Do you feel lost in a sea of meaningless words whenever you look at an insurance policy?
Is too much jargon preventing you from creating a vital ‘f**k off’ fund?
We all know about the glass ceiling and its impact on women’s earnings, but it seems women are also not able to save or invest as much as men, for the crap reason that they don’t feel they can understand financial terms & conditions.
A new survey suggests that because women feel they don’t get financial jargon, they are less likely to save for a rainy day, invest for the future, or even the ‘f**k off fund’ that Caitlin Moran recently advised every woman to prioritise.
Despite 27 per cent of female investors studying carefully the information and small print they receive about investments, only 19 per cent say they fully understand it.
Men are a little more lax when it comes to reading, with only 21 per cent saying they study it in detail, and yet that quick scan is enough for 25 per cent of male investors to claim full understanding of the information.
Majid Shabir, founder and CEO of Instinct, which conducted the survey said, “Our research adds to previous studies that show that there is a material difference between how men and women absorb and act on financial information presented to them. It is difficult to say whether this is due to differences in their respective appetites towards risk or familiarity with the financial terminology.”
So… either women are stupid, think they are stupid or consider the information poorly explained (and it might well be). Whatever the reason for this lack of understanding, which leads to a reluctance to save or invest, we’ve got to get-the-f*** over it.
Let’s be clear: despite commitments from firms to be clear, fair and not misleading, information is still often unclear, unfair and quite misleading. That is why Fairer Finance runs a ‘Spare us the small print’, campaign.
But in the absence of perfect information, we still have to make some decisions to protect our financial freedom.
Want to know what kind of investor you are and where your moral compass lies? Take our fun quiz.
Want to know more about how to realign your money with your morals? Read some of our other blogs, including: Why you don’t have to be bad to make money.
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