Mona Mahajan, Senior Investment Strategist at Edward Jones, joins TheStreet to explain why some women are being held back financially.
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00:00So, can you first break down what exactly the sandwich generation is and how it's evolved over time?
00:07The sandwich generation, for those that are not aware, is that generation of women that are dealing with both
00:13caring for children and caring for their elderly loved ones. So they're somewhat sandwiched in the middle there
00:19and in some cases struggling both emotionally and financially.
00:24According to your recent study, nearly two-thirds of women in the sandwich generation say
00:29that caregiving has impacted their financial situation.
00:32Can you elaborate on the unique financial burden that these women are facing?
00:37These women in the sandwich generation do have a unique financial burden and a unique source of stress.
00:44And that is, one, they are often the ones that have to take a step back in their careers
00:49or they step out of their careers altogether to use that time to care for both their children
00:56and their loved ones and elderly loved ones as well.
00:59And so the time that they take out of the workforce or even the step back that they take,
01:04that really does cause them to have not only lower savings, potentially lower 401k
01:11and potentially lower long-term investments overall.
01:14So there really is that financial component of caregiving that comes into play as your career is impacted,
01:22as women in the sandwich generation have felt.
01:24What are the long-term implications on this when it comes to financial security for women,
01:30particularly when it comes to retirement, savings and career advancement?
01:37Yeah, absolutely. You know, look, women are still considered the CFOs of their households.
01:42They tend to make about 85% of the decisions, whether it's purchasing groceries,
01:47purchasing new clothes for the kids, vacation planning, etc.
01:50But what we've noticed from our study is that a lot of women in these child care and caregiving situations
01:58in that sandwich generation, they tend to focus on near-term financial goals.
02:02So do they have enough savings for their children or enough savings for their aging parents
02:08or even enough savings for their own health care needs and their family's health care needs?
02:13Those are the short-term savings goals.
02:15What they lack, though, is that longer-term perspective.
02:18You know, where can they look to develop a long-term, secure financial future?
02:25And those are the type of planning things that we want to make sure here at Edward Jones
02:29that women in the sandwich generation are starting to focus on more and more.