Video: Women and super

In this video Tracey Spicer talks to Natasha Janssens from Women with Cents about some of the challenges that women face in building their super, and what to think about if you’re considering taking out some of your super due to COVID-19.

Transcript

Tracey Spicer

Hi, I’m Tracey Spicer. We’re joined today by the founder of Women with Cents Natasha Janssens. How are you Tash?

Natasha Janssens

I’m well, thank you. Thank you for having me.

Tracey Spicer

It’s my pleasure. We’ve known each other for a while. And what I find really powerful about what you write and talk about is that your upbringing really shaped your approach to money management. Could you take us through some of that?

Natasha Janssens

Yes. I’m very fortunate that I wasn’t born an Australian citizen, so I got to experience what life was like for the rest of the world. And so my parents are both from the old Yugoslavia and with my dad’s work, actually, we were also posted to Uganda and Sri Lanka.

So growing up, you know, I got to experience a very different world. I got to experience first-hand what life was like in poverty, in war, the impact of unemployment, recession. And I even saw banks go bankrupt and people lose their life savings. So from a very early age, that really showed me that the risks that we can experience when we’re reliant on someone else, whether that’s the government or family or other people for financial support.

Tracey Spicer

Your advice is always very practical, very pragmatic, and it also puts a gender lens on it as well when it comes to women in the workplace, in particular superannuation. What are some of the myriad challenges that women face in this area compared with men?

Natasha Janssens

Oh women face a range of unique challenges, especially when it comes to their super. So it’s no secret that even in Australia we have a gender pay gap, meaning that women on average and at the moment around 14% less than men. We also know that women tend to be the ones who take more time out of the workforce and who retire early in order to be able to raise children and to be able to look after elderly and sick family members.

So what that means is that women tend to either take a complete break from work or when they return to work, they return in a reduced capacity, working part-time or casually.

And now there’s another new emerging trend, which is that women, I suppose, as a response to trying to juggle career and home responsibilities are now tending to self-employment, so more and more women are starting up their own businesses.

And what I know working as an accountant is that self-employed people, men and women alike, they tend to not pay themselves super.

So all of these factors together, especially for women, just contribute to us retiring with far less super than men. And when you consider that we live longer than men. That puts us in an even tougher spot.

Tracey Spicer

And it’s almost a perfect storm at the moment with the global pandemic. I know that you’ve written about women working from home more during this time and also having to take the unpaid load of looking after kids. You’ve got a two year-old and a six year-old. How has this affected you all?

Natasha Janssens

Look. It has been a challenge for me. So my husband is a necessary worker working for the Department of Health. So he was required to be on location helping them deal with all of this, which meant that I was at home trying to run my business and look after two little kids in tow. So it made life very stressful and very challenging.

Tracey Spicer

And then there’s the mental load on top of that, because the research done showed that a lot of women think, oh, look, I’m not going to look into my superannuation fund. I’ve got too much going on up here to even contemplate investigating and researching that.

Natasha Janssens

Well, that’s exactly it. So as women, we have been conditioned that it’s our responsibility to look after everyone else’s needs first. And we’re literally used to having to prioritise the urgent and type of the important.

The urgent being, you know, what’s for dinner? And what are the kids going to wear to school tomorrow? And the important being, things like the long-term financial matters. So it makes it really easy at the end of the day to understandably feel exhausted and say, you know what, retirement that seems like such a long way off. I’ll look after that tomorrow. But the danger is that tomorrow may never come.

Tracey Spicer

I’d like to know your advice to people who are thinking about taking this $10,000 chunk or series of $10,000 chunks out of their superannuation at this point in time.

Natasha Janssens

Well, look, I can completely understand the temptation to do so, because when we consider especially how much the governments tend to tinker with super, a lot of people have a perception that super isn’t our own money.

And so it’s very tempting to then justify withdrawing that money now and think of it. Well, what’s the expression? A bird in the hand is worth two in the tree, so to speak.

But it’s really important to be aware that super is your own money.

The further off retirement is for you, the greater the reliance and the likelihood is that there’s not gonna be much of a government pension to speak of and you’re going to need your own money to rely on. So from that point of view, really, please make sure that you’re exhausting every other avenue and really be leaving accessing super as your last resort. And if you do that, make sure that you have a plan in place for how quickly you can start to contribute that money back in once you back on your feet.

Tracey Spicer

Are we seeing a phenomenon where the people who can least afford it are the ones who feel that they have to take out this $10,000 chunk?

Natasha Janssens

Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, it’s not the first time that we’ve seen changes in government policy where it really feels as though the people who can least afford to be taking that risk or as you say, least afford to be accessing the super forced into having to do so.

So that’s going to create an even wider wealth gap for future generations as well.

Tracey Spicer

So what’s your advice then, Natasha, to everybody at the moment, but particularly women who often end up with much less superannuation than men to get through these next few years and have at least a comfortable retirement?

Natasha Janssens

So it’s a challenging time for Australians because this is the first recession that we have seen in a long time. So for many people, it’s the first one they have seen in their adult lives or even, you know, since they’ve been born, so it can be very unnerving as to how do we deal with this moving forward?

The biggest thing is to be proactive. This is the time to really roll up your sleeves, find opportunities to save and quick wins wherever you can, and make sure that you’re setting aside first of all an emergency saving buffer so that if you do lose your job or anything that happens down the track, that you’re able to self-sustain, but also that then long term, we’re not relying just on what government policies are going to be, but we’re really prioritising our own saving for the future.

Tracey Spicer

And a lot of this wonderful advice is contained in your book, the excellently named Wonder Woman’s Guide to Money. Natasha Janssens, thanks very much for talking to me today.

Natasha Janssens

Thank you so much, Tracey.