I’d be curious if I did a quick survey of couples I know, kinda like the Newlywed Game, and asked “Who’s the better saver in the couple?”, how many times people would tell me that a female was the better saver, and less inclined to piss money away.
In my immediate family, my grandmother was more frugal than my grandfather, who wanted to get drinks at the bar after work, and enjoyed bringing home little gifts for his kids. My grandmother was the workhorse who bought margarine instead of butter and worked herself to the bone.
Between my parents, my mother was the epitome of the materialistic woman who wanted a parade of goodies, while my father wanted to secure their future before blowing money on vacations.
In my sister’s marriage, she is the more frugal of the two, but in my brother’s marriage, he is the more frugal of the two.
I don’t know how i feel about comparing single women to single men, as the implied narrative, is that women are foolish and blowing all their money on pedicures. In reality, the figures are probably driven heavily by women’s role as mother, caregiver, etc. Like, if women are more likely to live as single parents, then they probably have a crappy savings rate, due to having their income feed extra mouths. Or, if women are the more likely of the two, to leave the work force to raise kids, then a single or divorced may not have the earning power.
Anyways, I think it is worth looking at the possibly faulty implications of supposed facts, because numbers can be shaded, to tell nearly any story. if you control for income, and if you control for years out of the work force, and blah blah blah, then maybe women aren’t so stupid? (Or maybe myself and my female relatives are truly rare and amazing? I’d be OK with that title.)