Tell us how you think about money — I’ll post results next week

August 24 20 Comments latest by I Will Teach You To Be Rich » Help with analyzing data from survey?

When I started the series on women and personal finance, Kimble wrote, “I am a little skeptical that this is a series being done by someone who is an outside observer to the female-personal-finance realm.” She encouraged me to use data instead of making it up, so today I’m running her survey on the site.

Please take a couple minutes to answer this survey on how you think about money. I’ll post the results next week. **RSS readers, please click here.

Note: This survey is now closed.

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20 Comments latest by I Will Teach You To Be Rich » Help with analyzing data from survey?

Heroines of Personal Finance and Entrepreneurship #6: Barbara Stanny

August 23 16 Comments latest by Frank

Interview contributed by Cody McKibben –

Barbara Stanny is a powerful speaker who has devoted herself to transforming women’s relationship with money. She is the author of five books about personal finance and women in business, and working on a sixth! Barbara is the daughter of the late entrepreneur and philanthropist Richard A. Bloch, who co-founded H&R Block with his brother Henry in 1953. But her experience with her father and financial tragedy with her husband led her to make it her mission to empower women financially. She has since interviewed hundreds of women who make over six figures, taught innumerable clients how to get out of financial burden, and she even recently spoke at the WomenLead 2007 conference! Barbara is full of a lot of financial experience and wisdom. In the interview that follows, she shares a few great principles — in detail — and how you can apply them to your own financial life. Her answers are sure to both inspire you and surprise you.

Tell us about yourself and your background to start off. I’m curious how your father Richard influenced your financial education growing up?

I grew up wealthy, the daughter of the R of H&R Block. My father (being a product of his generation) truly believed that making and managing money was a man’s job. The only financial advice he ever gave me was “don’t worry.”

Now you’re someone who’s devoted much of your life to empowering women financially. You’ve said that financial enlightenment demands far more than just picking up a few facts here and there and buying a few stocks. Tell us about the psychological challenges that exist for women to reach financial competency.

I am convinced that the reason the vast majority of women are not protecting themselves financially, even though they know better, is because the Prince Charming Syndrome is alive and well. Prince Charming doesn’t need to be a man…it could be anything you think will save you…the lottery is a popular example. In order for women to get past their passivity and ignorance around money (they may be doing a little bit, but not saving/investing nearly enough), they must deal with their emotional blocks, limiting beliefs, irrational fears, and early decisions they made about themselves and money.

Your journey from financial dependence to independence was a defining transformation for you. How did that come about?

It came about because my husband was a compulsive gambler who lost a fortune of my money. After our divorce, I got tax bills for over a million dollars for back taxes he didn’t pay, illegal deals he got us in. I didn’t have the million dollars. My husband had left the country. My father wouldn’t lend me the money. I had three young daughters…I was not going to raise them on the street. That was the moment I knew I had to get smart about money. I had no idea how I was going to do it, but a miracle occurred. As a journalist, I was hired for a freelance writing project to interview women who were smart about money. Those interviews literally changed my life.

Right. For Secrets of Six Figure Women, you interviewed over 150 women who earn between $100K and $7 million a year. What lessons did you take from that experience?

I was a classic underearner. But I started earning six-figures before I even finished writing the book. The three biggest lessons were how critical it is to:

1. Have a profit motive;
2. Truly value yourself;
3. Be willing to be uncomfortable, to do what you don’t want to do.

What things did these high earners have in common, and how can female readers of IWillTeachYouToBeRich apply those things in their own lives to see their earnings increase?

I saw the exact same strategies show up in each and every one of the High Earner’s stories. Seven years ago, I began teaching a workshop based on what I learned from those women. My third book, Overcoming Underearning: a 5 Step Plan for a Richer Life, is based on over 200 interviews with women (and men) who had been through my workshops and saw a significant increase in their earnings. The steps are:

1. Tell the truth about what’s not working in your life, even if you don’t have a solution in sight;
2. Commit to making a profit;
3. Stretch, by doing what you’re scared to do;
4. Surround yourself with supportive people, and eliminate the naysayers from your life;
5. Respect and appreciate money by taking care of it. How? By following the 4 Rules: Spend Less, Save More, Invest Wisely, and Give Generously…in that order!

For your new book Finding a Financial Advisor You Can Trust, you say that money management can be overwhelming and how some people don’t have the time, knowledge, or skills to do it themselves. Explain your thoughts on this. Do you think most people can (or even should) be empowered to manage their own finances, or do you recommend a little more hands-off approach for some individuals?

