Our mission: to empower, educate and engage women around the topic of money.

Here are some ideas from the women at Directions:

1. I  learn from my financial mistakes.
2. I  know I will have enough because I am enough.
3. I am able to set and make progress toward financial goals.
4. I can talk  about money with those I care about.
5. I know enough to make good financial decisions.
6. I know my value in the marketplace and can ask for it.
7. I understand that taking care of myself financially is just as important as taking care of others.
8. I spend money in a way that honors my values and responsibilities.
9. I may choose to delegate, but not abdicate, responsibility for managing my money.
10. When I have questions or fears about money, I speak up and get the support and answers I need.

Other ideas?  What does being financially empowered mean to you? Let us know in the comment section below.  Your shares will undoubtedly help others think about this important issue.

Looking for resources to help you get empowered? Visit our free resources by clicking here.

Do you see the connection to money? We study, plan, hire professionals, yet still there is an element to investing and managing money that you simply can’t predict or control. So here are a few things to do so that at the end of the day you can sit back and love the garden you’ve created rather than grumble about the wrong colors, scents and design:

1. Plant good seeds – Buy quality investments, ones with a track record and solid management. Diversify; don’t use seeds or investments all from the same company.
2. Be flexible and spend a little time weeding – If something grows too fast or not at all, or is simply not what you expected, pull it out of the portfolio and try again. Investing, like gardening, is a process of trial and error. The key? If you don’t try, you’ll have no opportunity to improve your results.
3. Prune – Trees and bushes often grow better when cut back and thinned-out. Be willing to sell some of your favorite investment, if it becomes too large a part of your portfolio, and allow an undervalued investment to grow bigger and stronger in its place.
4. Expect a few failures – There are going to be investments in your garden that fail. It’s just bound to happen, and if you try to avoid this eventuality you will also miss owning the winners. Be willing to explore the edges of your risk tolerance. Don’t violate it, but also don’t let fear be your travel guide.
5. Be prepared – Soil happens. Rain comes and goes. Frost can bite you in the butt. With investing we can never know exactly what’s going to happen, and I can tell you with certainty that the perfect investment last year won’t be stellar in the coming years. The market, just like the growing year, is cyclical. But unlike the seasons, we can’t always predict that a sudden snowstorm is going to lock us inside our house with eight crazy relatives, four dogs and an ailing guinea pig. You can come prepared with your attitude (flexibility really is the key to happiness), and with your back-up plan (insurance is handy when the rock falls on your foot or the tendonitis in your shoulder from weeding prevents you from working until Spring). Create a financial plan that has the unexpected built into it.

To get to know Luna better, read her story or visit her website.

57% of Americans older than 65 have said they are “very” or “extremely” likely to remain in their current homes during retirement.  But who is going to care for them?

One of my youngest friends in our crowd announced at dinner the other night that she is going to start a home for all of us who are older.  Then she — with her background in gerontology, and another younger friend who’s a social worker — will take care of us while also creating a second career when she retires.

She was joking, but the idea is sound.  At the American Society on Aging Conference last week I posed myself a question on the first day, “With an aging population, who is going to be taking care of us in our old age?”  On the last day, the plenary session summarizing the conference posed this same question.  And then I got my answer.  We are. 

We will be creating different housing arrangements, modifying our homes or building new places using principals of universal design.  We may well still be working, even if only part-time.  We can become care managers, bill-payers, drivers, grocery shoppers — providing all the services that many adults need.  In fact, we might ourselves need some services – like driving and shopping — but still be able to provide others such as bill-paying, therapy, care managing.

This conference made something very clear to me; financial advisors need to start addressing this issue now.  All of our clients, but especially with women (who tend to live an average of seven years longer than men), should begin talking about these issues and they need our help making plans … not just for how they will get care but also how they may be able to stretch the income they will have by supplementing it with part-time work giving care.  Such an approach might be encouraging to those who have seen their portfolios plummet and who have begun to fear becoming bag ladies. Our futures can be filled with both getting and giving.  This is an effective way for advisors to begin changing the conversation.

