A recent survey by Desjardins Wealth Management found that 61% of women have a conservative investor profile.  The results suggest that women take less risk than men and tend to prefer safer investment portfolios.

Are women wired differently as the financial experts suggest?  Do they lack confidence and knowledge?

Related: 10 ways for women to take control of their finances

Or is it that life circumstances can significantly affect risk tolerance?  Look at the facts:

• Most women STILL earn less than men for the same work.
• They find themselves in traditional female jobs (what we used to call “pink-collar”) that pay lower wages.
• Women are more likely to leave the paid workforce, work part-time, or take on a less demanding job in order to raise their children and/or care for elderly parents.
• Divorced women can have their standard of living reduced by 50% or more.
• Women live longer than men and, as such, more likely to be widowed.
• Older women are less likely to have the university education that could give them more earning power.
• Although women take on the day-to-day household financial management, many choose not to assume responsibility for managing investments.

Lower pay – longer life.  Is it any wonder that preservation of capital is of the highest priority?

Targeting female clients

In the past financial service providers tended to ignore women investors.  They were considered a minor secondary market with a perceived lower level of interest in money matters – more interested in spending than investing.

Related: How women view money matters

However, more and more investment professionals are now placing new emphasis on targeting female clients.  Times have changed and a growing demographic of affluent single women, business owners, and primary breadwinners that have increased earning, spending, and investing power is seen as a ripe opportunity for the industry.

According to Financial Planning magazine:

• Women (in the US) will inherit $30 trillion in inter-generational wealth transfers from their husbands and parents.
• Women make approximately 80% of family buying decisions.
• 28% of homeowners are single women.
• 22% of married women earn more money than their spouse.
• 49% of female survey respondents rely on advisers.
• 9 out of 10 women will find themselves with sole responsibility for their finances at some point in their lives – through death of their spouse, or divorce.

Yet, a study done by Fidelity Investments found that 70% of widows fire their financial adviser within one year of their spouse’s death.  Why?  They had no trust in their adviser, felt they were condescending to them and expected them to trust their advice unquestioningly, and were dismissive of their (the client’s) concerns and needs.

Related: Why a fiduciary standard for investment advisers is needed in Canada

So, what do women want?

This coaching for advisers comes from Financial Planning magazine:

• Women want an adviser who is a good listener, who understands her unique financial concerns and who is willing to coach her over time.
• They want advisers who have expertise and use it to achieve positive results – together.
• They want to discuss their options and understand potential outcomes.
• They want the information required to make an informed decision, including transparency of fees.
• Women want to learn financial skills and get clear explanations of various products and strategies – and no sales pressure.

There is obviously a need for reliable advice and information.

The bottom line

One adviser suggested that communicating with female clients takes too much time.  There is a bias toward steering women into more conservative investments that are easier to explain.

He said that male investors tend to agree more with their suggestions and like to move forward right away.  They are more likely to churn their portfolios on a regular basis to chase returns.

Related: When the market goes down do you buy, sell, or ignore?

It’s time to lose these stereotypes about gender, money, emotions, and risk.  Life circumstances can significantly affect investment styles and risk tolerance, regardless of gender.  Differences between male and female investors may not be all that great.

Each investor should be treated as an individual with his/her own unique goals, experiences, and attitudes about investing.

Canadian financial speaker and author Talbot Stevens has written a new book called, The Smart Debt Coach, which hit the shelves this week.  In it he explains a key concept that gets overlooked by most investors: when you’re saving for retirement, you should never put dry pasta in your RRSP.

Related: 5 common RRSP myths

Come again?  Here’s how Mr. Stevens explains the pasta analogy in the book:

“Have you ever noticed that when you cook pasta, it expands to be much larger than it was when it was dry?  As it soaks up water, it can become twice as big after it’s cooked.  And if you let it dry out, it returns to its original size.

