Allianz Life released their second study on women and money today.

While some of the Women Money and Power Phase II study findings are interesting, I can’t help but wonder: Would men have answered much differently?

For example women who were surveyed answered the following regarding financial information:

Information is overwhelming/too much/hard to sort through	44 percent
Information is complicated or hard to understand	36 percent
Materials are really boring and dry	32 percent
Don’t understand terminology/materials seem foreign	26 percent

I would not be the least bit surprised to learn that many guys feel the same way. It’s not a female thing to think that much of the terminology and materials that insurance companies utilize is hard for even finance majors to digest.

Here’s another example

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I was in line at a coffee shop the other day with a financial planner. We started chatting with the barista, a fashionable gal who l guess is probably in her early to mid twenties. She was talking about how she was glad it was almost payday. Not because her rent was late. Certainly not because her piggy bank was hungry. Because she wanted to buy a pair of boots that cost nearly $500!

But what about the salt stains she’s going to get on those puppies or the fact that she must have worked a full week if not longer to buy a single pair of shoes?

I’m an opinionated sort but I’m also polite to strangers, so I managed to hold my tongue.

But I asked the planner what she thinks when she hears such remarks from people, including her clients. She said it’s like nails on a chalkboard. But she didn’t advise the barista, mostly because when it comes to spending, she says people often do what they want to do.

Who knows? This coffee peddler could be wealthy and making lattes for fun. And if she’ll be wearing those boots until the day she dies, I suppose the price could be right. I doubt it on both points.

What would you have done? Do you nod politely when people mention financial decisions that you think are foolish? Or are you one to speak your mind?

(And if you want to know how to make a boot and other cool origami out of money, check out this Tao of Making Money blog post).

Ameriprise conducted a survey last spring about different generations’ money attitudes and beliefs.

Here’s an excerpt of the release:

Forty-six percent of the adult children of boomers say they are very optimistic about their personal financial future, compared to 39 percent of boomers and only 28 percent of the boomers’ parents’ generation who report they are very optimistic about their financial future.

Likewise, 48 percent of the adult children of boomers say that they are very confident in their ability to reach all of their financial goals over time; only 36 percent of boomers and 34 percent of boomers’ parents feel the same way.

To me, these numbers speak more to time constraints than anything. It’s a lot harder to feel confident about financial futures and reaching financial goals if you’re 90 years old. You’re not working, you have a finite amount of money and have a lot of time to sit around and watch your nest egg shrink and grow with the day’s market gyrations. When you do venture out to the store you see the price of groceries and medicine rising above the bump in your Social Security check that’s supposed to cover cost of living increases.

The press release highlighted how younger generations are more optimistic than their parents. But to me, what stands out is that more than half of those surveyed are worried.

Maybe I just run with a gloomy crowd, but I’m not hearing from “very confident,” “very optimistic” people– in my personal life or in my work.

Instead, I hear a generation concerned about a future of higher taxes, wage stagnation, job insecurity, an American economy poised to take a backseat to the “third world,” and college tuition inflation.

I am hopeful that I will have a decades-long, satisfying career and decades-long enjoyable retirement. But I am worried about some of what I mentioned above.

How about you? Confident about your financial future? Confident, but concerned? Or are your genuinely worried? And why?

I’m clearing out my e-mail inbox (I know it’s not a personal finance topic, but if someone has the answer for efficient e-mail management I’m all eyes).

Two of the messages announce blogs written by smart experts on hot button topics.

The first is Anna Lusardi, a Dartmouth professor and financial literacy expert. Her new blog (http://annalusardi.blogspot.com/). It doesn’t look like she’s posting daily. But it will be a good place to monitor for new research on why the heck so many Americans know so little about money.

Lusardi is Italian and one topic I’d like to see her address would be financial literacy in Italy and other parts of the world and whether it’s a global issue or a more localized one.

Closer to home, Mark Ireland a former assistant attorney general who is now a staff attorney with the Foreclosure Relief Law Project in St. Paul, launched Consumer Rights Watch (http://consumerrightswatch.blogspot.com) His blog will cover many issues relating to foreclosure and sub prime lending, two complex topics that are getting a lot of attention.

This New York Times story by Shira Boss about the economy of Second Life is a fascinating read. Banks collapsing, avatars with 250 pairs of shoes, people pounding the pavement in search of a better job for their virtual self, real estate moguls, McMansions built with pixels. Second Life has it all.

If you spend time on Second Life, I’d love to hear about how you spend your Linden dollars. And why you think we’re driven to replicate our consumer society in a virtual world.