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Is It Cheaper To Be a Man or a Woman (or Girl/Guy, Depending on Your Age)?
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I’ve got a couple of questions for you all today, folks. Is it cheaper to be a girl or a guy in today’s society? Is it cheaper to raise a guy or a girl?
I recently told my girlfriend my idea for this post, and she immediately said, “It’s loads more expensive to be/raise a girl! Are you nuts? How is that even a question?”
So, even though the answer to this question may seem apparent to some, let’s do our due-diligence and find out once and for all if it’s cheaper to be guy or a girl.
In doing some quick research, I couldn’t find any definitive studies on this subject. However, there was some good general guidance out there about the types of things that guys/girls have to spend money on.
Let’s take a look at some of these to see if we can find a concrete answer!
- Cars/Car Insurance
- It’s a well known fact that girls have cheaper car insurance than guys. I think this is because girls tend to get in to smaller, more frequent accidents, but when guys get in to accidents, they are more likely to be making a HUGE error and total the car.
- Winner = Cheaper to be a girl.
- Clothes/Shoes
- There is no question in my mind that girls spend more on clothes and shoes. Guys wear the same clothes for years and have 4 pairs of shoes (brown, black, sandals, and running shoes). Girls have 10^100000 pairs of shoes. One for every outfit.
- Winner = Cheaper to be a guy.
- Â Dating
- The generally accepted practice in today’s dating culture is for the guy to pay for the date. Both guys and girls probably buy about the same amount on birthday/Xmas presents. However, guys also have to pay for Valentine’s Day ideas and other random gifts/flowers (even if you get them discounted like I do from 1-800-Flowers.com) that cause the overall cost to go up.
- Winner = Cheaper to be a girl.
- Marriage
- The guy has to buy the engagement ring. Sadly, the generally accepted practice for this is to spend about 1 month’s salary on this (if you make $60,000 a year, this amounts to $5000). So, this causes the price of being a guy to go up.
- When it comes to the actual wedding, the girl’s parents usually pay twice as much as the guy’s parents.
- Winner = Tie. Cheaper to have a guy as a child, but cheaper to be the girl getting married.
- Food/Drink
- Guys definitely eat more. However, I feel like girls tend to eat higher quality/expensive food. But, I think that guys tend to eat out more often, driving the cost up.
- In addition, guys tend to be the “providers/buyers” of drinks at parties and bars. This also drives up the cost of being a guy.
- Winner = Cheaper to be a girl.
- Hygiene
- Since girls wear makeup, I believe that this drives the comparative costs up.
- Winner = Cheaper to be a guy.
- Sports
- This category is a tough call, as I think that for the most part, it is equal between boys and girls.Â
- However, I think that our culture places more importance on guys playing sports (for better or for worse). Therefore, guys are more apt to be involved in multiple sports.
- Winner = Cheaper to be a girl.
- Personal note – It was probably my sports of baseball and cycling that made me slightly more expensive to raise than my sister growing up. This was due to the fact that competitive cycling required a lot of expensive equipment (think multiple thousand Dollar bikes, shoes, wheels, etc) and the traveling that was involved.
How about you all? What do you think? Is it more expensive to raise a boy or a girl? Is it more expensive to be a girl or a guy? Did I leave out any big categories of spending?
Share your experiences by commenting below!
***Photo courtesy of http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4137/4915591835_721ab43540.jpg
About the Author Jacob A Irwin
Hi folks! My name is Jacob. I am the owner and operator of My Personal Finance Journey. I started this blog in January of 2010 and have enjoyed the journey ever since. Since finishing up graduate school in Virginia in 2014, I have been working in biopharmaceutical development in Colorado. You can read more about me and this site here​. Please contact me if you have any questions!
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I've been looking into health insurance policies lately for both a man and woman in the same middle-aged range, and women's policy prices have been significantly higher with relatively the same health record. There could be a lot of variables, but that's been my experience so far.
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Thanks for sharing that Max! Any ideas what makes the women's policies more expensive? More preventative care?
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It could be due to more preventative care, as the policies I've looked at do outline certain screenings that are 100% covered for women, which men don't necessarily need and therefore wouldn't be covered for men in the policy. That could just be for my age range though, because after a certain age, men start to need certain screenings more regularly as well. I would imagine that the insurance companies base their rates on statistics (if not greed), so there must be something that indicates health care costs might be more expensive generally for women. However, this would all be subjective based on age, health, and many other factors. I wonder if it's true for others as well.
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Very interesting findings Max! Thanks so much for sharing. I have one guess as to what “one” of those certain screenings is..haha
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Cool article. I would say I disagree and think it is cheaper to be a man. They don't have to worry about looking nice with their clothes, they require less personal care stuff, and now adays, it's a 50 50 spilt on dates.
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Thanks for reading Miss T! These are interesting results though….We have myself and Krantcents (the two guys) saying it is equal, and the two ladies saying it's cheaper to be a man. I think we need some more commenters to settle this!! 🙂
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I have to say I think it's cheaper to be a guy. The things that make being a guy more expensive are usually just for young guys. As they get older those expenses drop off, but girls are expensive their whole lives. I wonder how medical expenses play into it.
On a side note: You have 777 twitter followers right now, you should go play the slots or something.
Nice point Ashley! I would imagine that medical expenses for women are more earlier in life, then more for men later in life (since we don't last as long! haha)
My recent post Is It Cheaper To Be a Man or a Woman or Girl-Guy- Depending on Your Age
I suspect it could be almost equal! There are trade offs that are different, but I think you can avoid some of those differences. For example, it is more expensive for womens' haircuts versus men, however women do not need them as often.
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Thanks for reading Krantcents! I would agree with you as well. There are many trade offs that in my opinion, balance out. I still do think that raising a girl would probably be a slightly more expensive though.
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