Money, markets and affluent women

By Dian Vujovich

Whoa, what a day on Wall Street. New record highs have no doubt plumped up many 401(k), IRA and ROTH IRAs, trust funds, personal portfolios and all sorts of hopes and dreams of the monied. But today’s good news money also included terrific June budget data. As for the affluent women reference in the headline, well, just read some info about them that I found interesting. Sort of.

First, the markets: When Bernanke speaks, the whole world listens.

Thanks to some of Ben’s comments last night, instead of talking about a possible and in the not-so-distant future tapering of our bond-buying program, he now said that the economy isn’t ready for such a move so it’s still full-steam ahead for the program.

The reaction to his words this time were a big switch from what happened in the markets last month  when he suggested the possibility of a tapering. That kind of talk/implication opened a can of market worms and worries. So in June, after his comments, the market responded by falling.

Today, it was just the opposite: The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up over 169 points at 15,460.92; the S&P 500 up 22.4 points to 1,675.02; and the NASDAQ up over 57 points closing at 3,578.3. Oh, the power of Ben and the Fed.

The money news that’s worth repeating has to do with our June budget: We’ve got dough!

Turns out thanks to rising tax revenues, spending cuts, payments to the Treasury, etc., in the month of June, Uncle Sam took in more money than he paid out. Really. By a lot: $117 billion. That’s the largest June surplus on record. This news,  according to Reuters.

And now for the affluent women.

A Hearst Magazines and Fleishman Hillard report published this month, “A Study of Women’s Lives, Lifestyles and Marketplace Impact”, highlighted some of the traits of “affluent” women. The affluent in this case related to ladies living in households were income exceed $100,000. That doesn’t sound too affluent to me, but hey six-figures is six-figures.

What caught my eye in this report were the demographics of these women. And not because they was so unusual but  traditional.

The profile of the affluent women here  were college-educated (80 percent), married (80 percent), worked (72 percent) and lived in the burbs (75 percent). While they were more likely to be better educated than their hubbies, most left the heavy lifting of being the household’s major bread winner to the guys.