Financial Planning happened to be a male domain. But our experience at CAGRfunds has been different. If you look 20-25 years back, you would agree that homes had a very clear split of work. Women would be largely responsible for the house management while the males of the family would mostly be in charge of the money management. So all notices with respect to payment of school fees would naturally go to our dads. But if we think deeper, we cannot fail to notice how our mothers used to manage the domestic finances.
Times have been changing but not the traits. Women have been dealing with finances and managing them exceptionally well since forever. But what has changed is how evidently the skill is manifesting itself now. We realized this when we started meeting more and more female prospects at CAGRfunds.
Couple of interesting cases that we came across:
- One of our female client was way more diligent and interested in getting investments started than her husband. She had been investing since before her marriage and discovered her husband to be restricted to bank deposits. That is when she decided to get a holistic financial planning exercise done and kick start both their investments. We not manage their siblings’ investments also.
- In a few cases, we discovered that young women knew about mutual funds and investing whereas the rest of the family members were only aware of Fixed Deposits. Some such clients actually went back to their husbands and fathers to explain them the mechanics of mutual funds and NPS.
- One of our client was extremely concerned about the fact that her brother was not saving anything. She chased us and her brother to start saving. She started by doing a con call with us and her brother to ensure that we rope him in. The duos are happy CAGR clients now!
- A 22 year old client of ours had just started working. She was responsible for managing her family expenses and getting her younger siblings educated. Her expenses matched her income. Yet she wanted to start saving for the future. We cannot be more inspired!
As we recall our experiences with our female clients, we cannot express how inspired we feel to see that we have come a long way as a society. Husbands are increasingly becoming comfortable reposing trust in their wives and young girls are planning for retirement right in their first job.
This International Women’s Day, we appreciate and salute each of our female clients who decided to take control of their finances. We often wonder what financial independence means. But here we are, talking to hundreds of girls and women who desire to be financially independent in more than several ways. And what better way to celebrate women’s day than to contribute towards making more and more women financially independent!
To all the women out there – we are truly proud of you. And we wish you a very Happy International Women’s Day!