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(1) I have enjoyed the thread and have learned from it.
(2) You seem to have an extremely narrow (“needle’s eye”) area of focus. You choose to mention your wife’s role in your planning (obviously a very important consideration) but object when another poster shares how he and his wife resolve the issue(s) you are dealing with. That’s hardly conducive to a healthy discussion. Fortunately the thread is rich in investment insights many here will benefit from - despite your sometimes strong protestations that members are overstepping the sanctity of the thread..
msf, you are absolutely correct! My Schwab assigned Personal Account Representative has previously informed me that there is a list of local FAs, that they can provide to me, if I want to work with someone locally. We have not gone down that path "yet", but we have discussed it as an option. The important thing for me is to involve my wife in these decisions, and to ensure she is part of the decision, whatever that may be. And concerning the "option" of switching my banking arrangement to an online experience with Schwab Brokerage, that has been discussed periodically on these financial forums in the past, and it has been adopted by a few posters I know very well. If it was just a decision I was making for myself, then I would look at it in more detail. But Banking in my situation, is always "joint" banking arrangements, and I always have my wife's input/participation in those decisions. We have been married over 50 years, and I know how frustrated my wife is with online financial processes, and she would never agree to online, joint banking systems. Just because it is possible to do it, does not mean it is something that you should do, especially if it will upset and be resisted by your wife.
(1) I have enjoyed the thread and have learned from it.
(2) You seem to have an extremely narrow (“needle’s eye”) area of focus. You choose to mention your wife’s role in your planning (obviously a very important consideration) but object when another poster shares how he and his wife resolve the issue(s) you are dealing with. That’s hardly conducive to a healthy discussion. Fortunately the thread is rich in investment insights many here will benefit from - despite your sometimes strong protestations that members are overstepping the sanctity of the thread..
Hank, thanks for the comments. I will take a bit more time reflecting on my comments, to better prevent them from impeding healthy discussion.
Regarding my having "an extremely narrow area of focus", I will just say that was the original intent of this thread, in which I asked other CD investors what they were choosing to do with their CDs that were maturing. I thought that topic was so narrow and addressed to a limited number of posters, that it would result in a very short thread. However, it did go "adrift" and expanded to other topics of interest, involving a much broader array of posters. I knew that was happening, acknowledged it, and yet my role of OP was no longer as relevant. On one of those "adrift" topics, I made a decision to ask some questions, that focused on its relevance to spouses. That led to even more spouse related discussion. In hindsight, I wished I would have left my spouse out of the discussions, instead of inadvertently producing additional discussion involving spouses. It was my decision, my mistake, and I will think twice about referencing my spouse in future discussions.
@dtconroe- Well sir, while I surely respect your thoughts on all of this, I must demur with respect to the "spousal" element of the conversation. From my many years of frequenting MFO I can confirm that this question is actually a very important one with respect to older investors, and one which has been discussed numerous times over the years.
I personally have a similar situation, and have attempted to simplify and structure our financial resources to accommodate my wife's abilities to deal with the various financial "systems" that must be involved. I'm always very interested to read about how others might handle this subject, as there's always something to be learned here.
Getting my wife to be interested in our investments is an exercise in futility. And yet as business partners for three decades she managed our largest and most complex accounts solo. At sea she was a brilliant (celestial) navigator. You can’t force the river.
Several people have mentioned that they plan to leave detailed written instructions for their spouses to follow.
I informally help several friends. IMO, those written instructions won't be effective.
A spouse who has not been interested in financial affairs won't have confidence to just follow what is written and may even fear that they don't understand the written instructions well.
They will find a trusted friend or a financial advisor.
I have seen other family dynamics at work as well. Recently widowed spouses want to keep some financial matters private - so they don't want to tell their kids about them. This view may change as they age and start to feel that they won't be around for long. It's for sociologists to figure out why, although I have guesses.
In a recent situation, when a friend's health has deteriorated, I did make the family aware of some financial details - maybe they knew or not, but my concern was that some accounts may become inactive or abandoned.
Me and the missus have been together since we were kids. Back in the 70's-80's, she easily (and proudly for her) would have been on a Top 10 List nationally of spouses who had ZERO interest in all things financial, especially investments.
After all these years, that interest level of ZERO might now at least be a ONE or TWO. Yeah, her interest level is still a challenge for me.
BUT, over all these years, I felt it was my duty and obligation to not concentrate on her interest level, but rather address her acumen by educating her on all things financial, especially investments.
So I did, albeit with her kicking and screaming in the early years!
And now, after ~50 years, despite still negligible interest, she is a walking, talking authority on US stock OEFs and ETFs and CDs (our investment vehicles of choice), well, at least the ones that are worthy of our investment dollars.
