When was the last time you judged your friends for their poor spending choices?

Yet each time we judge others’ spending, we’re less likely to actually look at our own spending and do something about it. And just as your friends probably overspend on “ridiculous” things, so do you.

Today, I’ll illustrate several examples of how hypocritical we are in judging others’ spending. So come along — but hold on, because we’re going to be looking in the mirror for much of the ride.

“I can’t believe she spent THAT MUCH on her wedding…”

Which is fine! Unlike other boring personal-finance pundits, who delusionally lecture you to have a small wedding (when you won’t), I’m a big fan of spending extravagantly on the things you love, if you cut costs mercilessly on the things you don’t. (Hint: If you’re 20 years old, you need to be saving $333/month for your wedding. 25 years old? $1,167/month.)

And yet, there are always people who will judge you for your spending choices.

Introducing the most annoying people on the planet

On the wedding post, there was a group of commenters that were some of the most annoying people I’ve ever heard from:

“$28,000 for a wedding is absurd. Most weddings end in divorce, why start your marriage financially cramped by a wedding? Yes, I realize you can plan to save that $28,000 in advance. However, wouldn’t it be more sensible to use that money for a down payment on a home (instant equity!). Or, to buy outright a late model used car? Just a few thoughts.”

“28k for a wedding is utterly ridiculous The key is to NOT invite everyone you know. I spent about $2500 TOTAL on my wedding 4 years ago. Yes, you read that right…What a complete waste of money to spend 28k on one day! What about saving that money for the rest of your life?”

“Wow, I don’t know where morons that spend $28K on weddings buy the stuff to do it, but I’ve got some left over paper plates I can sell you for $100 each.”

You can find these annoying people criticizing others’ spending on virtually every post on weddings.

Each of these people made it their mission to point out how “ridiculous” it is to spend $28,000, or $10,000, or even $2,000 for a wedding. ‘It’s outrageous! I did it for $100! Stop wasting your money,’ they angrily write.

But there’s just one thing…

They’re all hypocrites.

What would they say if I examined their spending? In fact, here’s a new rule:

Give me your budget and 10 minutes on the phone and I could identify 20% of your money being “wasted” on something useless and unnecessary.

Now, an exploration on how hypocritical we all are about money.

We’re hypocrites for judging our friends’ spending

When you judge others for their spending, you automatically assign YOUR values to them without even recognizing it. You think spending money on clothes, or first-class airfare, or expensive jewelry is wasteful? What about your own spending?

“That is just stupid. Unless the clothes are broken, there is no need to return it. If it is the wrong size, it can be exchanged for the right size.

PS: I hate the mentality of people buying clothes for “fashion” or whatever. You are buying $100 for something that costs $10 dollars to manufacture in China!

And about fashion trends – it is wasteful and stupid. If last season/year’s clothes are not broken, there is no need to buy new ones. Jeezz. As for “brand name” clothes – wake the fuck up.”

Yes, I’m sure your computers and new XBOX and 30″ LED TV are so important, too.

You think it’s ridiculous to buy $100 clothes? Let’s go beyond the knee-jerk reaction to understand what’s actually going on here.

• What if your friend who buys expensive clothes makes twice as much as you (say, $120,000)? Is it “wasteful and stupid” then?
• What if your friends don’t eat out as often as you, but they love buying a new shirt every month because it makes them feel good?
• What if you live in the midwest, but your friend lives in Manhattan? How does that change things?
• What if you’re 25 and your friend is 29? How does that change things?

Judging others’ spending is emotional, not rational

Think back to the last time you judged someone else for spending. Maybe you heard how much your friend pays for his apartment, or overheard your co-worker talking about yet another weekend vacation.

When we judge others’ spending, we do it emotionally, not rationally. Let’s say you hear that your friend is going on a trip to Vegas and staying in the Bellagio for $800/night. Do you consciously evaluate his income, age, spending patterns, priorities, and debt levels? Of course not. We simply say, “Wow, I couldn’t imagine spending $800/night on a hotel room. Therefore, his spending is RIDICULOUS!”