What does it mean to “change the conversation around women and money?”  Click here to read more from our blog.

There is a memorable Bob Newhart skit where he plays a psychiatrist meeting for the first time with a woman who nervously confesses her problems with claustrophobia, bulimia, and relationships.  Newhart is not your classic Freudian shrink who stares into space, saying nothing. In fact, he actually has some advice for his client, which he summarizes in just two words:

“STOP IT!”

When the flabbergasted woman just stares at him, he drives his recommendation home by spelling it:  “S-T-O-P new word I-T!!!”

Session over, mission accomplished, slam bam thank you ma’am.

Like all classic humor, the sketch is funny because it depicts a fundamental truth.  When women ask for advice, they are often not asking for solutions but acceptance. And when men give advice, they focus on eliminating the problem, not analyzing its origins. How many times have you come home from a bad day, complaining about a workmate, a traffic snarl, an uncooperative team?  Your husband or partner will listen for a minute and then feel compelled to fix it, as soon as possible.  “You just gotta work around him/it/them,” he opines, grabbing for the remote.  He sees the problem as solved, while you feel that he hasn’t heard a word you’ve said.

Financial planning can be a “fix-it” discipline, and as a CFP® practitioner, I’ve always enjoyed solving problems.  And I’ll admit, there are some problems that seem to require a “STOP IT!” response.   Spending too much?  Not willing to take any investment risk?  Putting off completing that questionnaire for the estate planning attorney?  Just stop doing what you’re doing, and everything will be fine.

But the logic and simplicity of such advice has, to my knowledge, never changed behavior.  It has, in fact, almost lost me two clients, one whom I told to stop spending money on eating out, the other whom I advised to stop buying shoes.  Their flabbergasted response told me that I did not get it.  I was advocating eliminating the tip of the iceberg, leaving the real and much greater issues submerged, threatening to sink their financial ship.

I certainly learned from those early mistakes, and now know that my job is to listen, deeply and thoughtfully, long before I offer advice.  I’ve learned that women need to be heard, and accepted, before they need to be fixed.  Often, they feel isolated with their financial issues, and need reassurance that others share their situation, that they are pretty average when it comes to their worries about money.  In this way, they differ from men.  She wants to know that she is “the same as” whereas he wants to know if he is “better than.”

When choosing a financial planner, you want, of course, experience and expertise.  You want commitment to an ethical code of standards.  But there is another “E” prerequisite you should be looking for:  Empathy.  On your first visit to interview a prospective advisor, who does most of the talking?  Are you offered answers before you have posed all the questions?  Do you leave the advisor’s office relieved because the interview is over, or because you have found a safe place to become more financially competent?  When you return for a second visit, is it clear that the planner has reflected upon and digested all that you shared in your first meeting?

Sometimes we want professionals who are all business and completely focused on their skills.  I, for instance, don’t want my attorney to be my pal.  A bit of bedside manner works well in doctors, but if I get more than 10 minutes worth, I begin to feel uncomfortable.  When it comes to money management, however, our emotional assets and liabilities are just as important as our financial inventory, and may have a greater impact on our ability to be financially successful than a six-figure 401(k).

Here’s some advice if you’re meeting with an advisor who does more talking than listening.  Just tell him or her to “Stop It!”  It’s your turn to speak.

Walter the Muppet is known for his identity crisis. But there should be no question about yours. Photo from www.Muppet.Wikia.com

Many of you have undoubtedly heard about the news story of last week: The Op Ed (resignation letter) that the Goldman Sachs employee, Greg Smith, wrote in the New York Times. Mr. Smith had a few choice words for his employer of 12 years, and he revealed a few things that Goldman has been trying to counter ever since. It makes for a great news story, but it also provides a revelation to the majority of American investors who work with large Wall Street firms.

In professional circles, we often talk about a “client-first” attitude. Advisors place priority on the well-being of the client, while the advisor’s own well-being – or the compensation earned by their recommendation – takes a back seat. The client is served first.

