More women than men say they are solely responsible for making financial decisions for their households.

However, women express lower levels of financial confidence and optimism than men, according to a new study from Regions Private Wealth Management.

Understanding those spousal dynamics is critical, as more service providers, managed accounts, and robo-advisors are incorporating spousal information when crafting customized retirement solutions for 401(k) participants.

Older women are marginally more confident about handling finances than younger women, though less so than men.

While men ranked their own confidence level at 6.20 on a 7-point scale, women overall ranked their confidence at 5.86—but women under 50 only thought their confidence deserved a 5.61 rank.

Among the findings of the study is the fact that no matter their gender, respondents said they’d advise their own younger selves to start younger and save more (69 percent).

Women, however, are more likely to “seek more advice from professionals” than men, at 38 percent compared with 30 percent.

When it came to improving their future financial security, the most common actions by either men or women are to review a retirement savings plan (71 percent) and meet with a financial advisor (61 percent).

Younger women are more likely than others to say they have done nothing in the past year to improve their future financial security (18 percent).

Men might look to their wives for advice (32 percent), but women are more than twice as likely to rely on their husbands for guidance (65 percent).

And men are more likely to consider themselves wealthy than women are (38 percent compared with 27 percent), as well as being more likely to be confident in their future financial well-being.

While fewer than two thirds of respondents were willing to rate that confidence as high as a six or seven on a seven-point scale (where seven is “Very confident”)—the mean rating is 5.75—women are less optimistic than men, at 5.62 compared with 5.83. Younger females (5.14) and divorced females (5.07) are even less optimistic.

Instant Insights /

Women handle more financial decisions, but are less confident

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