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Women are growing market for financial planning
By Dennis Quick
Senior Staff Writer
About every other month, Melody Bundschuh, a financial planner with Commonwealth Financial Group on Daniel Island, holds “lunch-and-learn” sessions for women.
The events are social and are designed to make women feel comfortable about discussing a traditionally male-dominated subject—financial planning. The women discuss retirement strategies, investing, long-term health care and other financial concerns.
“I find out what their financial goals are and help them achieve those goals,” Bundschuh said.
Financial planners are increasingly targeting women because they outnumber men, outlive them and, by 2010, will control 60% of the nation’s wealth, Bundschuh noted.
In 2005, there were more than 86 million women between the ages of 18 and 59—a sizeable population that has caught the attention of financial planners.
Programs and seminars educating women on topics ranging from credit management to life insurance have grown more prevalent.
And women appreciate the attention. In West Ashley, the Center for Women has seen a “strong response” to the financial education programs it offers regularly, said Executive Director Jennet Robinson Alterman. The center’s brown-bag lunches draw between 20 and 30 financial-minded women, and offsite events held in larger venues usually attract more.
Bundschuh’s bi-monthly “lunch-and-learn” gatherings attract anywhere from a dozen to more than 20 women.
Rosemary Wright, a certified financial planner with Wachovia Wealth Management in Charleston and a 19-year veteran in financial services, is seeing more women entering the field.
“They recognize that it’s a career that can pay well,” she said. “A fair amount of women want to become financial planners because they want to help people.”
Facts of life
Women in the United States earn 76 cents for every dollar men earn, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That figure is even lower in South Carolina—73 cents for every dollar men earn, according to “The Status of South Carolina’s Women,” a 2005 report prepared by the University of South Carolina’s Moore School of Business.
Because women earn less than men, have a smaller retirement income and live longer than men, financial planning is crucial for women, Alterman said.
In 2004, the Women’s Institute for a Secure Retirement, or WISER, published “A Simple Guide to What Everyone Needs to Know about Money and Retirement,” a 16-page pullout booklet in Good Housekeeping magazine.
The WISER report noted these sobering facts:
• Social Security is designed to be a safety net, not a primary source of retirement income. The average monthly Social Security benefit for men is $1,015; for women, $779.
• The earlier people retire, the lower their Social Security payment will be. The longer people wait to retire, the more their monthly payment will be.
• The age for Social Security eligibility is slowly climbing. Those born after 1960 will not reach full retirement age until they are 67, not 65 as many still assume.
• Laws do not require pension plans, and fewer companies are offering them. Today, less than one-fifth of working Americans participate in traditional pension plans.
Men as well as women need financial education, Alterman said. But because women have had less of it, they tend to get into more financial trouble.
Money talk
Women like bonding with other women and discussing their problems with one another, Bundschuh pointed out. That is why it is more effective for financial planners and educators to reach women through informal gatherings, usually over lunch, where women can relax and learn.
Such group meetings are sometimes known as “financial-ware” parties, a take-off of Tupperware parties where housewives once gathered to purchase Tupperware plastic food containers.
In June, the Center for Women will co-host with Wachovia a “financial face-lift,” a workshop for older women who missed out on learning the financial facts of life in their younger years and need to get their money matters in order.
The center also recommends free, Web-based financial training through the Wise Up program created by the Women’s Bureau of the U.S. Department of Labor. The Web site, http://wiseupwomen.tamu.edu , includes eight topics ranging from “Money Basics” to “Insurance and Risk Management” and is aimed at women in their 20s and 30s.
Women make 80% of a household’s financial decisions and tend to be more planning-oriented, Bundschuh noted. Therefore, budgeting, investments, retirement accounts, savings and other dollars-and-cents issues are subjects women need to talk about not just for their family’s financial safety, but also for their preservation.
“We’re nurturing, but we don’t always take care of ourselves,” Bundschuh said.
Dennis Quick is senior staff writer for the Business Journal. E-mail him at dquick@charlestonbusiness.com.
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