Firms like mine, and the others listed on the Directions website, are Registered Investment Advisors. We are held to a fiduciary standard which requires us to put our clients’ interests ahead of our own. Yes, this is a legal requirement!

Imagine going to a family doctor who prescribes medicines according to whichever pharmaceutical company offers the largest kickback or “commission” for that prescription. We would much rather the doctor writes a prescription for the medicine that was going to be most effective, right? It seems ridiculous to imagine the medical industry operating that way, but large firms like Goldman Sachs have gotten away with it for decades.

Wall Street firms have been offering advice based upon what is in it for them, and much of America has fallen for it. This was the point of Smith’s letter, and it accounts for the media firestorm that ensued. Smith reveals that Goldman Sachs puts its clients last. Here are the “highlights” from Smith’s letter:

1. “To put the problem in the simplest terms,” he writes, “the interests of the client continue to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money.” This form of business should be called “client-last.

2. Promotions are not garnered by merit, but profit: “If you make enough money for the firm (and are not currently an ax murderer) you will be promoted into a position of influence.”

3. In order to make money for the firm, a Goldman employee has a few options: “Persuading your clients to invest in the stocks or other products that we are trying to get rid of because they are not seen as having a lot of potential profit.” Nice doing business with you, right? Or, “Get your clients — some of whom are sophisticated, and some of whom aren’t — to trade whatever will bring the biggest profit to Goldman. Call me old-fashioned,” said Smith, “but I don’t like selling my clients a product that is wrong for them.”

4. Perhaps the most disturbing Smith comment addresses Wall Street’s unsympathetic approach. He reports, “It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off. Over the last 12 months, I have seen five different managing directors refer to their own clients as ‘Muppets,’ sometimes over internal e-mail… Will people push the envelope and pitch lucrative and complicated products to clients even if they are not the simplest investments or the ones most directly aligned with the client’s goals? Absolutely. Every day, in fact.”

You can read Mr. Smith’s comments in their entirety here, where you will also see a nice illustration of vultures at feast. He predicts that companies — and people — who care only about making money will not be able to retain the trust of their customers.

And I agree. In an age where trust is eroding, and the financial world is getting increasingly more difficult to navigate, consumers need to know where they can go to get honest answers and recommendations. You need an adviser who sees you as a person, not a Muppet, and treats your family affairs with respect and compassion. But as the world sees Super Bowl ads and magazine pages touting enormous caches of financial resources, it’s understandable that the public’s perception of these Wall Street firms is more respectful than their behind-the-scenes behavior deserves. It behooves us to make sure the longstanding allegiance to this system comes to an end. I may work in a firm that would profit from that kind of systemic transformation, but I firmly believe the consumer will be best served when she is served first, not last.

My only parting comment, which I cannot help but make, is if you have any question about the honesty or integrity of your current advisor, give me (or another advisor on the Directions site) a call. We may not have the vast resources that they do at Goldman Sachs (or many brokerage firms for that matter), but we can compete with their culture and attitude any day of the week.

Click here to read Margie Carpenter’s story.

“Especially during the early phases of widowhood, women are so very vulnerable and may be easily taken advantage of.”

Perhaps you have heard people say that one should not make any major decisions after the death of someone close to you because grief may cloud your thinking.  According to Rehl, this is sound advice. One major decision you can make before you find yourself going through the grieving process is to get help with financial planning so that you do not have to worry about financial security during this difficult time. And if you have not had the guidance of a fee-only financial planner before becoming widowed, you will find this help invaluable should you find yourself in that situation.

Rehl provides some interesting statistics about widows in the United States:

“• The average age of widowhood is 56

• 80% of baby boomer wives (born 1947 to 1964) will experience widowhood

• On average, only 7 of 100 widows remarry

• Most widows experience financial decline”

She also writes about her own experiences with being a widow and of being afraid. Despite the fear and great loss, a widow needs to examine her finances, take steps to make sure she is on solid financial footing, and in time, begin to form goals for her new life. With the right guidance, a widow may be able to avoid financial decline.

