Are Men Better Investors Than Women And Other Money Questions

Have you seen the money related conversation starter cards circulating in the social media lately?

It is the Financial Service Council NZ teaming up with Hatch investment platform who brings us these downloadable cards that each have a money related question to answer.

I thought I’d do a post series of personally answering a few of these questions in each post and inviting you to share your own answer to the same question in the comments! You can download your own set here.

Who taught you about money?

To be honest, no one.

Money wasn’t spoken about in my home, except by my dad in a negative “I don’t have enough”-kind of way.

I taught myself in my mid-20s by reading books, debt free community on Instagram and especially following Canna Campbell from SugarMamma.tv at the beginning of my financial awareness journey.

It can be an overwhelming thing to start, and sometimes the going towards your goals is slow and frustrating, but it is definitely worth it. The feeling of being in control of your own finances brings (for me at least) such a peace of mind!

I will be ensuring that my children will be taught everything I wish I had known from the get go, so they will hit the ground running when they’re young adults and hopefully will avoid the bigger money mistakes in their lives.

Do you ever go to bed worried about money?

Sometimes.

I have had a few years to organise my finances in a way that I’m happy with it, have very minimal and low rate debt (mortgage and student loan) and quite low ongoing expenses in general.

I believe in the abundance of money and positive mindset around it, I tend to believe that things will work out, after all, they have worked out all the other times before.

Currently, as I am writing this, we are in a bit more of a financial pinch.

My partner has injured himself while he was taking a break from working. He was doing bigger work on our property (like building a double garage) and helping a friend to do some building work as well.

This meant that while his injury is covered by ACC (Accident Compensation Corporation in New Zealand) he wasn’t entitled to receive weekly payments to replace wages while recovering. Work and Income won’t help him because I’m a student and StudyLink won’t help me because of technicality in the way I’ve structured my studies.

While we’re just getting by with with my income and our savings, it has been extremely frustrating and stressful to try to deal with it, and being denied help because of a technicality, our income is well below all their cut offs for help.

So, lately I have been getting a bit worried about money. But trying to remain positive with faith in the system for some help to come through!

Are men better investors than women?

Research shows that women and men generally invest in different ways.

Women tend to use the long term buy-and-hold strategy and often they buy diversified ETFs.

Men often trade more, try to pick winners and try to time the market.

This leads to women often having higher portfolio returns, especially after fees and taxes have been accounted for.

You can read a bit more in here.

I suppose the old school view has been that men are better, considering investing and money in general was more of a “man’s job” in the past.

It’s awesome to see more women interested in investing and their overall financial wellbeing.

Also, this study goes to show how buy-and-hold strategy usually is the way to go to ensure good returns over the years!

Of course this is a generalisation only (although based on some research data) and I’m sure there are men who prefer the buy-and-hold strategy and women who do trading.

You can read the previous money question post here!

I’d love to hear your answers to these questions in the comments below!