Leaving a written plan might help the dying spouse feel that they've done their part in the marriage. But good luck to the surviving spouse with all that, as yogi has so eloquently detailed.
Aside: We currently manage the portfolios of several friends and relatives, including two widows whose hubbies had left them written plans that they had ZERO interest or ability in following.
YMMV. As may your take on how this critical element should be handled.
I see mostly men posting about the lack of financial interest from their wives. Individually find out the root cause for yourself and your role in it. As Yogi said, others can guess but can be wrong. If you need help, ask another woman for the cause. There may be a few in this forum.
At the risk of boring posters about CD information on this thread, I did a review of CD offerings at Schwab this morning. For non-callable CDs, with a maturity of one year or longer, the non-callable CDs have stayed pretty similar now for the past few weeks--pretty much from 4% to 4.1%, with a few new institutions making those rate offers. Callable CDs have also stayed pretty much the same, although there have been a couple of offerings that were slightly higher, but still with first call dates in July 2025. My local credit union, offering of a non-callable CD/share certificate of 4.5% for one year, remains the most attractive offer for my existing cash from a matured CD.
I see mostly men posting about the lack of financial interest from their wives. Individually find out the root cause for yourself and your role in it. As Yogi said, others can guess but can be wrong. If you need help, ask another woman for the cause. There may be a few in this forum.
Great post YBB.
Good point BB.
I've (gratuitously) managed ports for at least 10 women over the past 40+ years. The most often cited reason from them for not wanting to manage their ports is FEAR.
Yeah, ALL CAPS! True FEAR! FEAR of all kinds of things related to management of investments or doing anything of material financial consequence.
FEAR related to investment portfolio mgmt is as really tough obstacle to overcome. But as part of managing their ports, I've had as a goal for each of them to one day be confident and capable of managing their own ports. I've only been able to do that with one woman who took over the mgmt of her port and is doing remarkably well. Conversely, with a couple of others, we know that we can only even talk to them about their ports for about five minutes before they nearly pass out or break out in hives.
Both widow's ports who had spousal written plans that we currently manage are the same: Intense FEAR of everything related to the process, especially their own acumen Distrust, near hatred, of their dearly departed (sic) hubbies handled their finances
Which is all to say, whatever a spouse has written in their plan for their surviving spouse stands a reasonable chance of not being executed/executed as planned due to FEAR, distrust and/or a lack of acumen.
I see mostly men posting about the lack of financial interest from their wives. Individually find out the root cause for yourself and your role in it. As Yogi said, others can guess but can be wrong. If you need help, ask another woman for the cause. There may be a few in this forum.
Great post YBB.
I don't think it is a gender issue. I think is a marital relationship issue, and what is unique in that marital relationship regarding finances and investing.
I see mostly men posting about the lack of financial interest from their wives. Individually find out the root cause for yourself and your role in it. As Yogi said, others can guess but can be wrong. If you need help, ask another woman for the cause. There may be a few in this forum.
Great post YBB.
I don't think it is a gender issue. I think is a marital relationship issue, and what is unique in that marital relationship regarding finances and investing.
NEW YORK - The latest findings from New York Life’s Wealth Watch survey provide insights into the existing financial confidence and knowledge gaps between men and women. Confidence is the top emotion that men report feeling toward managing their household finances (45%) while stress is the leading emotion for women (38%). The survey found that women report feeling the most knowledgeable about paying bills, maintaining good credit, and saving for emergencies. However, they report feeling significantly less knowledgeable than their male counterparts about building wealth, creating investment portfolios, understanding protection products like insurance, and legacy planning.
Plenty of other stratified M/F data included in study for anyone interested in facts over opinions.
That said, the data pretty much ties to what my 40-50 years of work and investing experience has taught me and what I've posted previously here.
Aside: I worked in audit shops my entire career. By chance, the composition was generally skewed more towards women than men. Many were VERY bright people, including plenty of MBAs, CPAs and CAOs, with our reports going to upper mgmt and high level clients.
I always wanted to discuss investments, portfolios and wealth management with anyone else interested, including auditees and those to whom we reported. So did the vast majority of the men I worked under/managed. Conversely, the women, many highly educated and certified in high level finance positions, were largely uninterested, uneducated and inexperienced in wealth mgmt.
Puhleeease don't take these remarks as sexist. They are not and I am not. Take them for what they are: my real-life experiences in the financial world. These experiences are what convinced me the best way to tend to my wife's financial future if I pass first was to educate her as best I could on wealth management.
A) "Many [women] were VERY bright people, including plenty of MBAs, CPAs and CAOs"
B) "the women, many highly educated and certified in high level finance positions, were largely uninterested, uneducated and inexperienced in wealth mgmt"
Seems to me to be two completely different skill sets- • A): Insuring that numbers are being computed and accounted for properly, according to established accounting principles.