My biggest surprise when interviewing financially successful women was how few of them were actually wealthy. In all my research, I have found that the women with the highest net worth were not necessarily the ones who made the most (or inherited it). They were the ones who worked (at least at some point) with financial advisors…and most had a team of professionals they consulted (i.e. estate lawyer, accountant, investment advisor, financial planner, etc.).

You also contributed recently to Breaking Through: Getting Past the Stuck Points In Your Life, and you worked alongside several fantastic female authors, leaders, and role models. Tell us about just a few of them and what you learned.

Breaking Through is an anthology. I contacted over 60 professional women with this question: How have you gotten past the stuck points in your life, or how have you helped others? I was so impressed with their responses…and I learned that 1) stuck points are inevitable, 2) stuck points need to be respected rather than resisted, and 3) stuck points have a purpose…they actually force you to grow. Often, just past the stuck point lies a significant breakthrough.

Any last thoughts you’d like to share?

I always thought the whole point of financial success was to have more money in the bank and greater security for the future. And indeed that is important. But what I learned from the women I interviewed, it wasn’t just how much money they had…it was what they were doing with their money once they felt financially secure and empowered. They were using their money to make a difference in the lives of people they loved, in causes they felt passionate about. Having an impact, I began to see, was the ultimate reward for creating wealth. Philanthropy is where the real fun and power lies!

I want to thank Barbara so much for sharing some of her very valuable time with us, and for the many ideas that we can apply to our own lives. Learn more about Barbara Stanny and her books, workshops, and coaching at BarbaraStanny.com, and keep an eye out for her next book, Women, Wealth, and Power.

Cody McKibben is a leadership blogger, web designer, and career instigator in California. He writes regularly at THRILLINGheroics.com.

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16 Comments latest by Frank

Heroines of Personal Finance and Entrepreneurship #5: Michelle Goodman

August 13 6 Comments latest by Abby

Interview contributed by Cody McKibben –

Michelle Goodman is a bold Seattle freelance writer who’s been working for herself for 15 years, contributing to Salon, Bust, Bitch, Bark, the Seattle Times, and the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Now she’s compiled the book she wished she’d found when she first started out on her own — The Anti 9-to-5 Guide: Practical Career Advice for Women Who Think Outside the Cube — to help wage slaves transition to flexible, alternative work, and help “cubicle expats,” as she calls them, avoid the mistakes she made early on in her self-employment. Today she talks with us about the book and about women in the workplace.

You just wrote a book called The Anti 9-to-5 Guide. What’s it all about?

The Anti 9-to-5 Guide is about working outside the typical mind-numbing 9-to-5 office grind. In the first part of the book, I tell people how to figure out what they want to do instead, research a new career path or business idea, network like crazy, and infiltrate an industry they have no experience in. In the second part, I tell people how to find and negotiate flextime and telecommuting work, start your own business, work from home without losing your mind, survive as a temp, move from corporate to nonprofit work, and work overseas, outdoors, or in a male-dominated trade. I wanted to cover as many nontraditional career paths for women as I could, from freelance writing to firefighting to flying to Japan to teach English for a couple of years.

Your book is geared specifically toward women. You say it “shows women weary of the corporate hamster wheel a better way to make a buck.” Why just women? Are there issues specific to women that made you write about them?

The easy answer is that my publisher, Seal Press, only does books for women. That’s their niche. I had been writing articles on the topic for indie women’s publications like Bust and Bitch, as well as a special women’s section for the Seattle Times, so Seal Press seemed like a natural fit.

That said, I wanted to do a career book aimed at women because we do have unique challenges in the workforce that men don’t necessarily have to deal with: the wage gap, the glass ceiling, the mommy track and mommy wage gap. Given all that, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that women start businesses at twice the rate of men. And study after study shows women more likely than men to want, ask for, and take flexible work options (alternate schedules and telecommuting), probably because we’re still the primary caregivers for kids and elderly relatives in society. I will say that 95% of the book’s contents apply to men, though, and I’ve heard from many men who’ve enjoyed and gotten a lot out of the advice in the book.

What about young women? How does age factor into the equation?

Twenty-something and thirty-something women have far more of an entrepreneurial spirit than their parents ever did, partly because it’s such an at-will employment workforce these days, and partly because we saw Boomer women (often, our moms) working their asses off trying to prove they could have it all and burning out. After witnessing Enron after Enron go down in flames, and friend after friend get laid off, the message is now loud and clear: It doesn’t matter how dedicated an employee you are — companies are only out for themselves. So why work your butt to the bone like your mom did when you know you stand a decent chance of not getting a company healthcare or retirement plan and of winding up on unemployment any given month of the year?

