued by this and wanted to know what are women thinking & doing about their finances. What have they learnt and what are they wanting to share as a money lesson?
Can we women, put aside our past experiences and change the way we perceive money, manage it & effectively make it grow?
To get a better understanding, LXME, over a period of 2 weeks, across cities like Mumbai, Bangalore, New Delhi, Mangalore, Pune, Jaipur, Kolkata, Indore, and Hyderabad, ran a quantitative survey with women in the age group of 25-45, capturing 1250 responses. The survey was equally targeted at women who were either single, married, or married with kids. Let us see what these women have to say?
s?Do you make your own financial decisions?
Do you make your own financial decisions?
Of the 1250 women interviewed, 66% single women said they do not make their own financial decisions & 28% depended on their fathers. What was shocking was that barely mere 5% women said they depend on their mothers for money matters. With respect to married women, the number of women not making independent financial decisions increases to 69% with the fathers being replaced by husbands or joint decision making. Unfortunately, the dependency keeps increasing as women have children with eventually only 24% making decisions independently. Also, the rise in husbands making all decisions saw an increase from 17% to 33%.
Key takeaway
A woman’s marital status & a child influences her money decision-making status. As women evolve in their life stages, they become less independent in taking money decisions. Do they prefer to share the responsibility or pass it on?
It is evident they do not depend on their mothers for money matters, it is either their fathers or spouses. Social conditioning here plays an important role in shaping women’s outlook towards financial planning.
Money & Childhood
Women inherently are maternal irrespective of having kids or not. Women derive their parenting skills from their childhood & the world they envisage for their family. When a woman learns, she shares it with her family, children, friends, colleagues & the world at large.
Children on the other hand refuse to learn what they are told! Haven’t we all been there? But they learn best by observation and the one person they constantly observe is their mom. So we at LXME decided to ask women about money & children (aged 4 years+)!
Only 7% of the women surveyed mentioned their moms as financial decision-makers while 66% of them said they do not make financial decisions. Yet, 91% women teach their kids about money while 86% said they inculcate good money habits in their kids and 87% have given their kids a piggy bank to save money.
BUT
Only 24% of these women actually take independent money decisions!
Ironic?
Women form the early habits, but fathers become the role model for financial decision-making. Why are we not making the larger decisions which are more impactful & critical for the family? Why are we limiting ourselves to household expenses, budgeting & saving? Why are we not investing our savings to grow our money?
Is this the childhood memory we want to create for our children?