Baby Boomer women and wealth management

Investment Analysis Clubs Macro Economic Trends and Risks
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https://www.wsj.com/personal-finance/baby-boomer-wealth-transfer-women-5776d3a5?mod=hp_featst_pos3

Baby Boomer Women Are Now Deciding the Fate of Trillions of Dollars

With baby boomers aging and the gender gap in lifespans growing, more women have the final word on how the family nest egg gets parceled out

By Oyin Adedoyin and Katherine Hamilton, The Wall Street Journal, Jan. 18, 2025

Women are reshaping the biggest wealth transfer in modern history.

A record number of Americans turn 65 this year, and more women are set to outlive their husbands as female lifespans lengthen relative to men’s. As a result, women aren’t only stockpiling wealth from their own careers but also getting the final word on how the family nest egg is parceled out.

And they are handling the money differently than their husbands by switching financial advisers and investing more with an eye toward longevity. They are redirecting money to charity and allocating more to long-term healthcare…

American women over 60 last year controlled some $8 trillion of liquid wealth assets…Women’s wealth as a whole has grown by about 80% since 2018, outpacing the 62% growth in total wealth over that span…

Men are the primary financial decision makers in about 60% of affluent U.S. households…To avoid some of the pitfalls, many women are taking a more active role in managing finances before their husbands die. …

Women tend to invest with more of a focus on protecting capital by holding stable assets and bonds with long-duration yields…But that isn’t always the case, even for women focused on making their money last… [end quote]

Every household is different. If there are two partners (married or unmarried) the decision-making process will be different than a single-person household. And the presence of children (minor? grown? natural or step?) will complicate matters further since there can be a continuous drain of gifts as well as inheritance to consider. (DH and I don’t have children but my sister has children and grandchildren so I observe this.)

I have always managed my own money. I didn’t even meet DH until I was 34 and by that time I had already invested for over a decade and already owned my own home. When I moved in with him I set up a “house account” for regular joint expenditures (utilities, food, etc.) and we continued to manage our own assets separately even after we married 5 years later (in 1993).

I am more risk-averse than DH but I see this as a good thing. My objective isn’t to maximize wealth. (I can see @intercst jumping up and down and shaking his head, LOL!) My objective is to live my usual modest LBYM lifestyle with confidence that I will not run out of money even given the wild and unpredictable swings in the financial markets. My low-risk portfolio is a solid foundation. DH’s higher-risk portfolio can add gravy…but if the market turns bad I can feed him. :wink: I met an elderly woman whose husband invested all their money in the stock market in 1999 and lost everything when the bubble popped so they were forced to move into a one-bedroom apartment. (That wouldn’t happen to us since I own our home but it’s still a cautionary tale.)

I am more interested in long-term planning so I was the one who set up long-term care insurance and researched the credit shelter trust to minimize state death taxes. I wrote a point-by-point instruction sheet for actions to take if I die first since DH has never been an executor.

But this is only one way to manage household finances. Every household will be different. In my opinion, the only wrong way is for only one person to make all the decisions without knowledge and input from the other. Whether the husband or the wife is left out of the loop that increases vulnerability.

Wendy

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IIRC, in low-income households a majority of decision makers are women (“budgeting”) while in high-income households it is men (“investing”).

DB2

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My mother used to say, “My husband makes all the big decisions – whether we should send a man to the moon, whether China should be allowed into the United Nations. I make the small decisions – whether we need a new dishwasher, whether the kitchen needs remodeling…” LOL!

My father owned an electrical contracting company. My mother was a NYC high school teacher who earned 3 Master’s degrees going to school after work so she eventually had a very nice income.

A family story… in about 1964 (when I was 10 years old)… my father asked me to put together a collection of what my mother wanted most because it was her birthday. I brought Dad (from my doll collection) a miniature fur coat, diamond ring, doll-house kitchen stove and a tag showing foreign travel from my grandmother’s suitcase. My father strung these together with an envelope.

That night, Dad handed Mom the string of miniature items of desire. Mom burst into tears because she thought that Dad had forgotten her birthday and was stiffing her.

Then Dad said, “Open the envelope.”

In the envelope was a $500 bill. (To this day, it’s the only $500 bill I have ever seen. Remember that this was in 1964 before inflation started.)

Then my mother REALLY burst into tears.
:slight_smile:

Back to your original point…in my family it was the women who did the investing. My grandmother began investing her household savings into the stock market after World War 2 because she saw an economic boom coming. (My grandfather swore off the stock market after 1929.) My grandmother’s nickname for me was “My Little Dividend.” My mother also invested. The check I wrote to the IRS in 2001 after my mother died was the largest I ever wrote.
Wendy

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Thanks for this, Wendy. An article for every woman to read…and pass on to their daughters and granddaughters. We’ve all had an education this past year about how important it is for a woman to to be in charge of her own finances and financial destiny…along with exercising caution in choice of future partner.

My cautious, frugal, and formerly financially stable daughter with a solid financial future ahead of her has been darn near wiped out by the shenanigans of the freeloader who saw a golden opportunity and glommed onto it.

In that context…for any parent with children (sons as well as daughters) who’re planning on sharing their lives with another, here’s a hint. A background check sooner rather than later is not overkill!!!

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@VeeEnn I’m sorry to hear about your daughter’s problems. I witnessed something similar at work when a woman in the office was wiped out because her husband withdrew all the money in their joint account and ran off with another woman.