• B): Manipulating numbers in an attempt to increase their values and sums to the maximum extent possible, while also remaining reasonably consistent with safety.
And like most skill sets, there may be some degree of natural interest or aptitude involved, but education and training are the most important factors.
Edit: Re-reading @Old-Joe post, I now realize that I only restated what he succinctly stated.
I would rather the women in this forum rebut / agree with some of the assumptions (assertions?, even through surveys) made about women.
Have you guys noticed that just in our life time alone the difference between men and women behaviors, roles, skills, etc. has progressively become narrower and narrower? Closing the gap is continuing.
(Specific family and social backgrounds / dynamics being contributing factors is a different thing.)
For every skill (or the lack thereof) I was inclined to attribute to women, I could find so many exceptions that I just could not bring myself to posting those.
Women CFOs and CEOs have to continually grapple with allocation of capital and maximizing ROI. I personally do not think wealth management is a distinctly separate aptitude from Finance. If one has the aptitude and interest, skill can be learned / taught and practiced. There are a lot of men and women that have an aptitude but do not show an interest to gain skills related to (or that emanate from) the aptitude because they choose to allocate their time and energy else where. It is a choice they make - does not mean they do not have the aptitude.
In all the investment forums I have been to, I came across only one poster who ran a concentrated portfolio of individual stocks (and no fixed income and no funds), and it was a retired woman and she did not work in Finance. She posted all her portfolio B/S/Ws. Very disciplined. I forgot what her husband did but she posted so little about anything other than her portfolio. You could ask her to elaborate on her Whys and she was happy to oblige.
20 years ago I used to work at a company and an immigrant lady colleague also had a stock portfolio and she did better than any person in the Finance department. Her husband worked as a handyman. In fact, every person in our Finance department was more aggressive with the company finances than with their own portfolio but she was the opposite.
Comments
(1) I have enjoyed the thread and have learned from it.
(2) You seem to have an extremely narrow (“needle’s eye”) area of focus. You choose to mention your wife’s role in your planning (obviously a very important consideration) but object when another poster shares how he and his wife resolve the issue(s) you are dealing with. That’s hardly conducive to a healthy discussion. Fortunately the thread is rich in investment insights many here will benefit from - despite your sometimes strong protestations that members are overstepping the sanctity of the thread..
Regarding my having "an extremely narrow area of focus", I will just say that was the original intent of this thread, in which I asked other CD investors what they were choosing to do with their CDs that were maturing. I thought that topic was so narrow and addressed to a limited number of posters, that it would result in a very short thread. However, it did go "adrift" and expanded to other topics of interest, involving a much broader array of posters. I knew that was happening, acknowledged it, and yet my role of OP was no longer as relevant. On one of those "adrift" topics, I made a decision to ask some questions, that focused on its relevance to spouses. That led to even more spouse related discussion. In hindsight, I wished I would have left my spouse out of the discussions, instead of inadvertently producing additional discussion involving spouses. It was my decision, my mistake, and I will think twice about referencing my spouse in future discussions.
I personally have a similar situation, and have attempted to simplify and structure our financial resources to accommodate my wife's abilities to deal with the various financial "systems" that must be involved. I'm always very interested to read about how others might handle this subject, as there's always something to be learned here.
Thanks for initiating this thread.
OJ
I informally help several friends. IMO, those written instructions won't be effective.
A spouse who has not been interested in financial affairs won't have confidence to just follow what is written and may even fear that they don't understand the written instructions well.
They will find a trusted friend or a financial advisor.
I have seen other family dynamics at work as well. Recently widowed spouses want to keep some financial matters private - so they don't want to tell their kids about them. This view may change as they age and start to feel that they won't be around for long. It's for sociologists to figure out why, although I have guesses.
In a recent situation, when a friend's health has deteriorated, I did make the family aware of some financial details - maybe they knew or not, but my concern was that some accounts may become inactive or abandoned.
Me and the missus have been together since we were kids. Back in the 70's-80's, she easily (and proudly for her) would have been on a Top 10 List nationally of spouses who had ZERO interest in all things financial, especially investments.
After all these years, that interest level of ZERO might now at least be a ONE or TWO.
Yeah, her interest level is still a challenge for me.
BUT, over all these years, I felt it was my duty and obligation to not concentrate on her interest level, but rather address her acumen by educating her on all things financial, especially investments.
So I did, albeit with her kicking and screaming in the early years!
And now, after ~50 years, despite still negligible interest, she is a walking, talking authority on US stock OEFs and ETFs and CDs (our investment vehicles of choice), well, at least the ones that are worthy of our investment dollars.
Leaving a written plan might help the dying spouse feel that they've done their part in the marriage. But good luck to the surviving spouse with all that, as yogi has so eloquently detailed.
