Russian women told how much money they need to be happy

More than half of Russians consider 250,000 rubles a month to be a comfortable income level. A third of compatriots have more modest requests – 100 thousand rubles will be enough for them to be happy. This is evidenced by the survey data of the portal-marketplace of YouDo services. Half a million monthly income for a comfortable life was reported by 15% of respondents. And a very small group of Russians (4%) needs more than 500 thousand rubles for the same purposes. About why women’s surveys on the topic of income differ from men’s and whether the ways listed by compatriots to achieve their financial goals are real, MK found out from experts.

According to the study, almost half (48%) of women are confident that it will be enough for them to work and earn extra money to get the desired income. A third of respondents (33%) believe that for this they need to open their own business. Approximately 10% of Russian women considered it possible to receive a comfortable income for life only at an official place of employment or only on a part-time job.

According to Rosstat, in the fourth quarter of 2022, the average per capita cash income of citizens of our country amounted to 54.5 thousand rubles per month. Moreover, in the group with the lowest indicators, constituting 10% of the total population, the income amounted to only 10.5 thousand rubles per month. “For reference, in the group of citizens with the highest incomes, which also makes up 10% of the total population, the income amounted to 165.7 thousand rubles per month,” said Maxim Osadchiy, head of the analytical department of BKF-Bank, noting that the income desired by Russians perishing as something strongly far from reality. However, this sociological phenomenon has a scientific explanation. In surveys about desired incomes, men and women start from different benchmarks. “The results of the survey indicate that women are generally more optimistic than men, and in the case of Russian women, the factor of overestimated hopes for the future also plays a role,” Valery Yemelyanov, an expert on the stock market at BCS Mir Investments, explains the figures. – In such surveys, when people answer about a “comfortable level of income”, men take it literally and remember how much they actually spent in a month when they personally felt comfortable. Women have a fundamentally different approach. They name an amount that could cover (but which they do not have) all their needs, as well as the needs of the family, often including not only children, but also parents. Hence the dissonance.

If you look at these figures literally, then Yemelyanov believes that these are absolutely unrealistic requests. 250 thousand per month “clean” ($ 3300) is the average salary of a resident of the Netherlands or Norway. There is a completely different scale of prices than in Russia. And these countries are in the top 10 most prosperous on the planet. An income of 100 thousand rubles ($1300) is a more realistic estimate, at the level of the average income of residents of Estonia or Slovenia. But even this amount is twice the real average salary in Russia. In other words, again, this is a fantasy about how much women would like to have, but do not yet have and do not quite understand how and what they would spend these amounts in real life, the expert is sure.

But there are analysts who consider the demands of women to be in perfect harmony with Russian reality. “It seems to me that the range of desired income of 100-250 thousand rubles found in the study is absolutely fair,” Alexander Razuvaev, a member of the Supervisory Board of the Guild of Financial Analysts and Risk Managers, enters into an argument. – It corresponds to the price realities. An evening for two in a good Moscow restaurant costs 10-15 thousand rubles. A weekend trip to a good park hotel in the Moscow region or a similar trip to Kazan or St. Petersburg for a couple will cost about 100 thousand rubles. If we go to an online dating site, we see that kept women there ask from 100,000 to 250,000 rubles a month.” At the same time, the analyst is sure that the beauty should not work. Next to her should be a man who financially provides for her. If a woman works somewhere in the office, then she gives off energy during the day and returns home already “devastated” in the evening, and if she only deals with her personal life, then she will have enough joyful emotions to share them with her beloved man, and this will only benefit the couple, Razuvaev is sure.

Despite the traditional nature of this view of the role of women in the family, it is perhaps one of the more realistic ways of obtaining the income women desire than any other. Calculations carried out by experts show that the ways Russians have indicated for gaining high earnings — finding additional jobs or starting their own business — have even less correlation with reality than the non-feminist approach described by the analyst. So, according to Yemelyanov, the harsh laws of economics and mathematics say that if a woman already has a job and she does not bring the desired 250 thousand (or 100 thousand for a third of the respondents), then each hour of her working time costs too little to be able to raise the income so high.

For example, let’s take a woman with a salary above the national average – 80 thousand rubles. For an ordinary 5-day week and a 22-day working month, such a woman earns 730 rubles per hour. Even if we double this rate to 1,460 rubles and load a woman for the remaining hours in a day to the limit (8 hours of main work, 8 hours for sleep, two for food, two more for family, travel, personal time), we will receive a maximum income for 4 hours of part-time work per day is approximately 5.8 thousand, per month – less than 130 thousand rubles.

You can add days off, but in practice, no one can work for a long time in this mode without rest. And two or three months of the “super sprint” will simply undermine the health and, rather, even worsen the woman’s finances: more money will be spent on recovery. As a result, as we can see, with a very strong tension, you can almost triple your income by working part-time. But usually such double rates are due to the fact that there are no permanent orders, and in fact there will be not 130 thousand, but 50-60 thousand rubles at best, with a basic salary of 80 thousand rubles, a maximum of up to 140 thousand rubles per amount.

The salary may be different, but the ratio is the same: a part-time job for that and a part-time job that it cannot increase income at times. Luckily, if at least 1.5 times. Otherwise (if you manage to earn more than your main job), the woman simply changes jobs, going freelance. It is quite realistic to switch from 80 thousand rubles to 150 thousand rubles, but there is a price ceiling for hired specialists on the market and now it fluctuates around 200 thousand rubles a month. More receive in leadership positions or narrow specialists.

As for business (33% of respondents), this is an even less realistic way. The statistics of the opening and closing of individual entrepreneurs and small LLCs quite clearly shows that in 2-3 years most of them (more than 90%) “die”. This happens especially often with newcomers who have not previously launched and run a business. As a result, this way to raise income is for those who already have experience in managing someone else’s business. And they are not 33% of the population. This is a very small part of the Russian population who already have a good income. And they go into their business for other reasons, not because of a lack of money, the expert emphasized. Thus, in order for women to achieve the desired level of income, they need to choose other strategies than working part-time or starting a business just for the sake of money.