Instead, younger women are all about quality of life. A job is a job — it’s not a way of life. I wrote the book for women who are starting to suspect this, or have already come to realize this. I wanted to tell them all I could about all the alternative ways of working I’ve tried over the years, from stringing together a handful of part-time gigs, to temping, to working a flex schedule or telecommuting for a corporation, to working for myself.

The younger you are, and the less encumbered you are by kids, partner, and mortgage, the easier it is to try some of the less conventional ways of working — especially working overseas and starting your own business. You’re not tied down by location quite so much, and you’re able to take more financial risks without worrying if you’ll be able to clothe and feed your kids six months down the line.

I know you’ve spent a lot of time interviewing women freelancers and what you call “mompreneurs.” What insights have they taught you, and what differences exist for women in these different settings?

The other self-employed women I talked to — freelancers and business owners alike — confirmed that many of my experiences and philosophies about working for myself are pretty universal. A big overriding theme in all the interviews was, No matter how shitty a week I’m having (perhaps a cash-cow customer cancelled a big order, or all your computers up and died), I’d still rather be working for myself than back working for the man — even if it means sometimes working longer days or dealing with headaches I used to be able to make accounts payable, the resident geek, or customer service handle.

The mompreneurs who run businesses out of their homes taught me that my multitasking challenges are nothing compared to trying to juggle five client deadlines with five hungry kids. Suddenly, having to schedule a daily walk or two with my dog, evening plans with friends, and half a dozen editors pinging me for information on any given day seems like a cakewalk.

The biggest differences you see with employees vs. entrepreneurs (including freelancers) is that unless they have flextime or telecommuting privileges, employees who are moms feel very under the gun to get everything done. It’s hard to get all those mom duties squared away before and after hours — even if you have a domestic partner to help.

One benefit that employees have over entrepreneurs/freelancers, though, is that because they’re not working for their own company, they have an easier time compartmentalizing work. Unless you’re in one of those industries where you’re married to the job (law, medicine, software development), when you clock out, it’s totally Miller time. Your evenings are yours and yours alone, so you put up your feet and relax. Whereas the freelancer or indie business owner feels more like a student during finals — the work is never done, and if you’re not good at compartmentalizing, you might feel like there’s always something hanging over your head.

Ramit writes about personal finances for young people, but only about 20% of his readers are women. Why do you think this is? What can he do to improve the balance of his readers?

I think this is sad. But I know that women are still less likely than men to get a grip on their money as soon as they could. Many of us dread negotiations — as if asking for what we’re worth will sound boastful or make you unlikeable — so we don’t always make as much money as we should or could. We’re also taught that talking about money is uncouth, which is a twisted way of thinking that does not help at all when it comes to negotiating salary, getting a grip on your checkbook, or learning what it means to invest. I’m talking in generalizations here, but women are nurturing to a fault; we’re likely to put everyone else — friends, family, kids, boss — before ourselves. And that factors into not getting our money — essentially our livelihood and security — straight from an early age.

This isn’t going to be a very popular thing for a feminist to say, but there are still an awful lot of Gen-X women out there who think that their financial life will begin when they shack up or get married and have someone to pool their resources with (someone hopefully more financially savvy than them). But that’s a pretty big unknown. You may not get married. Or you may get married much later in life. Or you may marry and then lose your spouse one way or another and still have to fend for yourself. Or you may marry someone who’s a total financial mess. For the record, I’m 39 and have never been married. And yeah, I didn’t get my shit together financially till I was in my thirties. I have my divorced mom — who didn’t learn her way around investments until becoming single in her forties — to thank for forcing me to get my financial life together.

I’d like to see some female guest bloggers write articles for women about retirement (women are more likely to be impoverished in their golden years than men), homeownership (single women are the largest segment of the population buying homes), saving and investing, merging our finances with those of a domestic partner, paying down consumer debt (women have a lot of shopping-related debt!), and so on. I suspect that female “experts” will be able to nail the female psychology — and the “Girlfriend, let me tell you how it really is” tone a bit more.

Thanks Michelle! Head over to Anti9to5Guide.com to follow Michelle’s great blog, where she shares research and profiles of women who are doing it! And you can buy The Anti 9-to-5 Guide: Practical Career Advice for Women that Think Outside the Cube at Powell’s Books or at Amazon.com.

Cody McKibben is a blogger, web designer, and career instigator in Sacramento, California. He blogs about leadership and innovation at THRILLINGheroics.com.

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