More than ever before, women are taking on more responsibility when it comes to money matters at home. New research shows that increasingly, more women are becoming the main breadwinner in their family and that the majority of them now look after the family’s budget; from getting the bills paid, to making the big financial decisions in the home.

However, while in 2011 the traditional tide of men being the main family earner and decision maker is turning it appears that women are failing to financially protect themselves. The research highlights the fact that millions of working women do not have a savings account, life insurance or income protection, leaving themselves and their families at risk.

So what should you be doing now to secure your own and your family’s financial future?

One woman who knows what it’s like to be financially in control of her household is the woman behind the MOBOs, Kanya King and she also knows how important it is for women to make sure they themselves are financially protected.

Log on to our Web TV show where Kanya, alongside Roger Edwards from Bright Grey will give you advice on how to make sure you are financially secure now and in the future.

Kanya King and Roger Edwards join us live online for tips on how to secure you and your family’s financial future.

For more information visit www.brightgrey.com

H: Louise Perry, host

A: Roger Edwards, Marketing Director, Bright Grey

B: Kanya King, MOBO Awards Founder

H: According to the women in protection report from protection specialist Bright Grey, 46% of working women now describe themselves as the main earner in their household, suggesting that the traditional tide of men being the main family earner is turning. Has this study underlined another significant step forward in equality?

Titles

H: Hello and welcome to the Personal Finance show, I’m Louise Perry. A report from protection specialist Bright Grey shows that women are increasingly assuming financial independence, with nearly half of working women recently surveyed describing themselves as the main earners in their family. Joining me today to discuss this and more is Roger Edwards from Bright Grey and Kanya King, founder of the Mobo Awards. Hello to both of you

A: Hello

H: Thank you very much for joining me today. Now coming up on the show today – working women are increasingly responsible for making financial decisions in the home, but are they doing enough to protect themselves financially? All your questions will be answered here live. Now don’t forget this is a live show so if you have any questions or comments for Roger or Kanya then please use the box on your screen, click send and if you’re Tweeting whilst watching the show then please use the # tag StudioTalk and I’ll try and give you a mention. Now tell me a little bit Roger about the findings from your research?

A: I think it’s a pretty well-established fact that most people think that it’s the men that bring home the money in the household, but the Bright Grey research is showing that over the last few years, more and more women are becoming the main breadwinner, in fact it’s just under half of women in the UK are now the main breadwinners in the family, and in addition to being the main breadwinners, they are also the ones who are starting to take the financial decisions within the household, not only just the family budgets, they’re paying the bills, doing the online banking?

H: Yes

A: But buying insurance you know and sorting out all the budgets for the family over the course of the year

H: And looking after their family. Do you think this – they’re becoming – men and women are becoming more equal or do you think it’s more of a needs must that women are now finding more of a place in the workplace?

A: I think that women are definitely becoming more equal. Over the course of the years, women have spent more time being able to go to college, they’ve not had families as young as perhaps they did in the past, so they’ve had more time to develop business skills and to get a job, and that’s why we’re seeing more and more women becoming – getting higher up the jobs ladder and being entrepreneurs and advancing. It’s not that they’ve replaced the men it’s just that they have become equal to them, so what we’re seeing now is families where the women are the main breadwinners. There will still be some families where the men are still –

H: Yes of course, yes

A: Bring in more money, but what we’re also seeing is dual income families where both are perhaps earning just as much, and when you’ve got a family where two people are bringing in the money, you start to enjoy better holidays, you start buying –

H: A better lifestyle

A: Better lifestyle, bigger mortgages and that sort of thing and what we’re trying – what we’re looking at with the Bright Grey report is that even though people are becoming – women are becoming more financially independent, are they actually looking to the future and protecting their families against a time when perhaps they aren’t bringing in the money for whatever reason – sickness or unemployment or something like that

H: We’re going to take a look at that in more detail throughout the program. Now Kanya you’re a very successful businesswoman, just briefly I want to take you back a few years

B: Ok

H: To how it started, to how the MOBO awards started because now it is a very successful business, you are a very successful business owner – but how did it start for you as a business?

