Marty Kopplin of Omaha said his wife, Melissa, does the budgeting in their household. But he does most of the worrying.
“I don't know if there are gender differences” in how men and women react to economic stressors, Marty Kopplin said.
“When things are in flux and changing, and there are concerns in the general economy, I probably tend to react to that more. I'm more nervous about it and fear the unknown. She just doesn't get as nervous.”
Although Kopplin is the designated worrier in his family, studies indicate women appear to be sleeping less and worrying more than men about layoffs, declining home values and plummeting retirement accounts. The reasons, experts say, include how men and women view security, and the traditional roles of the sexes.
“Psychologically, women are more security-conscious than men,” said Ben Woolsey, director of marketing and research at CreditCards.com, an online site for consumers.
On the other hand, Woolsey said, “I don't know if men just live in a greater state of denial.”
A June poll conducted for CreditCards.com found that nearly three-quarters of the female respondents said they had occasionally lost sleep over finances, compared with 64 percent of men. Among the concerns cited by survey participants were saving for retirement and the ability to pay bills.
In a separate look at the gender issue, a company that operates a financial planning help line as an employee benefit for large companies said that from January through April it received twice as many calls from women than men.
“Men might be a bit more inclined to stick with the traditional role of provider, which might make them feel more in charge,” said Gary Smola, a research analyst at Financial Finesse, which works with more than 300 large corporations nationwide.
Other reasons financial crises might hit women harder than men:
Ÿ Women tend to pay most of the bills and do most of the household budgeting, so they know the family's financial status.
Ÿ Women and men react differently to stress.
Sharon Taubert, vice president of Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Nebraska, said women tend to see the money coming in and the money going out.
“It's laid at their feet,” she said.
Marty Kopplin, an engineer, said he and his wife, a counselor, are trying to do a better job of dividing the budgeting responsibilities. He didn't know why they gravitated toward his wife.
“You'd think numbers would be my thing,” Kopplin said.
As a counselor, Melissa Kopplin said she has examined the issue personally and professionally.
Upbringing, social learning and gender are among influences that shape people's behavior, she said. Women traditionally have handled the household details, which often include money. That continues to largely be the case, Melissa Kopplin said, although it's changing because couples in two-income households must share household responsibilities.
Omaha bankruptcy attorney John Turco said that in his experience, women initiate contact with a financial expert perhaps 60 percent of the time.
“I have done this for over 20 years and I've never done a survey or kept statistics, but it does tend to be the woman,” Turco said.
Financial stress, or work stress that affects the home, typically will be more upsetting to women, said Joyce Serido, a research scientist at the University of Arizona.
Women can leave work stress at the workplace, she said, but when worries intrude on their lives at home, “now you've hit them where it hurts.”
Serido is managing a 10-year study of 2,000 students at the university that began in 2008 to investigate why some people do better with finances than others. Serido's interests include stress and coping mechanisms.
Thus far, she said, men and women scored roughly the same in objective knowledge, but men tended to overestimate their financial know-how. That could lead to men taking more risks than women and adopting short-term solutions such as borrowing money to pay bills, Serido said.
When men have a problem, then tend to do something about it rather than just worry, even if the action they take isn't necessarily good, Serido said.
“They deal with it. They do something about it.
“Females are more reactive emotionally, less likely to take action and more likely to think about it.”
Women also tend to seek other people's opinions, while men really do follow the stereotypical pattern of not “asking for directions while driving,” Serido said.
That could explain why 68 percent of the calls to Smola's Financial Finesse in the first four months of the year came from women.
Judging by the telephone calls, men also appeared to be more confident about their cash flow, about their ability to pay off credit card balances, about having an emergency fund and about possessing a general knowledge of stocks, bonds and mutual funds, Smola said.
“Men felt more comfortable and confident,” he said.
In fact, men might be overconfident, Smola said, citing a 1999 study by two university researchers in California.
Titled “Boys Will Be Boys: Gender, Overconfidence and Common Stock Investment,” the study found that the average turnover rate in common stocks for men was nearly 1½ times that for women. The higher trading volume reduced the men's net returns by 1 percentage point a year compared with the women.
“Greater overconfidence leads to greater trading and to lower expected utility,” researchers Brad Barber and Terrance Odean said.
Women tend to be more responsible and men lean toward risks, Serido said.
“For good or bad, men act.”
Contact the writer:
444-1117, joe.ruff@owh.com
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