When it comes to judging spending, we consistently demonize others’ spending while rationalizing our own.

Ironically, if you went back in time and asked yourself of 5 years ago if he could imagine spending what you spend on food/clothes/travel today, the younger you would scoff and think your modern-day spending would be “ridiculous,” too. What do you think you’ll be doing 5 years from now?

But if someone dared point out your own spending on something — say, a new Macbook because your old one was “slow” — you’d have a multitude of reasons to justify it. “My old one was slow…and this one is important for my productivity…and I need it to run the new software I want, and….”

This pattern repeats itself in virtually every article on others spending money online:

In a terrific New York Times article on redecorating on a budget, a newlywed couple budgets $2,000 to renovate their apartment.

“$2000 is more than I’ve had to spend on decorating my entire house for the past four years. Decorating on a budget? How about $500 or less…”

“I made handsome, one-of-a-kind pillows, by taking embroidered dresses my brother purchased in the Middle East, that our mother never wore, and made covers for pillows I had tired of. (I didn’t even have to buy blank stuffers). ANY fabric store has even high-end design-house remnants that would be suitable and CHEAP.”

“How many newlyweds can afford to spend this kind of money on revamping their apartment?…I would rather put that money in a savings account for a house, or put it away for a nice vacation.”

Notice the presumptuous commenters condemning the couple for spending on their home decorations, and suggesting that their way — making pillows by hand or putting the money away for a vacation — is “better.”

Again, give me these comments’ budgets and 10 minutes on the phone, and I could identify hundreds of dollars per month that they’re “wasting” — according to my tastes. Yet few people — even those who lob financial judgments at others — would ever subject themselves to scrutiny of the same kind.

What is going on here? Are these people simply angry or jealous at hearing about other people spending on items they consider luxuries? Or is there something more going on?

In few other areas of our lives are we so adamant about us being “right” and others being “wrong,” particularly since most of us are terrible at managing our own money. When you dig deeper, you’ll discover the fascinating psychology of self-serving biases and other psychological mechanisms we use to judge others — but protect ourselves.

The psychology of judging others

The first phenomenon in judging others is called a “self-serving bias,” which we use to protect ourselves from judgment:

A self-serving bias occurs when people attribute their successes to internal or personal factors but attribute their failures to situational factors beyond their control…For example, a student who gets a good grade on an exam might say, “I got an A because I am intelligent and I studied hard!” whereas a student who does poorly on an exam might say, “The teacher gave me an F because he does not like me!”

If your friend buys a $500 coat, you might say, “That’s nuts…Jack is really bad at managing his money. He can’t even control his spending!” But when I asked you about the $500 coat in your jacket, you might say, “Oh, that’s because I had to go to a wedding last month.”

Second, we employ the Fundamental Attribution Error to judge others:

In social psychology, the fundamental attribution error…describes the tendency to over-value dispositional or personality-based explanations for the observed behaviors of others while under-valuing situational explanations for those behaviors.

In other words, “She bought those Jimmy Choos because she’s financially irresponsible” instead of “She bought those Jimmy Choos because she recently earned more money or negotiated her salary.” When judging others, we believe people make decisions because of WHO they are, rather than the SITUATION they’re in.

Third, we use the powerful strategy of downward social comparison:

Downward social comparison is a defensive tendency to evaluate oneself with a comparison group whose troubles are more serious than one’s own. This tends to occur when threatened people look to others who are less fortunate than themselves…For example, a breast cancer patient may have had a lumpectomy, but sees herself as better off than another patient who lost her breast

Wondering where you’ve seen this? Turn on any talk show or radio show. Try to monitor your emotions during the episode. You might notice your internal voice saying something like, “Oh yeah, I have $5,000 in credit card debt…but at least I don’t have $45,000 debt like that guy. This actually feels good — one of the chief reasons that talk shows and Money Diaries do so well. Yet the feeling of satisfaction is short-lived.

