Women over 40 are counting all their money

Ta-da, female 40 is the new male 40. (Photo by Elevate via Pexels)

Forty was for long a sexist numeral, considered just the right moment for women to have a mid-life crisis. On her 40th birthday, she is supposed to disappear from sight – as a sex object. At 39, she can still shock with an unplanned pregnancy, but a year later she must be saas and naani. After 40, she can enter a lift and not be stared at, she can meet an ex at home without neighbours twitching their curtains, and she can vanish into malls, never to be seen again.

Only death could briefly halt the clock, with everyone saying, ‘Oh, she died so young! She was only 40 years old!’ But that bonhomie is more because her husband – also in his 40s or older – is still young enough to remarry, phew. Her funeral sees marriage brokers storming in with a good match for him. If he dies when she's 40-something, she is handed a bhajan sheet.

Money has always had a gender: male. The only time husbands used to babytalk their wives was when it came to ‘property matters’. Women had the choice of fluttering eyelashes or looking coy as men lisped to them in a sing-song voice about matters of money and mansion deeds being too complicated for that delicate little head to process.

On the plus side, post 40, a woman could carry a migraine to full term. Her aches and pains and general decline of health were met with full-on tch-tch by an ageist society. If she is lucky, kids are by now ‘settled’ and MIL in heaven, or at least Kashi.

Working women, magnanimously ‘allowed’ to work by the patriarchs, were routinely robbed of their salary for the larger benefit of the family. Their money—considered just peanuts or at least inferior to the manly monthly pay of the man of the house—was for smaller, daily needs, and treated like small change…

Somewhere along the way, when no one was watching, women began to save, pay taxes, invest wisely and spend as they pleased. Most women, says a recent DBS & Crisil study, make independent financial decisions or annually earn over Rs 40 lakh by the time they are in their forties. Age is a factor just like address and affluence. Ta-da, female 40 is the new male 40.

It is official now. Money is wearing lipstick and carrying a handbag. Its heels are tapping the pavement. Most of us may prefer low-risk FDs, with only 15 percent opting for mutual funds and 7 percent dabbling in stocks, but we are touching crisp bank notes with naked hands by the time we are in our mid-forties! Too busy counting all our money to have a mid-life crisis.