Men, women differ on fiscal outlook

I've started a new Kratz holiday tradition.

It doesn't involve the spirit of the season, though. And I'm not really proud of it.

My wife, Stacey, describes it as the "Thanksgiving eve panic attack." It happens when I look around the house on the night before Thanksgiving, calculate what we've already spent for Christmas gifts and turkey-day food, and freak out about our financial situation.

"We have some credit card debt!" I exclaim. "And we still have so much left to buy! And it's not like I'm expecting a big raise anytime soon! How are we going to pay for all of this?"

Stacey responds by pointing out we're not in bad fiscal shape. We faced some unexpected expenses in the last year that may have put us in a bit of a hole, but we've got plans in place to get back out. She's not worried and is confident that everything will work out.

Then I grumble and mutter for a few minutes, admit that she is probably right, and proceed with the holiday season.

Sounds fun, doesn't it?

A couple of days after playing my part in this "tradition" last week, I was at work looking over the results of a recent survey on the differences between men and women when it comes to investing.

The survey, conducted in July and commissioned by online investing firm Scottrade, included a national sample of 627 men and 516 women. It has a margin of error of 3.1 percent.

It found that, while women rate their investing skills lower than men do, the recent performance of investment portfolios for both genders is exactly the same.

More interesting to me was a finding that 32 percent of women said they have become more familiar with their own personal financial situation in the last year, compared to 24 percent of men. And 22 percent of women said they have taken steps to learn more about the economy, compared to 15 percent of men.

In light of my pre-Thanksgiving panic ritual, I wanted to check the veracity of these results, so I called my wife. While I've always been the bill-payer in our family, she agreed that she has tried to become more knowledgeable about our family budget since the economy tanked. I've noticed that myself.

"I've tried to pay more attention to the checkbook and what's in it and what may be coming up, and to the rhythm of our financial month," Stacey told me, adding that everyone she knows seems more worried about money these days.