Are You Beautiful… And Broke?

Are you headed for a financial storm, but still in complete denial? Are you part of the 10% of Singaporean women who have planned for their future, or one of the 90% who are totally unprepared? It’s time to stop and smell the truth about money.

The average earning power of a woman in Singapore is $0.73 to every $1 a man makes, according to a 2008 Report on Wages by the Ministry of Manpower.

But that women are paid less for what looks like the same job is not the key issue. The looming problem is that women in Singapore are growing poorer as they grow older. At the point of retirement, men typically have 69% more CPF savings than their female counterparts, according to an article by Corinna Lim and Robin Rheaume for AWARE.

The reasons for this are many, but central to them is the core dilemma: Work or family? Only 55.6% of this country’s women are in the workforce. Women are also increasingly looking for part-time work arrangements to care for their children — and these part-time arrangements usually pay less.

Many women are not fully aware of their financial situation, such as knowing what their family assets are, details of their bank accounts (how much is in there, who are the signatories), investment portfolios, properties, family income sources… even where the family wills are kept — if they have wills in the first place.

AWARE ran a survey recently and the results are chilling: only 10% of women who took the poll are planning financially for their retirement. That means making sure that when we are too old to work, we have enough money to carry on our current lifestyle and to pay for medical care should we get sick (which is all too likely as we age).

This article won’t solve any problems — but at Nanz Inc we hope it will serve to start you thinking and talking about your level of consciousness of your financial status.

On the outside, the typical Singaporean woman is polished, well-dressed, has a roof over her heads, a designer bag on her shoulder and a mobile phone in her hand. She doesn’t look like she has a financial problem but there is every possibility she has credit card bills that she’s paying the minimum on, and loans for her home, car and holiday that she is slowly repaying. If she loses her job now, it would be a major disaster. Worse if she has children, and her husband decides to divorce her.

Sounds too terrible to be true, and yet, this is the situation for more Singapore women than most of us want to admit.

Let’s start this conversation going. What troubles you financially? Do you feel stuck in a money rut that you think you cannot get out of? What is your idea of financial freedom?

We want to hear from you!