Fourth, we have the Shrug Effect:

We see a famous CEO and point how “he took 5 companies public and got a Harvard MBA.” We see a successful children’s book author and point out how she already knew 4 publishers, so her book got published immediately. We point to Donald Trump and talk about how he had billions, so of course he could buy half of Manhattan, and we note that we’re already older than Michael Dell was when he was running Dell out of his dorm room.

And then we shrug. “What can we do?” “She has a Harvard MBA.” “They made it big, but they’re different than me.”

You see someone spending a lot of money on something that you consider “crazy.” Instead of trying to figure it out, we often shrug and say, “Well, they have [SOME ADVANTAGE YOU DON'T HAVE] and that’s how they do it. There’s no way I could ever do that.” Since this is psychologically painful and difficult, we demonize their behavior. Easier than understanding it.

A prime example: Demonizing a CEO for her spending experiment

Let’s examine a recent example of this.

Alexa Von Tobel, the CEO of a personal-finance site called Learnvest, wrote an article called, “How I Went 24 Hours Without Spending Any Money…In New York City.” (Interestingly, the article is now gone, and so is the Google cache. You’ll see why in a second. Fortunately, I grabbed a screenshot before it was taken down. )

Now, it may not have been the most tactful article, especially in this economic climate. In fact, the tone was somewhat condescending. But I intentionally chose this extreme example to make a point.

The problem is that Americans hate people who write about how they spend money on anything that’s not directly focused on the bare necessities of living.

The one wedding day of your life? You’re spending too much. Taking a luxurious vacation that you saved up for? You could feed 2,000 foreign children. Buying a couch for your living room? You should invest that in your Roth IRA.

How do you think people responded to Alexa’s article? Did they make thoughtful comments on the economy or different ways to earn money? Of course not. Commenters from around the web were absolutely livid.

On Shrug Effect.

A better way to approach the question would be to acknowledge that she probably has a few advantages you don’t, but focus on the things she DOES control — which you can learn from. For example, you could stipulate that yes, she likely has some advantages in life (maybe wealthy parents, some inheritance money, whatever)…but focus on the things you can control. She started her own company. She made friends with XYZ. She got internships at XYZ, which led her to XYZ2.

If you want to live her lifestyle, it pays to ask: How could she be earning SO MUCH that she could afford to take cabs every day? What is she doing that I don’t know about? Who can I talk to to learn more? How can I earn more money?

To many people, this is too much work. It’s easier to throw your hands up, accuse her of being a rich trust-fund kid, and then feel better about yourself since you don’t waste money on cabs every day. Witness virtually every comment accusing the writer of being wasteful and spending outlandish amounts of money on food and other supposedly wasteful items.

It’s much harder to actually consider the details of the situation. For example, one Reddit commenter notes that, “Often very highly paid workers have very little free time so it makes sense to spend some money to buy back some time, such as getting in a cab to get somewhere quicker.” Instead of criticizing her spending, wouldn’t it be more productive to ask, “Damn, this woman obviously makes a lot more money than I do. How did she do it and what can I apply to my situation?”

We’re more than happy to criticize others’ spending. Yet few people ever try to ask themselves what they can learn from someone whose spending outpaces their own — and even fewer open up their own finances to such scrutiny.

A huge caveat: Most people are terrible with their money

There is one upside to judging others’ spending: Since most people are absolutely terrible at managing their own money, when you judge them, you’re probably right.

An excerpt from my personal finance book:

Yet it’s gone from being annoying to fascinating: You can get true insights into people’s belief systems about money by watching what they say.

