Bromwich+Smith Celebrates International Women’s Day

^{By Bromwich+Smith Staff | 985 words | Reading Time: 4 minutes and 55 seconds | Date: 2023/03/07}

International Women's Day falls on March 8th this year, and is intended to celebrate the progress made towards achieving gender equality and women's empowerment. International Women’s Day invites everyone to step forward, and to embrace equality. Take a moment to imagine, a world with gender equality with no discrimination of stereotypes, no bias and no judgement. We think its an important time to reflect on accomplishments made by our female role models, and make a push for gender equality worldwide. At Bromwich+Smith, we are proud of our female leaders including newly introduced CEO Shelley Vandenberg. 

Women in debt

Typically, females are the driving force behind household consumer spending, buying the household items, kids school and activity fees and supplies, replacing household items and everything in between. For some, this can be a mental and financial drain, ensuring that everything gets paid and the household runs smoothly.  A lack of universal maternity leave, gender pay gap, student debt or other debt ( credit cards, loans, mortgages), increased interest rates pile on to the stress. The added strain many females faced during the pandemic, needing to help school kids on top of everything else, created debt and stress levels that we haven’t experienced before.

The average female worker, will make 26% less than her male counterpart. Women carrying student debt loans can expect to take an additional two years to pay off their loan.

Childcare and debt

While we know that childcare often falls to the mother, in todays society more and more females hold employment outside of the house. During the pandemic, we saw more women loosing their jobs or needing to leave to address the needs of their family. More than 52% of mothers who choose to leave their job did so because their child’s school, or daycare options were closed.

With childcare options reopen, it is important to explore the cost of childcare, and the affect that has on a household. There is a massive variance in childcare costs depending where in the country you reside. On the low end, Manitobans can expect to pay around $650, where as full time child care in Ontario can be upwards of $1986 a month. Depending on how many children are needing childcare, many mothers are finding themselves out priced and unable to justify full time employment.

Three tips to eliminate Female debt:

1. Educate yourself on Financial Literacy. Women are less likely to be educated on financial topics, and that can be a costly mistake. Individuals with lower financial literacy are 6 times more likely to struggle making ends meet and 3 times more likely to have overwhelming debt. Lets change those numbers, and take back financial knowledge. Surround yourself with a team of professionals to support you, and help you make the best financial decisions.
2. Pink Tax. Being aware that a “ pink tax” exists is an important step to acknowledge. The wage gap discrepancy, and debt load burden are exasperated with gender based price hikes.  With women earning less than their male counterparts, they will often pursue high education levels, taking on more student debt in an attempt to make more money. Women will also pay more in persona hygiene items, like soaps and razors, feminine hygiene items and clothing. This tightens the disposable income, and making it more difficult to pay off debt, or build wealth. Ways to combat this include shopping around, take a look at the ladies razors vs mens, other than the colour and price point there likely is not much difference. Forego the pink handle, and save yourself some money.
3. Ask the men in your life to help. Have these heavy conversations with your male coworkers. Having simple discussions about the gender pay gap normalizes it, and when we all come to the table with the same understanding of what is fair is when things can start changing. Men- support the females in your life to establish an emergency fund, set up their own bank accounts, speak to a financial advisor. Having savings set aside can help debt from growing when the rainy day starts to flood.

Know the value of your debt

Not all debt is created equal. While the majority of Canadians carry debt, not all of the debt is considered to be bad. Good debt can be leveraged to increase your cash flow. This could include a mortgage, car loan, house renovations or a small business loan. Bad debt is what we want to limit. This is where we borrow money and incur consumer debt. This includes credit card debt and payday loans.

One debt that can be placed in both categories is student loan debt. Student loans are considered a good debt, as increasing your education should increase your salary expectations. However, student debt is considered bad debt if you are unable to pay it off. When you are unable to make payments, it turns into a negative on your credit score.

When you are evaluating your debt, and determining which to pay off first there are many methods you can choose to examine. Know that there is no one right answer, and sometimes trial and error is needed to find the solution that is right for you. Some will choose to start with the lowest debt, and once it has been paid off in entirety put the payment amount towards the next lowest debt. Others will focus on paying the debt with the highest interest off first.

If you are finding that your debt is becoming unmanageable, know that you have options. A Licensed Insolvency Trustee is federally regulated, and the only ones in Canada to help with your debt relief programs.

If you are facing overwhelming debt, remember that you are not alone. Bromwich+Smith has a number of debt relief strategies to help you regain control of your finances and get your life back on track. Reach out today for a free, confidential, no obligation consultation. Bromwich+Smith’s Debt Relief Specialists are available by phone at 1.855.884.9243, or request a call back at contact us page.