B: Yes it started in 1996; we put on our very first international show which was broadcast – which was televised

H: Yes

B: And then syndicated to many countries around the world, and I started off funnily enough working from an office in my bedroom

H: Working from home, perfect

B: Absolutely, keeping the overheads down

H: Yes of course

B: Financial planning was very important to me, not taking on more than I could chew. And then I subsequently moved to bigger premises, and then started to take on staff and a very big team, but you know when I look back into my own situation, I became financially independent because my parents were very much always struggling with debts, and it had the kind of reverse effect on my which made me go out there and want to you know ensure that I never had to worry about you know –

H: You didn’t want that for your children, your lifestyle

B: Exactly

H: Now have you found that obviously now it is a successful business, as you said you’ve got staff now that work for you, do you find that women and men are more on an equal footing within business and within financial earning power?

B: I mean I suppose it depends what sector you look in, I mean of course we still have a shortage of women at top level, in boardrooms. I mean with our situation in the – I suppose the entertainment industry and the creative industry; there’s a lot of women at quite high level. I’ve always felt that more diversity and on board can only help a company to grow, and after all obviously with them being half the workforce, so of course it’s very exciting this report, you know this is equality at its best

H: Yes exactly, it is exciting isn’t it?

B: Absolutely and I’m not surprised by the findings because you know as mentioned, as Roger mentioned, you know more girls go into school, women go into colleges, now women are not taking as much time out in terms of having families, they’re not taking much time out of the workplace, and of course they’re also taking jobs that used to be the domain of the men, so I think things are very much changing and of course that also reflects, you know, the household as well.

H: So the changes are all good, with women you know earning more, and I’m sure you would agree that as a women in business to have that financial independence, I think it’s very self-satisfying but obviously we’ve talked about briefly this independence, this financial independence that women have now got needs to be looked after, so are we not very good at planning for the future, are women not so good at that?

A: Actually women are very good at planning

H: Right

A: In fact women are very good at multi-tasking

H: Of course

A: It’s a bit of a cliché isn’t it, but guys can do one thing at a time, women can think about one thing and do another, and this is one of the reasons why women are becoming more important in business because they can juggle quite a lot of priorities at once, so they have got that ability to look after the family finances perhaps, whilst also thinking about what’s happening in the job, and it’s that ability that the women have to juggle those things together has led to this result that we’re seeing in the report. And whilst I said earlier that women are taking more financial responsibility in the home, and they are perhaps budgeting, they may be buying house insurance and car insurance, the one thing that they’re not looking at, and this is probably just a matter of fact that it’s just down the list of priorities, is financial protection. What happens to my family if I can’t earn my money any more, you know, how do we afford the mortgage, how do we afford the holidays that we’ve become used to, and as a result of the Bright Grey report, what we’re really wanting women to do is to just take that little bit step further in that financial independence and say what can we do to protect the family even more

H: Ok so if a woman is the main breadwinner or is you know earning substantially sort of similar to what her husband is, and she is now starting to make those financial decisions, what sort of protection should she be looking at? What’s key for her?

A: I think what I’d like to think people should do is almost like have an annual family AGM or a family budget

H: Round the kitchen table?

A: Round the kitchen table, maybe have a glass of wine, you want to make it quite nice and sociable at the same time, and say what’s the income that’s coming in? What are our essentials, you know the household bills, the mortgage, school fees, whatever it might be. What are the luxuries, so holidays and cars and that sort of thing, and what would happen if my income stopped, if it’s a dual income family what would happen if the husband or the partner’s income stopped, what would we have to do without? What couldn’t we do without, and start to think about the policies that you could put in place. Now life insurance is very important if you, for the eventuality of the breadwinner dying. Income protection would replace the income for the individual, if they couldn’t work because they were sick. There’s unemployment cover as well which could cover them if they lost their job. So they probably need to have a look at a basket of financial options, and it can get quite confusing, it can get quite complicated

H: Yes it can get hard for them to choose from, I mean –

A: Yes so advice is a good thing to look for

H: Yes

A: A financial advisor will be able to look at your individual circumstances, you know what is the income, what are the family circumstances and say ok for you this amount of life cover, this amount of income protection, possibly some unemployment cover is the right combination for your family, but of course it might be different for somebody else

H: For somebody else and that is the key to seek advice

A: Absolutely, absolutely

H: Now Kanya we know Kanya the successful businesswoman, but what about at home. At home do you make the financial decisions, does your husband make the financial – is it 50 /50 split, how does it work for you?