1. When I launched my Earn1k course to help people earn more money, I got many comments about how crazy others would be to spend money on my course — and how dare I charge for an online course.
2. A while back, Henry Blodget wrote a a semi-satirical article on the Huffington Post called “Easiest Job on Planet: Bank CEO. And in a separate thread, internet commenters took the bait, writing that being a bank CEO is all about luck and secret connections. This is classic Shrug Effect from armchair businesspeople who have never run a company. Even more interestingly, the comments reveal several limiting beliefs about money, such as “money=evil” and “anyone who has money must have done something bad to get it.”
3. Another personal finance blogger, FMF, wrote a guest post about making 6 figures in 7 years. The result? People hated him. Themes include jealousy, “not everyone can do it,” excuses like “I’m too old,” and “Yeah, but $100k means you hate your job.” Funny, few people say, “Wow, this guy did a lot of hard work to earn six figures and now he’s writing a free blog post to share how he did it. What can I take away from this to improve my life?” Easier to criticize others’ spending — or earning — rather than do something different in our own lives.
4. Erica Douglass, who sold her company for over $1 million at age 26, writes about outsourcing part of her life. The commenters go nuts, accusing her of being irresponsible with her money, racist, and virtually every other financial criciticism you can imagine.

What can you learn from judging other people’s spending?

First, when you judge other people for poor spending, you’re probably right, since most people are horrible at managing your money. This judgment is profoundly rewarding — and also wasteful — since we employ psychological techniques to distort our judgments in favor of our own spending. Think back to the last time you gossiped about a friend’s new pair of shoes or iPhone: It felt good for a few minutes. But it didn’t produce any positive behavioral change for you to change your spending.

Second, it’s easy to judge others, but hard to honestly evaluate our own spending. When we judge others, we assign “dispositional” reasons like, “He is just really bad at managing his money.” But when it comes to ourselves, we use “situational” explanations like, “It’s my birthday…I deserve it!”

Third, you WILL go up the hedonic treadmill and increase your spending as you earn more money — it’s only natural. When we judge someone else, we rarely take their income, savings, and other largely invisible factors into account.

Fourth, in America, we have a special hatred of people who earn significant amounts of money — especially when they fall from grace. If someone earns $250,000/year and spends $10,000/year on clothes, is it really “ridiculous”? In the above examples, you saw numerous examples of people earning six figures, spending on things that were very much in their reach — but people criticize without context.

Fifth, judging others is toxic. It’s not enough for us to make money — as a University of Texas researcher writes Psychology Today, “What makes me happy is that I make more money than you. It isn’t enough just to make a lot of money, you need to make more than the people to whom you compare yourself.”

But judging others goes even deeper. Have you ever noticed that co-worker who always complains about his boss, job, salary, etc? Think back to the last time you sat next to him — did you start complaining, too? Soon afterward, you feel worse about yourself. This negative emotion is the same thing that happens when you listen to a radio host skilled at evoking your emotions. You get outraged, you get angry….and the short-term emotion retards long-term behavioral change — it literally robs you of energy.

Judging others’ spending is a natural phenomenon. It’s also destructive and wastes time focusing on others, when you could focus on yourself.

About to judge someone’s spending? First, use this 5-step process

Whenever you find yourself about to judge someone else’s spending, ask these simple 5 questions first.

1. How much do they earn?
2. How much do they save, on a percentage and absolute basis?
3. What do they consciously spend on and what do they NOT care about spending on?
4. How long will they be keeping this purchase? (For example, are they buying a car to keep it for 10+ years? Or are they buying shoes to keep for one season?)
5. MOST IMPORTANT: Are my own finances automated and optimized? If not, automate your personal finances and implement the STFUDF Technique — against yourself.

Since few people will do this, my hope is that you’ll distract yourself enough to stop the insidious process of judging someone else before looking at yourself.

Personally, I’ve been trying to get better at this recently. To do so, I have to remind myself that personal finance is personal. You don’t know your friends’ financial situations — although they are likely not very good. But each time we judge someone else, we make it less likely of taking action on our own finances.

Earn more money: My Earn1k course to help you earn your first $1,000 on the side.

No, it’s not simply a love of talking about large breasts. Check out the cover of last month’s Glamour. Bottom-left corner.

Aww yeah.

Below, I’ve embedded the article itself. But this isn’t just to point out how Scarlett and I are destined to be together.

Notice how my content has been translated for a female audience. Same material, but it’s completely different than the way I write. It reminds me of some of my previous articles on prior guest post on women and money, specifically an article on how women’s magazines and men’s magazines write about money.

