Category: Architecting solutions
When we think of doing better with managing our personal financial situation, the “better” part typically comes with the picture of more technology, more data or just more external “stuff”. Yet, there is plenty of evidence that hardwired cognitive and behavioral biases are one of the biggest barriers and challenges preventing us from managing money better.
If you’ve ever made countless resolutions to “finally” bring your “finances” in “order”, only to be derailed again due to one challenge or other, to be flummoxed at the exact same spots as before – you’re not alone. There are as many solutions to the problem of solving personal finance for good as I can count into the four and five figures. Yet the problem continues to be intractable for many, compounded by the frustration of having followed yet another new app or mantra, only to fail again.
If there is one thing that characterizes the lives of women across multiple social strata – it is the severe lack of time and bandwidth that most of them battle constantly. The same amount of attention and mental capacity has to be apportioned between many equally important and demanding tasks – work, home, kids, and not least, money, for many busy women.
Here’s a pop quiz: Did you ask a friend or family member the last time you were pondering a financial decision? Why or why not? And if you did, did you actually take their advice?
The field of sociology is not one we immediately connect with the world of hard numbers, money and finance. Yet, it feels intuitive and natural that friends and family must have some bearing on an individual’s financial and particularly investment and savings activities. But how to get an objective view? And more importantly, what does that objective view imply for specific groups or segments, such as women, for example?
The answers to this age-old question range from the philosophical and comedic to the merely banal. Few offer new insight and even fewer back up those insights with solid facts. Every now and then, a refreshing exception breaks through the clutter.
The Boston Consulting Group conducted an extensive and comprehensive survey across the globe covering 12,000 women across 21 countries spanning diverse socioeconomic classes to get a definitive answer to this question – at least as far as commercial goods go. The results were published in a compelling and engaging book, “Women want more“, by Michael J. Silverstein and Kate Sayre, both of The Boston Consulting Group. The book covers not only financial services, but a multitude of products and services including healthcare, food, apparel, fitness and beauty.