B: Yes I mean we’ve got an interesting arrangement because my partner works for me in my company

H: Ok

B: So effectively as a CEO I have the vision for the business and I make a lot of the decisions

H: Right

B: At home we jointly tend to decide kind of our financial short, medium and long term goals, and he implements them so he definitely – he’s very good with numbers

H: Very useful, very useful

B: Very useful to have. And he makes sure the spending is on the straight and narrow. You know we do have – we regularly evaluate our goals

H: Yes

B: And it’s important for us, I mean ever since I was young and became financially independent and I got on the property ladder, having come from a large family of 9 I needed to move very quickly

H: That’s a big family

B: Exactly, big family so I had no choice, but now it’s more difficult, you know it’s more difficult to get on the housing ladder, so I always think you can’t have all your eggs in one basket, you know you’ve got to think about investing in your career

H: Yes

B: And then of course when you have children then there’s different priorities that are important to you

H: Big change in the dynamics isn’t it

B: That’s right

H: When you’ve got dependents

B: Exactly and I think you’ve got to continue to evaluate that, like you would do with a will, it’s not something you can do and then forget about it because circumstances change all the time

H: So you work together at home to put those sort of protections if you like in

B: Absolutely yes

H: But in the business, is that your domain or

B: I mean he works in the business so clearly he has massive input, and I’m very fortunate to have someone – my partner who is equally as passionate about the business as I am, so it kind of works really, really well, and you know of course I would think that in terms of finances and your business, you can’t leave it to someone else, and I think sometimes women have made the mistake of you know leaving it to their husband or partner,

H: That’s a really important point

B: And not – exactly, and I think you’ve still got to be part of that, and I think the more you do it the more you learn and I think you know failing to plan is planning to fail, so therefore you know it’s important to –

H: I think that’s a really important point you said there, that I think perhaps in the past, it has been the man that has made the decisions, that knows how much the mortgage is, that knows how much this is, that knows when it goes out, but I think it’s important for the woman in the household to know those things, to know how much her mortgage payment is, and to know about her life insurance – do you think that’s good advice for any female in the –

A: I think so, I mean actually from my own experience I’m thinking back to when I was growing up, I don’t think my mum had any idea how much the mortgage was

H: No

A: Or even – I mean there was no such thing as a joint bank account in those – I mean there wasn’t in our house, but of course these days I think it’s absolutely essential for people to know what’s coming in through the door and what the outgoings are, I mean how can you budget properly if you don’t know what income you’re getting and what your expenditures are, because you could end up spending far too much

H: Than you earn

A: Or you could actually find that you could spend even more

H: Or invest it

A: Or invest it, or save it, yes, whatever it is. So yes absolutely and it’s what you were saying about having the goals and why I keep coming back to the idea of the family budgeting session –

H: I like the AGM, I like that

A: An annual, you know, make it – our goals for this year are, you know we want the holiday, what do we – can we afford it? Yes we can but we might have to back off

H: Somewhere else

A: Yes exactly

B: We run our household like a business, and I think that is the only way to look at it

H: Again, that is a very important point

B: Absolutely and I was really shocked to find out in the findings something like 2 million women do not have savings accounts

A: I think again things like insurance, not so much savings but things like insurance do tend to fall quite low down in priorities

H: Yes they do. They do

A: And what I tend to say to people is just have a look at what you’re spending your money on, you know whether it’s your household bills or your new clothes or your holidays, and every single one of those things that appear on your bank statement or appear on your household list of priorities is paid for by the income that you earn

H: We’ve got some – I’m just going to pause you there because we’ve got some questions for you from our viewers. In the final part of today’s program Roger and Kanya will be answering your questions so there’s still time to get some questions to us, and we will be back shortly

Break

H: Ok, we’ve got some questions for you; I really want to put them to you as quick as we can. I’ve got one here from Sue in Barnet who says “we have a really nice lifestyle because both me and my partner are working, but I’m worried about the recession” – as I’m sure lots of people are – “and the possibility of one or both of us losing our jobs. What do you advise?”