Whether you knew nothing about the household finances or were handling the finances right alongside your spouse, as a widow, you will want someone reliable to help you start this new chapter in your life.

To read Claire Emory’s story, click here, or visit her website.

I’ve seen my grandson learning the same lessons as he has played one of the many versions of Monopoly that he owns–Beatles Monopoly, Fantasy Baseball Monopoly, Yankees world Champions Monopoly, and regular Monopoly.  (Never mind what he is learning about making money by selling the same thing in many different guises!).

But we both had a new learning experience recently when we played his newest version–Electronic Banking Monopoly.  This version comes with a little calculator that’s like a bank and credit card combined…it keeps track of all your liquid assets (no more bills in different colors to line up along your edge of the Board!).  When you have to pay rent, it’s a quick swipe and your assets are automatically switched over to the property owner’s account.  If you’re the one getting the rent, it automatically switches to your account without ever passing through your hands.

Want to buy a house?  You have to check with the bank about the amount of your cash available (no more counting up the bills in front of you to see if there will be any left over for the built up properties you may soon land on or the penalty you may have to pay to get out of jail!).

• No more seeing your stash increase as you earn $200 for going past “Go”.

• No more counting out the bills to see how many fives you need to pay the rent.

• No more keeping track of what your neighbors have just by looking at what’s in front of them.  If they keep spending, you have to figure they have plenty.

But, we learned some very important truths:

• It is difficult to know what you own and what you owe if it all happens automatically.

• It is misleading to conclude that people who are spending MUST have more money than you.

• It is much less fun not to have a clear picture of your available assets.  In fact, it was nerve wracking.  And disempowering because it was hard to plan.

