Off The Market: Women, Men And Money

Pauline Millard, a writer and real-estate broker in Manhattan, has encountered a troubling disparity in how young men and women handle their finances and pay rent. Her findings, in today’s Off The Market:

Last week I rented an apartment to a 22-year-old guy who was new to Manhattan. After the lease signing he lamented about having to use his father as a guarantor. I told him not to feel badly about it, he was fresh out of college, after all. It was par for the course.

“True,” he said. “But I don’t want to have to use him the next time I move.”

In all likelihood, he probably won’t. If there’s one thing I’ve noticed after renting apartments in Manhattan for a few years, is that men become financially independent light years before women. In 5 years time my young male client will be employed and have some money squirreled away so that if he needs to move, or buy a car or whatever, he’ll be able to. His female counterpart, most likely, will not. I will likely be on the phone with her father about signing a guarantor form.

I saw this scenario so often that I started to wonder why. Not to be judgmental, but to figure out why was it that if two young graduates – who may both start an entry-level position with a salary of, say, $40,000 – why is that in just a few years the guy will likely be making double that when the woman may just be eeking along, with maybe some credit card debt to boot?

Logically, this shouldn’t happen, what with the economic playing field more equal than it has ever been. Women earn the majority of 4-year degrees. The Labor Department released a study in July of this year that reported that the wage gap between men and women, particularly among people in their 20s, was shrinking tremendously.

Yet, based on what I see on a day to day basis, as they move on with their professional lives, it’s the guys who enjoy more financial freedom as they grow older, and the young women who are slower to remove the crutch of their parents, if they’re lucky enough to have that.