A: Again, take stock of your financial situation. I think that it’s very important that people have a safety net. Now the easiest safety net as Kanya said before is to have some savings, that might be just having two or three months worth of your income or your salary in a bank account that you can get your hands on really quite quickly if you needed to in an emergency. But if you’re concerned about what would happen to your family if you lost your job through sickness long-term or a critical illness or something like that, then it is actually quite easy and not as expensive as you might think to put in place an insurance policy like income protection, which would replace your income if you couldn’t work due to sickness, and if you speak to a financial advisor, and they’re quite easy to find if you look on the internet, they will be able to give you tailor-made advice and tell you which product would meet your needs the best

H: Again seeking advice from somebody that knows to advise you

A: Absolutely

H: Ok I’ve got another one for you. Now it says in the synopsis that more women are becoming the main breadwinner which we’ve been talking about, in the family, and surely this can’t be true. Maybe there’s a few but surely not the majority?

A: Well I think that the survey that we’ve just – that we’ve been talking about – the Bright Grey survey says that we’re almost at the position now where just under half of women –

H: It’s close isn’t it, it is almost half

A: Are the main breadwinner. And there are regional variations, I think our survey said that in Lancashire it’s about 41% of women are the main breadwinners. In Northern Ireland it was 50% so there is a bit of regional variation, but we are getting close to it being almost a 50/50 split of you know who’s bringing in the majority of the money

H: Bringing in the money. Ok we’ve got another one for you here, now this is from Philippa in Stevenage. She says “I’ve been thinking about getting life insurance cover. Is this the best option for someone who works part-time?”

A: Whether somebody needs life insurance is probably not dependent on whether they work part-time or full-time, I think the question that she needs to ask herself and again she might need to get an advisor to help with this, is who is left behind if I was to die? Now if she’s a single person, then actually arguably she probably doesn’t need life insurance because there’s no dependents who rely upon her financially now, however if she’s married, she has children, she has a mortgage, she has household bills to pay

H: If she has commitments

A: If she has commitments then I think that life insurance would be quite important because if she wasn’t there then the remaining people, the family, the dependents would get a lump sum which they would be able to use to pay the bills. Now obviously it’s a very sad situation to lose somebody in those circumstances and that money that the life insurance policy pays out will never replace the person that’s gone, but eventually it does help them cope financially

H: Yes

A: And it’s an emotional time –

H: Which you need to be able to do

A: You need to have that

H: Ok. We’ve got another one here which I think – I don’t know whether – well both of you can answer this one. “All this talk about women being the main bread earners. How can we find time to develop a career if we’ve got kids to look after?” That’s from Joanne Stuart. Kanya?

B: How can we find the time?

H: The time, yes, to develop a career if we’ve got kids to look after?

B: Yes well I’ve been in that situation myself so –

H: Yes exactly

B: So I had a young son when I started the MOBO awards and it’s not easy because you are juggling many things. I think what was important for me was I was doing something I loved so it ceased to become work, so you know and also you know thinking about trying to make an income from doing something you’re passionate about you know can pay dividends later on, so you know of course you need support or your family around you

H: You need a bit of a support network

B: Absolutely, I think that’s invaluable to be honest with you. If you have the right support – when you go out to work then you, you know you can rest assured knowing that your dependents are in good hands

H: And you are a perfect example of someone who has literally juggled all those balls, kept them in the air and made a successful career in a business

B: I mean it’s not easy

H: It’s doable

B: But if you want to do something so badly then you’ll do everything you can and you’re prepared to overcome obstacles and sacrifices to make it happen

H: That’s brilliant. Well I’m afraid we’ve run out of time. My thanks to both Roger and to Kanya, thank you very much for joining us today and for more information go to brightgrey.com and until next time, goodbye

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