That experience taught me that nobody should merge their financial assets with another person’s, regardless of how loving the relationship and how trustworthy they may seem.

I love DH like a teenager. We have been together since 1987. But I still maintain separate accounts and always will. DH would have to become a different person to betray me…but it’s better not to take the risk.

Wendy

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Wendy, my wife and I have always had separate accounts. When my father-in-law died a year and a half ago there was lots and lots of paperwork with banks and financial institutions to deal with. We are both older than you and decided to switch to joint accounts (except for IRAs of course) as a favor to the survivor.

DB2

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Yes. Parasitic behavior is not gender specific.

…just remember, you made me post this.

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One day at work, I said to a coworker “I would not touch a woman, unless I had a pre-nup.” Deb, whose daughter was engaged at that time, and had a way of butting in to conversations where she had no business, heard that, and barked “I told my daughter if he ever says anything about a pre-nup, leave him!”. Clearly, being able to take a guy’s money was the most important thing to Deb . A few years later. she pressured a guy into marrying her. The guy’s home was in Florida. Deb was let go from the company because she didn’t show up for work half the time. She stopped in the office a year after getting married, to say “hi”. Why was she in metro Detroit, when her husband’s home was in Florida? She had spent the entire summer with her mom. I did notice that her old Civic had been replaced by a new Grand Cherokee. I had visions of her new husband walking into his empty house in Florida, and thinking “I keep telling myself I’m married, but the only way I can tell is from the rate that money keeps disappearing from my bank account”.

Steve

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Another tidbit I saw on the wire the last few days: one of the bits in the aspirational tax policy is repeal of the “head of household” deduction. “Head of household” is often used by single parents. Why eliminate it? “Traditional American family values” dictates everyone be in a hetro marraige, even if it’s a bad marriage, rather than divorced or never married, with children.

Remember the flap about “Murphy Brown”?

Vice President Dan Quayle decried the fictional character in a campaign speech.

“​​Bearing babies irresponsibly is simply wrong. Failing to support children one has fathered is wrong and we must be unequivocal about this,” he said at the time.

“It doesn’t help matters when primetime TV has Murphy Brown, a character who supposedly epitomizes today’s intelligent, highly paid professional woman, mocking the importance of fathers by bearing a child alone and calling it just another lifestyle choice.”

Steve…has seen this movie before.

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It’s titled “Women are conservative, risk averse, while men are “hold my beer” risk takers”.

:stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
ralph

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Funny, but I have not seen any proposed constitutional amendments abolishing divorce, mandating marriage for life, and so on. Which universe did you say the “believers” were from–and why?

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The thirty year project to turn attitudes back to where they were in the 1950s, when divorce was frowned on, childbearing out of wedlock was a scandal, and legal abortion and artificial birth control did not exist, has not reached it’s end point yet.

Ever read the novel, or see the original film of “Peyton Place”? In an idyllic, small, New England town, simmers a horrible scandal: Allison MacKenzie was born out of wedlock! The novel was published in 1956. The film was released in 1957.

Streve

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Only the owner of an account can withdraw money. That’s the reason to keep separate accounts instead of joint accounts.

Wendy

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With her comment about pre-nups, I took it as a given that her first priority was being able to take a man’s money, so she would not have accepted separate accounts.

Steve

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I think the model is “The Stepford Wives” bending to the patriarchy.

intercst

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People are different.

I cannot conceive of being permanently legally spiritually joined to a person without that including my love, life, and worldly goods.

I have been married three times and widowed twice. Each time I got to know the person extremely well before taking the vows and doing the endowing.

Works great for me.

d fb

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Would those be the “feminazies” that a recipient of the “Presidential Medal of Freedom” ridiculed?

…changing the wives from free-thinking, intelligent women into compliant wives dedicated solely to homemaking.

Because everyone must conform to “traditional American family values”. Can’t have any “bitter cat ladies” around, right?

Steve

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Wasn’t that a never ending TV soap opera with Mia Farrow?

The Captain
liked Mia Farrow :grinning:

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Amen. I would have walked from a pre-nup as well. Like co-mingled accounts, it’s a matter of trust rather than a focus on taking another’s wealth. Then again, it’s the woman in this household that does the investing, though perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I do the research, present the data, and DH and I make joint decisions. I wouldn’t have it any other way, as the two of us make better choices as a team than as individuals, multiplying our strengths and tempering our individual weaknesses.

Anecdotes are a very weak form of evidence. I’m sure that plenty of stories supporting either side could be found. For example, one of my best friends has separate accounts with her spouse. He took her credit cards, on which he was not an authorized user, and racked up charges. Liquidated his 401K and bought a bar, which failed. Really wrecked their financial stability. A similar thing happened to my sister, though she at least finally divorced the guy, while my friend is still married. He would be in jail had he been my spouse.

IP

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Before we married, my wife and I decided one of us should stay home with our future kids. Because of work opportunities for me, she raised our children (probably the better option and the reason our kids didn’t grow up to be psychopaths).

We’ve always had shared accounts. It didn’t feel right to have separate accounts, with her sacrificing a career and all. After two masters degrees, she’s doing something she loves and making decent money. We still have shared accounts. She doesn’t always agree with my purchases, I don’t always agree with hers. We always talk about large purchases.

I understand the reasons for keeping separate accounts. Lots of our friends do. However, the advice to never merge your financial assets with another person’s seems off the mark. How about - Never marry a dirtbag?

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