Dollars you earn are a lot like pasta.  You’re paid with dollars that haven’t been taxed yet.  Before-tax dollars are like larger, wet, cooked pasta.  But after federal and provincial income taxes suck all the water out, you’re left with after-tax dollars – smaller, dry pasta.

If you don’t put the equivalent, before-tax amount in your RRSP, you end up unknowingly investing less than you start with, less than you intended, and less than you need to.

One of the behavioural risks of RRSPs is that by spending the refund, you end up converting after-tax dollars to less valuable before-tax dollars, probably without realizing it.”

Five RRSP refund strategies to consider

Strategy one: Spend the refund – When you make a $3,000 RRSP contribution, assuming a 40 percent tax bracket, you’ll generate a $1,200 tax refund.  Most of us spend the refund – some of us even plan out how we’ll spend the refund before we do our taxes.

“The common approach, of spending the RRSP-generated refund, is obviously the least effective, yet it is the most widely used of all the refund strategies,” said Mr. Stevens.

Related: What to do with your tax refund?

Back to the pasta analogy, let’s say you start out with $3,000 of after-tax money to invest – smaller, dry pasta.  If you contribute it to an RRSP and spend the $1,200 refund, you end up investing only $1,800 after tax.  That’s your net, after-refund contribution to your retirement.

Strategy two: Reinvest the refund – A more disciplined and committed saver might choose to reinvest their tax refund.  When you add the $1,200 refund to your $3,000 contribution, you’ve increased your RRSP deposit to $4,200 – a 40 percent improvement.

Mr. Stevens says that while this approach is better than spending the refund, reinvesting it still does not give you the initial, after-tax amount that you started with.  In other words, $3,000 after tax equates to $5,000 before tax.

“It means putting partially cooked pasta in your RRSP,” he said.

That brings us to the RRSP gross-up strategy.

Strategy three: “Gross up” the refund – The Gross-up strategy converts the after-tax amount available to invest into the equivalent, before-tax amount in your RRSP.

The easiest way to achieve this result is to use a temporary gross-up loan, where you borrow an amount equal to the refund that will be produced by the RRSP contribution.

In this case, you’d need to borrow $2,000 to gross up your $3,000 after-tax dollars to the equivalent $5,000 amount in your RRSP.

Related: Check out the RRSP gross-up calculator on Talbot Stevens’ website.

You’ll get a $2,000 tax refund, which is enough to completely pay off the loan.  The gross-up loan allows you to turn your $3,000 to invest into a $5,000 RRSP contribution, which means you end up with 67 percent more saved in your RRSP.

This is what Mr. Stevens meant when he said you should only ever put fully cooked pasta into your RRSP.

Strategy four: Top-up loan – With this approach you use a small, short-term loan to “top up” an annual RRSP contribution.  Say your RRSP contribution room was $4,000 and you only had $1,000 available to invest: you could borrow the extra $3,000.

Unlike with the gross-up strategy, where you use the refund to immediately pay off the loan, your $2,000 tax refund could pay off most, but not all, of the loan.

Related: How an RRSP loan turned my $12,000 contribution into $20,000

“Top-up loans are typically paid off in less than a year,” said Mr. Stevens.

Strategy five: Catch-up loan – With this approach you use a larger “catch-up” loan that could take anywhere from five to 15 years to repay.  Borrowing a larger amount may allow you to catch up on unused RRSP contribution room – at least, temporarily.

“Since most clients don’t maximize their RRSP every year, some have accumulated more than $30,000 of RRSP room that may never be used,” said Mr. Stevens.

Final thoughts

I spoke with Talbot Stevens earlier this week and asked him about my RRSP loan strategy, which he said falls into strategy number four.  He agreed that one of the main benefits to this approach was the forced discipline of having to repay the loan.

Related: Withdrawing from your RRSP early may cost you

He said the biggest challenge we face is behavioral – we spend all or most of our refund – and so we don’t take full advantage of our RRSP contributions.

Reinvesting or grossing up your tax refund is a simple way to increase your retirement funds.