Below, click “Fullscreen” to read this:

Can’t see the embedded file? Click here.

More reading

• See my other press appearances
• See an extremely detailed interview on how I get press coverage

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What would you do to get an $8,000 raise?

I taught my friend how to negotiate an $8,000 increase in salary and a 50% boost in equity in 4 hours. And this was after she’s committed the cardinal sin of negotiating: revealing what her salary expectations were.

This is the kind of thing we all know we “should” do…but we don’t do it. Even though we can get the information for “free” online. Hmm….

In this video, learn how to:

• Negotiate with an experienced recruiter
• Rebound after you undercut yourself
• Why reading a negotiation book is not enough
• Know when to be adversarial and when to be cooperative

This video is probably worth $3,000 – $10,000 for my average reader IF YOU IMPLEMENT IT AND IMPLEMENT IT CORRECTLY.

Oh yeah…I have more videos on negotiation (thanks to Chris Whitmore for filming/editing).

Get more negotiation videos: For detailed videos of EXACT phrases, situations, and tactics for dealing with tough recruiters and intimidating executives, join the Boot Camp pre-launch list. Do it today because I’m closing it down soon.

This post is part of a series on How To Negotiate. For more articles on negotiation skills and techniques, go to the index page, or follow the links below.

« How Todd made $13,000 in 5 months, doubled his salary, and turned down a $25,000 raise

How To Negotiate

Stephen T. was scared of calling companies, calls them, negotiates fees successfully»

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…is the phenomenal New York Times article written about how a woman named Diane McLeod got into thousands of dollars of debt. It’s remarkable because it includes a rich set of multimedia features that let you understand how many of us get into so much debt — and also allow you to compare yourself to others. They include:

• An overview article: Given a Shovel, Americans Dig Deeper Into Debt
• A timeline of debt from the 1920s until now
• A haunting video of Diane McLeod. Just watch her attitude and how her debt affects her.
• 700+ comments from people (I suggest sorting by Readers’ Recommendations). The condemnation is both enlightening and saddening. We seem to take pleasure in seeing other people’s pain (“She could have made better choices…Idon’t buy all that crap”) and yet, some of it is very true. I agree with most of the comments about the evilness of credit-card companies, and yet, we do have choices.
• A tool that lets you compare how much debt you have with others like you

Want to watch it all? Click here to start.

Here’s my take: On one hand, we all know people like Diane, who make poor financial decisions, never take the time to get educated about money, and sink into a hole of financial quicksand. These people are easy to judge because they have all the visible signs of financial stupidity: New cars every two years, expensive high-definition TVs, vacations, houses they can’t afford. And yet, on the other hand, financial institutions, advertising, and social influence have all coordinated an attack on us to spend more. In fact, we’ve been told for decades that owning a house is the single-best financial decision we can make. It’s not.

Is education the answer? Maybe, but it’s not a panacea.

Should we just stop spending so much? Of course we should, but that’s like saying we should all lose weight by making better choices. Easy to say, extremely difficult to do. I’m hopeful that the current environment calls for a restructuring of our priorities. I hope that we get conscious about our spending and start prioritizing saving over spending. With extended hardship, this will become more likely. We all need to be conscious of our finances, but we’re playing in a world with the deck stacked against us.

I’m tired of demonizing people for making poor spending decisions. It might make you feel good about yourself, but it doesn’t actually change behavior.

And fundamentally, that’s what this site is about. It’s not about making people feel better about themselves by looking down at other people. It’s about getting behavioral change. In that vein, the 557 examples of changes people have made as a result of reading this site are probably my biggest success.

I fully expect lots of commenters to brag about how you got out of debt by making hard choices (just as they annoyingly bragged about their inexpensive weddings in the comments of this post). That’s great. But I’m sick of those comments that tell people to “just spend less.” Not everyone can stop spending 30% of their money on going out, because a lot of people don’t have that extra money.

There’s nuance to these arguments that’s missed by idiots who blather about how we should all “make better choices” and “start being responsible.” Of course we should, and if you’re reading this blog, you’re already doing this. But there are details that are missed by such superficial statements.

