Mobile investment app provider STASH has released new data concerning the retirement and investment habits of U.S. citizens and through this analysis has discovered that men are more frugal than women, especially when it comes to millennials.
Retirement planning is a major financial decision for most people to grapple with. However, it presents many challenges when people are strapped for cash. The new survey suggests considerable generational differences when it comes to saving.
The headline from the data review is that millennial women (29 percent) are more than twice as likely as millennial men (12 percent) to have debt and be unable to save. Moreover, if they won the lottery, men (at 61 percent) would be more likely to save or invest the entire amount than women (at 42 percent).
Basing retirement plans on winning a lottery is a dangerous financial decision, given the very low odds. However, this is something that many people are factoring in. Overall the survey found that 18 percent of the U.S. adult population are basing their retirement plans on the expectation of lottery success. This is made up of a higher proportion of millennials, at 26 percent compared with 13 percent of the ‘Bay Boomers’. Falling in the middle are Generation X, 19 percent pinning their hopes on a lottery win.
Millennial men in particular (66 percent) feel the lottery is a reasonable retirement plan, compared to millennial women (58 percent). Although men are more inclined to invest any winnings than women, as opposed to going on a spending spree.
The study also found that millennial women (31 percent) are almost three times as likely as men (13 percent) to have no retirement plan of any kind. Furthermore, when it comes to investing, millennial men are also doing marginally better than women.
Here 62 percent manage to invest between 5 and 15 percent of their income. In contrast, while 52 percent of millennial women were found to be investing less than 5 percent of their income into pensions and other investment predicts designed to meet their retirement plans.
For some people, complete retirement is not a realistic option. This is indicated by the finding that than a fifth (22 percent) of U.S. citizens plan to spend their retirement working a part-time job.
Other ways of coping financially include a minority of respondents stating they will expatriate to find cheaper living abroad (4 percent of people). Others have indicated they would be are happy to depend on their children (again at 4 percent) or try to find a rich spouse to support them (3 percent of people).
