Women more confident with finances

Author Barbara Stewart talks about the results of a recent survey on women's behaviours relating to money.

Ashley Redmond 3 April, 2012 | 1:00PM
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Ashley Redmond: I'm here with Barbara Stewart, Author of Rich Thinking - A Guide to Building Financial Confidence in Girls and Women.

Barbara, thanks so much for being here.

Barbara Stewart: Thank you, Ashley. Happy to be here.

Redmond: So, last year you did a study that was actually contrary to other studies. You found that women were confident with their finances. So, how did you expand your research this year?

Stewart: Well, yes. Last year's study, I commissioned Angus Reid to look at 1,000 women across Canada, specifically about their actual behaviours when it came to money. One of the most important statistics that came out of that report was that over half of women in Canada said that they acquired most of their knowledge through informal instruction from other people. Not from text books, not from financial institutions, not from the newspaper. Real life stories from real life people.

Redmond: What types of role models do women really learn the most from?

Stewart: Well, it is all over the map. There were lots of moms, lots of dads, quite heart-warming stories actually, grandparents, sometimes just a family friend.

Redmond: One thing that really stood out in your study was that women learned a lot about money through negative examples or negatives things that happened in their life. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Stewart: Yes, it could be either a pivotal moment of some sort. It could positive or negative, but in the negative, one example would be fairly blatant when a woman lost her father at a very young age in her teens and unfortunately he left the family without insurance. So that moment really shaped her entire life to the point where she's now got a career in the financial industry and her family is over-insured, of course, because she went to the other extreme to make sure that she would never leave her family in the same situation.

Redmond: Did you find that there was a prevailing theme about money?

Stewart: Well, there were 10 key themes that came out of this report, and I encourage everybody to have a look at it, but the one that permeated through all the themes was to be independent and to understand that what we want costs money and to really link work with money and being independent is really what underlies financial confidence.

Redmond: Thanks so much, Barbara.

Stewart: Thank you.

Redmond: To find out more, go to www.barbarastewart.ca and click the Research link.

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Ashley Redmond

Ashley Redmond  Ashley Redmond is a Vancouver-based freelance writer.

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