We learned our lesson and went back to playing basic Monopoly!

~~~

P.S.  In our real lives — a society driven by credit — it is even harder tracking what we own and what we owe, but we must if we want to  take control of our finances.

Some useful resources:

• American Association of Daily Money Managers at www.aadmm.com, an organization providing personal financial or bookkeeping services to those who need it.
• Mint.com (www.mint.com) is a free online money organization program that brings all your financial accounts together in one place.
• Or, if you would rather keep your financial status offline, you can purchase Quickbooks for your computer, cost is $183.

Nonetheless, as with the Monopoly game, it seems it should be easier than it used to be with all the computer tracking available.   But I find there’s an emotional component missing when we go completely digital and for some of us, paper and pen may well still be the way to go.

When I was someone’s employee, I would hire out for most household tasks — one, because I had the money, and two, because it was fun to be the “boss” in at least one area of my life. I did not admit that the real reason I had someone else do this stuff is because I really did not know how.

But now that I am self-employed, not nearly so well-paid, and painfully aware that I am the boss of no-one except myself, I am daily confronted with my lack of knowledge about all sorts of common things, both business and domestic. Printers and scanners confound me.

As do curtains. The windows in the guest bedroom have been naked for years, and it is finally getting to me, now that I work from home. I suppressed my urge to call my interior designer of yesteryear, and turned instead to Google as the ultimate font of wisdom. I read everything I could about how to install curtains and immediately and hopelessly got lost in the vocabulary: finials, grommets, hollow wall anchors, holdbacks, yikes! So I pointed myself toward Pottery Barn and bought whatever they said I needed. Installation is another matter altogether which may take another few years.

I can’t help but think that many women face the prospect of hiring financial advisors in much the same frame of mind as I face curtains. You know you probably need one, but have no good understanding of all that professional vocabulary. What’s the real difference between a CSA, a ChFC, a PFS, or a CFP®? But rather than spend time educating yourself, you go instead to someone calling himself an advisor, and nod your head at whatever he says you need. Implementation of the advice is another matter altogether.

Actually it is worse than that, since women’s need for financial advice is usually urgent, unlike bare windows which can safely be left for another few years, as long as I keep the bedroom door shut. In research done by the Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards (one of the credentialing organizations that issues the letters “CFP®” to qualifying professionals) it has been shown that a crisis is often what propels people into financial counseling. For women, this typically means a divorce, death of a spouse, aging parents, or a professional change.

But consider the consequences. The crisis that drives you to seek an advisor may also be one that completely unmoors you, mentally and emotionally. You are vulnerable – apt to be swayed by little things, like the fact that the advisor you like most is the one who keeps a box Kleenex in the conference room – as opposed to the big things, such as the advisor’s experience, education, and ethics. CFP Board research also shows that very few people do background checks on advisors, but instead go to whomever a family member or friend recommends.

As a financial advisor and consumer advocate, this really troubles me. In my twenty years of advisory practice, I can count on one hand the number of times I was asked about my professional credentials. People would hire me usually because they liked me. Now I am the first to admit that there must be emotional chemistry between an advisor and client, but it’s a good idea if likeable goes hand in hand with trustworthy. Bernie Madoff was reportedly a really nice guy…

For this reason, I recently wrote the “Consumer Guide to Financial Self Defense” which has been published and distributed by the CFP Board. It is intended to identify “red flags” that may signal trouble in a financial advisory engagement, as well as to educate consumers about the questions they should be asking. With consumers’ trust in financial experts falling to an all time low in the last few years, it’s time to help consumers understand what competence and trustworthiness should look like.

The Guide is just twenty pages, easily read, and downloadable from www.cfp.net. As the guide’s author, I unhumbly think it’s pretty good stuff. I’ve been asked, however, by reporters interested in the guide to pick two or three of the most important take-aways. So to accomodate word counts and readers short of time, I’ve distilled my advice to the following:

• Trust, but always verify. Ask your advisor which organization(s) supervise his activities – the most likely are the SEC, FINRA, the CFP Board (if the advisor holds the CFP® marks) or some combination thereof. Follow up with these organizations to make sure there are no public disciplinary sanctions on the advisor’s record.
• Ask your prospective advisor if he or she provides services as a fiduciary. This means the advisor must put your interests first, and fully disclose compensation and any conflicts of interest.
• Make sure that you understand both the pros and cons of any investment or financial strategy that the advisor recommends. If you are only hearing the benefits, then you are not hearing the whole story.

Just these three tips can make you far savvier (and safer) than the vast majority of consumers of financial advisory services. How do I know this? Because as a former advisor myself, I am almost never asked for this information. I routinely supplied it, not because I was asked, but because I believed clients need to know.

Now if there were also a Consumer Guide to Decorating, all would be well in my world. No more useless trips to Pottery Barn where I come home with something I did not need or want…

If you’re looking for a financial advisor, we have some resources to help: How to Find a Financial Planner and Meet our Advisors.

This article was originally posted at http://www.WomensMedia.com.

It would be hard to render a similar cartoon for a woman. For one thing, we are notorious for multi-tasking, which is to say, we are able to think (and do) many things at once. Add up all the things we think about and tend to in a given day, and you get off-the-chart, superwoman numbers like 150% or 200%.