Here’s what I suggest: Read the New York Times article. Then, read the 152 comments from other iwillteachyoutoberich readers about how they got into debt. That’s 67 pages of startlingly honest stories, most of them having to do with educational loans. Then, I would encourage you to carve out some time for two resources to understand some of the nuances of why many people — especially poor people — can’t get ahead. Here are two resources I fully recommend:

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

Also, check out 30 Days of Working Minimum Wage, a video in which Morgan Spurlock (who brought you Super Size Me) and his girlfriend work minimum wage. Sure, it’s gimmicky, but it’s a truly eye-opening movie that provides insights on why it’s nearly impossible to get ahead if you’re earning a certain income.

I’d love to hear your comments.

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I was having breakfast with someone today who told me the most interesting story. He had been dating his girlfriend for two years before they talked about finances. “It took me that long to get her trust,” he said. She was a public school teacher, so she didn’t make that much money. When he looked at her finances, he noticed that she had a lot of overdraft fees. He asked her to guess how much she had spent in overdraft fees. “About $100 or $200?” she guessed.

It turns out that her overdraft fees totaled $1,300 in the last year.

Here’s where it gets really interesting. He didn’t freak out or start yelling about how to negotiate out of bank fees. He simply pointed out something very gently: “What if you could focus on your overdrafts? If you eliminated just that fee, you’d be so much better off.”

Not set up an entire investment plan and global asset allocation. Not create a fully automated system with multiple accounts and savings strategies. Just focus on one big problem.

Now the question is…what’s your one big problem?

(Mine is eating out too much.)

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I read Oprah’s magazine once in a while. Yes, I said it. And my jaw drops when I see an article like the recent, “25 things you don’t have to worry about.” What? Why do I need a magazine to tell me what I don’t need to worry about?

But I’m not the target audience. It turns out men and women’s magazines are very different in the way they present money. Whether that’s good or bad is the subject of a guest post by Nina Smith from Queercents. I love how she’s used excerpts to point out the differences in how men’s and women’s magazines write about money.

-Ramit

* * *

Investment advice comes in all shapes and sizes. Grab a few back issues of Esquire and a quick scan of its “investing” columns reveals “investing” advice. For example, they give opinions on buying Wal-Mart, selling Apple, and buying the Baby Bells vs. Cable Companies.

But do the same with O, the Oprah Magazine and this is what the editors categorize as “investing”:

• How to buy life insurance
• The basics of financial planning and investing
• Home finance basics everyone should know
• Know how much home you can afford
• How to play rollover with your 401(k)

So here’s my Aha! moment: why do men get “investing” advice in their magazines and we get financial basics in ours?

Women get touchy-feely encouragement
Suze Orman is an O Magazine columnist and typically I like her advice. She’s spot on when it comes to buying a used car and term life insurance. But when speaking to women, is she talking down to us?

Case in point: look at what she says about establishing a rainy day fund in this O article. She writes, “Ideally, you will have eight months of living expenses stashed in a savings account. I know that sounds daunting, but make it a goal. Start putting away a little each month. Every penny you save is a step toward building your own personal insurance plan.”

Ahem… “I know that sounds daunting but make it a goal.”

Would a male personal finance expert ever instruct a man this way?

Men get hard-hitting advice
Ken Kurson, the columnist at Esquire and author of The Green Magazine Guide to Personal Finance: A No B.S. Money Book for Your Twenties and Thirties writes, “You’re keeping your emergency cash in a money market fund. In other words, don’t fund the expansion of your portfolio into stocks and bonds with the money you’re keeping on reserve, but feel free to consider that money part of your portfolio.”

See the difference? First let’s consider the demographics of O Magazine: The median age is 45, readership is predictably female (91%), married (66%), and a median household income of $88,000. Their readers aren’t exactly females fresh out of college.

So Orman is encouraging forty year old women to make sure they have an emergency fund and Kurson assumes twentysomething guys already have a stash in reserve. Perhaps this is why CNBC gets Jim Cramer and The Today Show has Jean Chatzky.

