Help Please: A Gender Perspective on Differences in Financial Help-Seeking Behaviour in Light of Retirement Preparedness, Risk Tolerance, and Financial Knowledge

Variables	Total Sample n = 4,595		Men n = 2,593		Women n = 2,002
	Prop (%)	M (SD)	Prop (%)	M (SD)	Prop (%)	M (SD)	Min	Max
Help-seeker (Stage four)		6.20 (3.17)		6.42 (2.98)		5.98 (3.33)	0	10
Perceived retirement preparedness		3.05 (1.32)		3.23 (1.31)		2.89 (1.31)	1	5
Intentional saver	54.68		58.48		50.97		0	1
Owns retirement account	41.55		45.86		37.35		0	1
Risk tolerance		4.24 (2.74)		4.81 (2.65)		3.68 (2.70)	0	10
Objective financial knowledge		2.23 (.81)		2.41 (.73)		2.05 (.85)	0	3
Subjective financial knowledge		7.25 (2.16)		7.36 (2.02)		7.16 (2.29)	0	10
Age		52.44 (17.61)		51.84 (17.41)		53.04 (17.79)	18	95
Log income		11.14 (1.25)		11.33 (1.39)		10.95 (1.05)	$0	$458,000,000
IHS Net worth		10.95 (6.51)		11.82 (5.67)		10.11 (7.13)	$ (555,500.00)	$2,390,000,000
White/Caucasian	68.89		72.58		67.26		0	1
Married	63.22		67.28		55.22		0	1
Employed	61.03						0	1
Education
Less than high school	8.37		7.34		9.38		0	1
Some college	20.89		20.55		21.22		0	1
Associate’s degree	27.99		23.63		32.25		0	1
Bachelor’s or master’s degree	24.46		29.06		19.98		0	1
Doctorate or professional degree	18.28		19.42		17.17		0	1

[i] Note. Statistics are population weighted. Min and max values reported for income and net worth are not transformed for descriptive purposes.

Table 2.

Results of gender differences between individual predictors

	Men				Women
	Most prominent	Biggest advantage	Level of advantage	% help-seeker	Most prominent	Biggest advantage	Level of advantage	% help-seeker	Gap if equal
Perceived retirement preparedness	4 to 5	22%/15%	5	92%	1 to 3	22%/15%	1	79%	4.4%
Intentional saver	1	58%/41%	Yes	94%	0	49%/42%	No	83%	4.7%
Owns retirement account	1	46%/37%	Yes	95%	0	63%/54%	No	85%	4.4%
Risk tolerance	5 to 10	12%/8%	7	97%	0 to 4	21%/10%	0	66%	2.0%
Objective financial knowledge	3	54%/35%	3	94%	0 to 2	25%/12%	0,1	81%	0.3%
Subjective financial knowledge	7 to 9	22%/16%	7	93%	1 to 6, 10	14%/9%	5	82%	2.3%
Education	Bachelor’s or more	29%/20%	4	0.96	Associate’s or less	32%/24%	3	0.88	0.042

Table 3.

Results of OLS regression results

Variable	Coefficient	SE	p
Perceived retirement preparedness	0.11	0.05	0.036
Intentional saver (Is not an intentional saver)	0.69	0.13	< .001
Owns retirement account (Does not own)	0.13	0.14	0.337
Risk tolerance	0.19	0.03	< .001
Expects future expense (Does not expect)	0.16	0.12	0.185
Objective financial knowledge	0.20	0.08	0.016
Subjective financial knowledge	0.30	0.03	< .001
Gender (Male)	0.06	0.12	0.638
Age	−0.02	0.00	< .001
Log income	−0.08	0.04	0.077
IHS Net worth	0.01	0.01	0.206
White (Non-White)	−0.22	0.13	0.088
Single (Married)	−0.08	0.13	0.536
Employed (Unemployed)	0.01	0.14	0.92
Education (Less than high school)
Some college	0.25	0.27	0.356
Associate’s degree	0.53	0.27	0.05
Bachelor’s or master’s degree	0.78	0.27	0.005
Doctorate or professional degree	0.63	0.28	0.027
Intercept	3.06	0.57	< .001

[i] Note. Source: 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances, weighted analysis using all five implicates and RII technique.

[ii] F(18, 4533.0) = 28.44, p < .001.

[iii] R² = .17.

Table 4.

Difference due to explained and unexplained components in financial help-seeking

Financial help-seeking	Coefficient	p-value	95% CI	Percent
Explained Components	0.514	<0.001	(.46, .57)	115.5
Unexplained Components	−0.069	0.259	(−.19, .05)	−15.5
Total Difference	0.445	<0.001	(.34, .54)

Table 5.

Multivariate decomposition results of gender differences and financial help-seeking

Group 1 = male (reference group)
Group 2 = female (comparison group)
	Difference due to explained components			Difference due to unexplained components
Variable	Coef	SE	Percent shared	Coef	SE	Percent shared
Perceived retirement preparedness	0.027^*	0.010	5.97	−0.127	0.134	−28.61
Intentional saver (Is not an intentional saver)	0.051^***	0.005	11.46	−0.029	0.057	−6.42
Owns retirement account (Does not own)	−0.013^*	0.007	−3.00	−0.217^***	0.047	−48.74
Risk tolerance	0.206^***	0.018	46.44	−0.017	0.083	−3.82
Expects future expense (Does not expect)	−0.001	0.001	−0.18	−0.221^***	0.057	−49.67
Objective financial knowledge	0.109^***	0.018	24.46	0.355^*	0.149	79.84
Subjective financial knowledge	0.075^***	0.004	16.85	0.773^***	0.207	173.81
Age	0.022^***	0.003	5.05	−0.279	0.206	−62.66
Log income	−0.019^*	0.008	−4.37	0.890	0.470	200.27
IHS Net worth	0.049^***	0.011	11.05	0.255^**	0.088	57.27
White (Non-White)	−0.022^***	0.004	−5.06	−0.263^**	0.076	−59.1
Single (Married)	0.011	0.016	2.51	−0.021	0.062	−4.73
Employed (Not employed)	−0.019	0.011	−4.24	−0.191^**	0.068	−42.99
Education (Less than high school)
Some college	−0.002^*	0.001	−0.54	0.035	0.052	7.87
Associate’s degree	−0.077^***	0.015	−17.36	0.213^**	0.077	47.95
Bachelor’s or master’s degree	0.092^***	0.016	20.74	0.088	0.050	19.7
Doctorate or professional degree	0.025^***	0.004	5.71	0.175^***	0.044	39.34

Note. Reference groups are in parentheses. Continuous variables do not have a reference group.

* p < .05,

** p <.01,

*** p < .001.

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/fprj-2026-0007 | Journal eISSN: 2206-1355 | Journal ISSN: 2206-1347

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Language: English

Published on: Jul 4, 2026

Published by: Financial Advice Association of Australia

In partnership with: Paradigm Publishing Services

Publication frequency: 2 issues per year

Keywords:

Financial help-seeking,

financial knowledge,

gender,

retirement preparedness,

risk tolerance

Related subjects:

Business and economics,

Political economics,

Economic theory, systems and structures,

Business management,

Business management, other,

Industries,

Banks, financial service provider, insurers

© 2026 Ashlyn Rollins-Koons, Megan McCoy, Tanya Staples, Blake Gray, published by Financial Advice Association of Australia
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Volume 12 (2026): Issue 2 (June 2026)