Aside: We currently manage the portfolios of several friends and relatives, including two widows whose hubbies had left them written plans that they had ZERO interest or ability in following.
YMMV. As may your take on how this critical element should be handled.
Great post YBB.
I've (gratuitously) managed ports for at least 10 women over the past 40+ years. The most often cited reason from them for not wanting to manage their ports is FEAR.
Yeah, ALL CAPS! True FEAR! FEAR of all kinds of things related to management of investments or doing anything of material financial consequence.
FEAR related to investment portfolio mgmt is as really tough obstacle to overcome. But as part of managing their ports, I've had as a goal for each of them to one day be confident and capable of managing their own ports. I've only been able to do that with one woman who took over the mgmt of her port and is doing remarkably well. Conversely, with a couple of others, we know that we can only even talk to them about their ports for about five minutes before they nearly pass out or break out in hives.
Both widow's ports who had spousal written plans that we currently manage are the same:
Intense FEAR of everything related to the process, especially their own acumen
Distrust, near hatred, of their dearly departed (sic) hubbies handled their finances
Which is all to say, whatever a spouse has written in their plan for their surviving spouse stands a reasonable chance of not being executed/executed as planned due to FEAR, distrust and/or a lack of acumen.
https://www.newyorklife.com/newsroom/2024/survey-highlights-existing-financial-confidence-and-knowledge-gaps-between-men-and-women
Excerpt (BOLD addded):
NEW YORK - The latest findings from New York Life’s Wealth Watch survey provide insights into the existing financial confidence and knowledge gaps between men and women. Confidence is the top emotion that men report feeling toward managing their household finances (45%) while stress is the leading emotion for women (38%). The survey found that women report feeling the most knowledgeable about paying bills, maintaining good credit, and saving for emergencies. However, they report feeling significantly less knowledgeable than their male counterparts about building wealth, creating investment portfolios, understanding protection products like insurance, and legacy planning.
Plenty of other stratified M/F data included in study for anyone interested in facts over opinions.
That said, the data pretty much ties to what my 40-50 years of work and investing experience has taught me and what I've posted previously here.
Aside: I worked in audit shops my entire career. By chance, the composition was generally skewed more towards women than men. Many were VERY bright people, including plenty of MBAs, CPAs and CAOs, with our reports going to upper mgmt and high level clients.
I always wanted to discuss investments, portfolios and wealth management with anyone else interested, including auditees and those to whom we reported. So did the vast majority of the men I worked under/managed. Conversely, the women, many highly educated and certified in high level finance positions, were largely uninterested, uneducated and inexperienced in wealth mgmt.
Puhleeease don't take these remarks as sexist. They are not and I am not. Take them for what they are: my real-life experiences in the financial world. These experiences are what convinced me the best way to tend to my wife's financial future if I pass first was to educate her as best I could on wealth management.
B) "the women, many highly educated and certified in high level finance positions, were largely uninterested, uneducated and inexperienced in wealth mgmt"
Seems to me to be two completely different skill sets-
• A): Insuring that numbers are being computed and accounted for properly, according to established accounting principles.
• B): Manipulating numbers in an attempt to increase their values and sums to the maximum extent possible, while also remaining reasonably consistent with safety.
And like most skill sets, there may be some degree of natural interest or aptitude involved, but education and training are the most important factors.
I would rather the women in this forum rebut / agree with some of the assumptions (assertions?, even through surveys) made about women.
Have you guys noticed that just in our life time alone the difference between men and women behaviors, roles, skills, etc. has progressively become narrower and narrower? Closing the gap is continuing.
(Specific family and social backgrounds / dynamics being contributing factors is a different thing.)
For every skill (or the lack thereof) I was inclined to attribute to women, I could find so many exceptions that I just could not bring myself to posting those.
Women CFOs and CEOs have to continually grapple with allocation of capital and maximizing ROI. I personally do not think wealth management is a distinctly separate aptitude from Finance. If one has the aptitude and interest, skill can be learned / taught and practiced. There are a lot of men and women that have an aptitude but do not show an interest to gain skills related to (or that emanate from) the aptitude because they choose to allocate their time and energy else where. It is a choice they make - does not mean they do not have the aptitude.
In all the investment forums I have been to, I came across only one poster who ran a concentrated portfolio of individual stocks (and no fixed income and no funds), and it was a retired woman and she did not work in Finance. She posted all her portfolio B/S/Ws. Very disciplined. I forgot what her husband did but she posted so little about anything other than her portfolio. You could ask her to elaborate on her Whys and she was happy to oblige.
20 years ago I used to work at a company and an immigrant lady colleague also had a stock portfolio and she did better than any person in the Finance department. Her husband worked as a handyman. In fact, every person in our Finance department was more aggressive with the company finances than with their own portfolio but she was the opposite.