A commenter at BloggingStocks had this analysis of Orman’s writings by saying, “When someone is talking to me about money, I want math. I bought one of Suze’s books and when she started talking about how I ‘felt’ about my money, I put the book down in disgust. Behavior patterns as applied to money fall under psychology; everything else is quantifiable. I don’t need to have a good relationship with my money; I need to understand how the stock market, the housing market and my 401K work.”

Gender-specific behaviors with money
But do female money experts talk down to us or are we inviting the tone by behavior? After all, according to Manisha Thakor and Sharon Kedar, authors of On My Own Two Feet, the average woman between ages 24 and 35 has only $500 in savings.

Woman’s Day acts like their readers only have $500 in savings as well and I don’t know any women under fifty subscribing to that magazine. Mary Hunt is their columnist and a quick glance at her 2007 columns reveal topics like “Big Online Bargains” and “Slash Your Food Bills”.

Kay Bell, the blogger at Don’t Mess with Taxes, gives her perception on the male vs. female financial behaviors. She writes, “Even today, some gender-specific societal expectations manage to persist… That is, a lot of women take a more ‘supportive’ fiscal approach, focusing on money maintenance, holding on to what they have, instead of taking steps to advance it.”

“We need to get over that right now and get more aggressive when it comes to money – making it, saving it, investing it. The go-for-it approach seems to be more typical of male financial bloggers. Men, at least in my anecdotal observations, are more apt to be risk takers with their money. They embrace the idea that to make more money you sometimes have to take some financial risks with what you’ve got.”

And it’s not just Oprah
I couldn’t find any money advice in InStyle magazine, but they offer plenty of ideas on how to spend it. Glamour claims to have a money expert, but the only thing I could find was an online debt quiz. Take it and see how you stack up with their readers. If you’re a regular follower of personal finance blogs then it’s likely you’re way of ahead of these well-heeled and in style consumers.

Just to be fair and balanced, I reviewed some other men’s magazines and money was either missing or sexualized and presented by young, attractive female writers. Check out the article by Anya Kamenetz in Men’s Health called, 7 Financial Habits of Highly Laid Men. Enough said – otherwise this might segue into a different discussion.

But maybe money is missing from general interest magazines because men go to the source for their financial advice by subscribing to the money periodicals. As an example here is the male / female readership break down for Fortune and Money:

Money: Male/Female (64% / 36%)
Fortune: Male/Female (79% / 21%)

And guess who is reading The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times?

Money spends the same whether it’s carried in a purse or wallet
So does tone and depth of the advice really matter? In the end, money is money and basic truths are better than nothing at all. But if empowerment and financial independence are what Suze Orman wants for the ladies, then maybe it’s time to butch up the advice. Don’t sugarcoat or wrap it in a soft, pretty package. We’re ready to take it like a man! That’s how you turn women savers into women investors!

Finally, for the sake of starting a conversation below, do you agree that women get fed the softer side of money from women’s magazines? Or will some of you accuse me of gender-generalizing? If you agree, then what should we do about it? Write to Oprah? Or just subscribe to Fortune and Money like the big boys?

—————
Nina blogs about money at Queercents.

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There’s an interesting discussion happening in the comments of last week’s post about gender and money. As usual, the comments make me think that this site has the best readers in the world.

(Cool note: This weekend, I Will Teach You To Be Rich crossed 7,000 comments.)

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Digg this!

Thanks to the 35+ comments on the last post, Rob from BankSwitcher (“Switching banks is hard…we make it easier”) was kind enough to re-analyze the data from my survey on gender and money (n=1,167).

Below, you’ll see red highlighting around areas where there are dramatic gender differences. For example:

• Slide 10: Guess who negotiates their salary more?
• Slide 12: Indulgences by gender
• Slide 16: Feelings towards money are dramatically different
• Slide 19: What personal-finance topics do men vs. women prefer?
• Slide 25: Absolutely staggering differences in perceptions of equal pay

Digg this!

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