What Are Women Doing With Their Money In 2022? New Survey Finds Increased Focus On Financial Wellness

The perception of women toward financial wellness underwent a sea change in the past year, according to the results of a survey by the 2022 Ellevest Financial Wellness Survey.

Climbing In Priority: About 42% of the women surveyed mentioned financial wellness as critical, thrice as much as the 14% polled in the 2021 survey.

After being relegated to the fourth spot in 2021, financial wellness climbed in priority and is currently considered by women as the second most important wellness aspect after mental wellness, the results showed.

Women Persists With Retirement Savings: The survey also found that unperturbed by economic uncertainty and market volatility, three-fourths of the women continued their retirement contributions. This was more than two-thirds of the men who said they did.

Women tend to invest more and post about 40 basis points higher returns than men, the survey found, with the outperformance is attributable to "staying the course in investing," Ellevest said.

"So, if our survey results are anything to go on, it's looking like women are positioning themselves well to ride out this tumultuous period and come out on top, it added.

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Women More Worried About Money: About 43% of women worry about money at least once a day and 59% worry about it at least once a week, the survey found. This compares to 36% and 55%, respectively, for men. The stress regarding money is, however, found more in older women than the younger ones.

Only about 14% of the women said they were prepared for a recession, compared to 30% of the men.

Home Women's Priority: When asked about their financial priority, about 30% said supporting their families is their top priority. Building an emergency fund and sticking to a budget were mentioned as their financial priorities by 29% and 26% of the women, respectively.

About 22% of women felt that both growing retirement savings and paying credit card debt are their priorities.

Deprioritizing retirement savings could have been due to the fact that for many women, retirement is still a pipe dream, Ellevest said. More than half of the women who said retirement savings is their priority don't see themselves being able to retire, the survey found.

On investing, women fare worse relative to men. The survey found that only about 36% of the women said they were investing, compared to 63% of the men who are investing.