Financial Freak Out

Women can invest, save and handle

debt just as well and skillfully as any man.

Why would anyone think otherwise?

Even if you already have a personal shopper on speed dial or you’re sitting

on a private jet whisking you to Napa right now, you still can’t just leave all

the financial planning and organization up to a man. Every one of us needs

to focus on the money. This is the great dividing line that separates smart

girls from the rest. So you gotta get a grip.

A Girl We Know

Stella is a married woman who runs her own endowment fund. She raises

and invests millions of dollars every month. But she’s in trouble with her

student loans and has a credit card her husband knows nothing about, with a balance of almost $25,000.

She actually has the cash in her personal investment account to clear the

card, but for some unknown reason she just ignores it.

In 2007, financial guru Suze Ormon hit a nerve with her eighth book,

Women and Money. Up to that point, Ormon focused on basic financial

strategies with no emphasis on either gender. Then she noticed a disturbing

trend of women actively ignoring their own financial welfare. She noted

that these gals were “clueless . . . or in some cases willingly resist-ing doing

what they [needed to do].”

The big surprise to Ormon was that these were “smart, competent,

accomplished women,” not silly, self-absorbed nitwits. She dug a little

deeper and found that even some of her closest girlfriends were hiding their

fear of finances.

Ormon has dubbed it, “the unknown factor that prevents them from doing

the right thing with their money.”

A Girl We Know About

Terri is a single girl who works as an actress and leases a sweet BMW. She

hasn’t paid personal income taxes in three years. She says she’s just

“running late.” She has kept virtually no records of her various jobs and

has no idea where to begin.

All those numbers make her feel dizzy. She is, however, impec-cably

groomed and usually well-organized. She hasn’t missed her scheduled

Thursday manicure in seven years.

Maybe for some women it’s a fear of the unknown; Ormon wonders if

maybe it isn’t a little streak of rebellion for holding it together in every

other part of their lives. Or perhaps it’s just that things had gotten so far out

of hand, they’re embarrassed.

Ormon must’ve struck upon something because her book sold like hotcakes.

Could it be that more than a few gals are struggling to get over this

“unknown factor”? Suze Ormon’s popularity has helped propel her to the

kind of international celebrity seldom bestowed upon financial advisors.

She now has her own talk show and has been named one of Time

Magazine’s Top 100 Most Influential People.

A Girl We Didn’t Know

She was an heiress. She grew up spoiled by opulence, learning all the rules

of etiquette but none of balancing a checkbook.

Towards the end of her life, she lived in a hotel, where stalkers would

snatch her jewels while she sat in the lounge. She had once been one of the richest women on earth. She died with just $3,000 in the bank. Her name

was Barbara Hutton, heir to the Woolworth fortune.

Barbara Hutton died nearly penniless in 1979. Although she inherited a

huge fortune, she was not given the skills to manage that money. She was a

victim of the age-old preju-dice that women shouldn’t or are unable to

handle money. This let her fall victim to gold-digging men and serious financial

mismanagement.

But these days, all women have access to a variety of financial resources

from books and online tools, to seminars and investing clubs. And for those

who are still intimidated there are even guides for Idiots and Dummies.

We girls need to be financially savvy in all economic cli-mates, but

especially now. Sure we know there are plenty of women who have their act

together when it comes to money management. (Y’all can skip this part and

jump back to the orgasm chapter.) But for the rest of us, like going to the

gym or wearing moisturizer, this is one of those things a smart girl simply

must do. Another Girl We Know

Sonia was a youthful 37-year-old who made a decent living as a freelance

commercial casting agent. However, her love of the finer things in life kept

her on the verge of bankruptcy. When one employer discovered an

accounting error, she received a fat check. She was ecstatic. We all thought

she would clear her credit cards and back rent and move forward. Instead

she went to Dubai for a week because she heard it had the best shopping

venues in the world. Sure, she had the time of her life, but when she got

back to face the bills, she wondered aloud why her financial karma just

never seemed to change. We are not financial counselors any more than we are matchmakers, but

we’ve discovered that there are so many helpful resources available that

there’s no excuse to keep dragging yourself further into debt. If you spend a

little time working on it, you can probably find a resource that works for

you.

Overall, there’s some agreement as to the basics. The gurus of dollars and

sense want you to ask yourself: have you ever created a true budget,

including one-time splurges, divided by 12? (Ouch!) Have you paid off

your high interest rate credit cards? Have you purchased proper health, life,

or car insur-ance? And that’s just the beginning.

If you’ve never done any of these things, it’s time to switch into high gear.

This means putting these money matters at the top of your priority list

instead of continuing to ignore them. Ormon has a whole “survival” method

that makes sense, so if you find yourself completely at a loss, perhaps you

should start with her book, or at least hit her website. Working Women’s Magazine summed up a few of the biggest mistakes the

modern gal can make: • Assuming your current financial situation is

permanent • Not using a budget • Waiting to save We know you’re smart girls, so after you finish feeling guilty, maybe a little

stomach-achey, or if you had chest pains while reading this like we did

when we wrote it, now’s the time to stop feeling sorry for yourself and get

to work. The budget thing is a recurring theme, so start making one—the

dry-cleaning can wait. It’s a habit that may just change your life forever.

A Couple We Know

They were a young professional couple. He was an engineer and she was a

young professor teaching comparative religion.

The couple bought a tiny condo, but even with their six-figure combined

income, they barely made enough to cover the mortgage, pay school loans,

and support her mother and their pre-mature twins. When she didn’t get

tenure, she was asked to leave. She scrambled to get a job. But just what

can an out-of-work religion professor do besides teach? She took a job as

an administrator twice a week at a methadone clinic, until she could get

credentialed to teach at the local high school. She and her husband soon

went into the red and were forced to sell their condo in a down-market.

Unfortunately, just being a successful career gal, a great companion,

girlfriend, or hot, hot, hot lover, doesn’t secure anything for the modern

woman. Plus, many high achievers are hobbled by the Achilles heel of

financial fear. Fortu-nately, it’s fixable, and you don’t need to visit an orthopedic surgeon.

If more women took time to learn a bit more about money, we think the

numbers in the big picture would change, especially in terms of “older

girls” and retirement.

After all, since we now know that women live longer and make less money

than men, it makes sense that we should budget, save and invest more aggressively than men. It’s time to get on it.

A man is not a financial plan.

Leslie Bennetts, The Feminine Mistake

We agree with Bennetts’ statement that a man is not a financial plan, but he

can be part of one. Most of us want to pair up at some point, so we can’t

forget about the GDI— remember it’s the Gold-Digging Imperative, which

means that you have no choice but to factor in earning power when picking

a mate. Use your looks to cash in and then build your wealth.

Don’t be fabulous and act foolish because even if you land a big fish,

without planning, you may still wake up at middle age alone and with no exit strategy. Now that’s not something a smart girl

would do, is it?

If and when you make a long-term commitment to someone, learn your

guy’s financial plan in detail. Even if your golden guy stays with you and is

a virtual fountain of financial youth, he might get hit by a truck. Or if you

end up fluffing, at least you’ll have a few bucks socked away so you don’t

have to restart from dead zero. Or worse, in debt.

And here’s some good news. Our “feminine” qualities—

like patience, intuition, and tenacity—are just the traits that make smart gals

into great investors,

Your financial future belongs to you.