Gail Survey

On Gail Vax-Oxlade's blog this morning women were asked to complete the following survey, so I thought I'd include it in my post this morning.

1. Do you control the purse strings when it comes to making decisions about household spending?
Yes....but I'm also the only person in the household.

2. Do you have the financial “last word” on spending in your family?
Yes....see above.

3. How often do you consult your partner before making fiscal decisions? (rank out of ten, ten being all the time, 1 being never)
When I did have a partner, whom I lived with, the number was 4.

4. Have you set a financial goal in the last year?
Yes, I sit down each month and determine both financial and personal goals to accomplish.

5. Do you have a financial plan to achieve your goal?
Yes, through automatic savings I am able to put money towards my goal of purchasing a home as well as for retirement, in my RRSPs.  I also have benchmark numbers that I'd like to meet to ensure that I reach that ultimate goal.

6. Are you in charge of your family’s financial education?
Yes.

7. Have you actually taken steps to educate your kids?
I have no children, but my plan if/when the time comes is to educate them early and often about earning money, saving that money, and spending the money.

8. Do you consistently encourage your children to save money?
I will once they come.  I plan to open an RESP as soon as I have a child and will encourage aunts/uncles if they'd like to give birthday or Christmas gifts in monetary form that at least some of it goes into the RESP.  I expect my children to work during the summers to contribute to their Education Savings Plan as well.

9. How do you prefer to get your financial information?

• Newspapers
• TV - 2nd
• Online
• Blogs - 1st
• Other: (what?)

10. If you do not take advantage of “financial news” sources, why not?

• Lack of interest in financial news
• Not relevant to my life
• Boring
• Too theoretical
• Other: (what?)

11. How confident are you in your financial know-how? (rank out of ten, ten being extremely confident, 1 being not at all confident)
At this point, I'm a 7.5 - I would like to in the next 5 years to transition a bit of my investments in RRSPs to a self-directed savings plan, but I don't have enough knowledge at this moment to feel comfortable doing that.

12. How old are you:

• Under 20
• 20-30: 28
• 31-40
• 41-50
• 51-60
• Over 60

13. Do you have an advisor that you trust?
Yes, I just transfered my investments from RBC to TD and thus far I'm happy.  When my portfolio grows, then I'll be thinking about transferring the funds to an investment brokerage firm.

14. How confident do you feel that you know who to turn to for financial advice? (rank out of ten, ten being extremely confident, 1 being not at all confident)
8.

15. Where to you live?

• Canada
• U.S.