Men, whether successful or not, don’t seem to worry about becoming destitute in their old age, invisible, unloved, roaming the streets, scrounging in garbage cans for food. But irrational as it seems, successful women do suffer from bag lady fears.
Katie Couric, Gloria Steinem and Lily Tomlin admit to sharing this fear of becoming a bag lady. So do 48 percent of the 1,938 high earning women polled by Allianz Life Insurance in a 2006 poll. A stunning 90 percent of these high earners admitted to feeling financially insecure.
Many of us who are or have been married don’t have a history of managing our own money. We’re not used to seeing the bigger picture. We thought our husband was better at making the ‘really big’ money decisions. While we balanced the household budget and decided what to buy, he handled the investments.
The bottom line? Our financial decisions resulted in money spent and gone, not invested for growth.
Bag lady fears may be irrational for financially secure Katie, Gloria and Lily. These fears relate to being out of control, of feeling weak and fearful that we can’t survive on our own.
Divorce or widowhood is the wake-up call that we really are on our own. There’s no Daddy or Hubby to depend on. Our future is up to us and what if we blow it?
Four in 10 marriages end before the 30th wedding anniversary. Only 16% of married women have a financial “Plan B” in case of divorce. The average age a woman is widowed is 56. Her average longevity is 84.
Doesn’t that make the irrational rational?
No comments:
Post a Comment