Survey Results: Who Really Pays the Bills Commentary
by
Scott Bilker |
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Thank
you for making last issue's survey such a success!
As usual, you all teach me so much
about how families deal with finances. I can always depend on your
comments and I do appreciate that!
The
main survey response page
indicates the statistics of for each question, for example, 81% of
the respondents are female. However, there are many other
interesting questions that can be answered. (Use this link to read
the main survey results page).
To start with, men and women are
consistent. Consistent in that if a man is answering the survey he
will report that the man is better at handling the finances. The
same is true for women.
Of the men that answered the survey,
52% said that the man is better at handling finances, 19% said women
are better, and 24% said neither.
Of the women that answered the survey
57% said that the women are better, 4% said men, and 33% said
neither.
It seems to me that there is at least
some consensus that women may be generally better (from what I'm
told). This is because women agree that women are better and 19% of
men indicated women as being better compared to only 4% of women
saying men are generally better with finances.
I can safely say that DebtSmartŪ
readers are successful with their relationships! Most of you, more
that 75% who answered the survey, have been in a relationship for more
than 16 years! And nearly a quarter for more that 20 years! Wow,
that's fantastic!
Of the married people that responded
to the survey, a majority, 79%, of these couples have the women
actually pay the bills, write and mail the checks (or pay online). Of
the single people who are in relationships it's only 50% of women
that pay the bills.
This is certainly explained by the
fact that (1) mostly women are the respondents to this survey (2)
most of them are married (3) women favor women when it comes to
money (as men favor men). Of the women that responded 93% said
they're married compared to 76% of men. Therefore, most of the men
that do the bill-paying in their relationship are not married. But
even so, the majority of men and women that read DebtSmartŪ are
married.
Those who identified themselves as
men who said that the man pays the bills and women who say the woman
pays the bills in the relationship is 90%! The obvious
conclusion is that overwhelmingly the respondents to the survey are
the very people that write the checks and handle the money. That
makes sense.
Here's something else that's quite
interesting. It's a 50-50 split between people who pay their bills
online and those that do not. However, of all the people that do pay
their bills online only 58% say they use at least some type of
financial software to track transactions.
The good news for people who use
software is that they're making backups! Ninety-four percent (94%)
say they do backup their data. Backups are a must. I'm backup-crazy!
I have eight fresh backups of my financial data at all times.
Whenever I'm done entering even a single transaction I make a backup
and check the backup copy using Beyond Compare (http://www.scootersoftware.com).
This software allows you to do a
binary compare of every file.
I started doing this a few years ago
when I discovered that some of my file copies were not done properly.
When you do a simple copy there is a chance that it's not exact. And
if there's one messed-up bit in the file all the data may be
corrupt.
Use this link to see the
main
survey results page.
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