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May 27, 2015 at 10:41 AM
Note: This article first appeared at NerdWallet.com. Click here to read the original post.
NerdWallet partnered with the National Foundation for Credit Counseling to ask over 2,000 Americans about their financial status, needs and knowledge.
The survey revealed stark differences in respondents’ financial confidence and security, along gender and also generational lines.
Intrigued, NerdWallet’s data team took a deeper look at the March 2015 survey to assess how women and men differ across the generations when it comes to personal finances.
Here’s where we focused our analysis
Confidence
To assess and compare financial confidence, we looked at how respondents in a group graded themselves on financial knowledge and their confidence in recent major financial decisions.
Security
To understand a group’s financial security, we looked at the proportion of individuals with high credit card debt and those with savings accounts.
Age and gender
We focused on the differences between the youngest and oldest Americans surveyed. In these two groups, millennials ages 18 to 34, and the oldest, who were over 65, we found the biggest differences in answers. We also compared women and men to highlight differences in knowledge between the sexes.
Key findings
Savings, confidence grows. Gaps in savings, confidence and debt between women and men decrease with age, at least among survey respondents. Almost 99 percent of women and men age 65 and older report being at least somewhat confident in their most recent major financial decision.
Millennials lag behind, and the gap is widest for women. While millennial women and men reported lower confidence in their financial decisions when compared with older generations, the survey found that the gap is widest for younger women — only 37 percent reported being very confident in their most recent major financial decision.
Less worry about finances in later years. Almost 70 percent of those surveyed who are 65 and older reported having no budget, although a majority do have an idea of how much they spend on housing, food and entertainment.
