The No. 1 financial regret among women is that they haven’t invested more, according to a new report from Bank of America Merrill Lynch
That’s just one of the findings in the report, called “Women & Financial Wellness: Beyond the Bottom Line,” which surveyed 2,638 women across all income and asset levels.
“Today, women’s lifelong financial wellness is at a tipping point,” says the report. “Thanks to a seismic shift toward women’s growing personal and financial power, they are poised to move into true financial independence. … Yet there is still a trail left to blaze. Women are living longer than ever before, and funding that longevity has truly become a women’s issue.”
The report was written by Lorna Sabbia, head of retirement and personal wealth solutions at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, and Maddy Dychtwald, co-founder of Age Wave.
The number one regret among women (named by 41% of those in the study) is that they aren’t investing more, which means they aren’t taking full advantage of “investments that provide the opportunity for [them] to grow their wealth in ways that income alone does not,” the study found.
Fifty-nine percent of the respondents said they weren’t doing a good job using investing as a way to pursue their financial goals. A full 60% said that a lack of investing knowledge was their primary barrier, while 34% of them said they didn’t have the confidence to invest.
Among those women who do invest, however, 77% said they felt they would be able to save enough money to last them the rest of their lives.
This presents a financial opportunity for the advisor industry to ramp up outreach and service offerings.
Despite the talk about improving financial education for the next generation, younger women are still coming up short, the report suggests. “Only 46% of millennial women are confident in investing compared to older generations. Confidence in investing is not just about experience but also exposure.”
While not investing enough is women’s top financial regret, it is not their only regret. Women also report that they wish they had chosen a career with higher pay, not taken on as much credit card debt and lived within or below their means.
Nearly a third of women in the survey (31%) said they regretted not living below or within their means. “This is true for women of all races and ethnicities,” the study found.