At the same time, we – like men – are often accused of having one-track minds. If they are guilty of thinking non-stop about sex, then our default setting would have to be on relationships, or if we are currently in one, THE Relationship.

Perhaps this is why love and money become so often a source of confusion and turmoil for us. When we’re quarreling about finances with our sweetie, there is often a subtext to our spats. He may be yelling about the overdrawn bank account – or perhaps you are doing the yelling – but in both cases, you are probably thinking he does not care about you or your feelings. In short, to a woman’s way of thinking, money troubles spell relationship troubles.

From here, it’s but a short step – which many women have taken – to identifying money with love. Having plenty of the first means having enough of the second. It is my firm conviction that “bag lady” fears, prevalent even among affluent women, are less about the possibility of running out of money than running out of love. What scares us most is that those shuffling, shapeless bag ladies are always alone.

Throughout most of history, women have had to rely on men for economic survival. We were responsible for making the meals and keeping the house, while men were responsible for providing them. Not all that long ago, women could not own assets in their own names: they were themselves the assets deeded to men via marriage, along with a few cows or linens thrown in for good measure.

Our economic environment has changed profoundly in the last forty years. Out of self-esteem as well as necessity, women have left the household cave in increasing numbers to club a few bison of their own. According to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center, approximately 22% of women now outearn their spouses, up from 4% in 1970.

This economic upheaval – or progress, depending on your point of view – has further complicated the intersection between love and money for many of us. Now that we have jobs and minds of our own, should our money be separate, too? What happens if he’s good at managing the money, and we’d prefer to be doing something else? What about those lingering, comfy feelings we get when someone takes care of us?

Our responses to these questions can run the psychological gamut, indicating at one extreme that we are financially “codependent” on our partners, to being completely financially separate at the other. Here, from my perspective as a financial planner, is what these states often look like:

Financial Codependence:
Sometimes my coupled women clients tell me that they work just fine with their significant others when it comes to money. A bit of probing often reveals, however, that this means that all financial control has been ceded to their partners. He not only handles the money, but does all the thinking about it, too. She calls this reliance “trust” which is fine, until it isn’t. A divorce, separation, or death can leave her financially, as well as emotionally, unmoored, not knowing where to turn or what to do.

Signs of unhealthy financial codependence can include:

• Not knowing how your assets are titled
• Having just a vague idea of what your net worth is, based primarily on what your partner tells you
• Spending just as long as it takes to sign your name on your joint tax return
• Asking your partner to find a financial advisor, and begging off some of the meetings with this advisor.

Financial Independence:
If a woman is working full-time, she likely has achieved some measure of financial independence, even if every bit of her salary is going into joint household accounts. This is because the benefits she acquires in the workplace – retirement plans, disability coverage, life insurance – will always be in her name only: they cannot, in other words, be titled with another individual. In the case of retirement plans, however, she may not have complete discretion about her choice of beneficiary; most non-IRA retirement plans require that a spouse be named as beneficiary, unless the spouse waives this right in writing.

Beyond this “automatic” separation of retirement assets and workplace benefits, a woman who has acquired assets before marriage may reasonably choose to keep these resources separate from her spouse, according her spouse the same independence with respect to his assets. For a woman who marries later in ife, or acquires stepchildren in the marriage, or has her own children from a previous union, this segregation of net worth is usually necessary to assure that her wealth is not transferred to the “wrong” beneficiaries, should she predecease her spouse.

It is possible, however, for a woman’s financial independence within a relationship to go too far. One instance is the private stash that a woman keeps hidden from her partner, when she is not actually planning to leave the relationship. There is, in fact, a new popular term for such secret stashes: “financial infidelity.”

Sometimes both partners take financial independence too far. I have worked with couples who attempt to maintain their financial autonomy by allocating every expense between them, usually based on a formula that reflects their unequal incomes. He makes twice as much as her, so he pays 2/3 of the mortgage from his checking account, while she writes a second check for 1/3 from hers. While logical and equitable, at least initially, this can result in tedious, not always friendly, end-of-month settlement sessions where money is being transferred between the spouses to settle the score. At tax time, they ask their accountant to prepare the tax returns as though they were filing singly and then use these calculations to determine what each is entitled to from the refund on their joint tax return. Perfectly fair, perhaps, but is the time and expense of keeping two books for the household really worth it?

Financial interdependence:
Between codependence and complete independence lies a healthy balance, namely financial interdependence. This results when couples establish shared goals and priorities, before they think about dividing assets and expenses. Joint accounts are then established to fund these goals, and each partner contributes to these accounts, ideally in an equal amount, and not necessarily based on relative ability to pay.

The couple also acknowledges that an economic union does exist, and that there are material benefits to such a union, as opposed to a simple and easily dismantled “shared overhead” arrangement. Both partners financially rely on one another, while also recognizing that at any time, each must be prepared to be financially responsible for his or her own self.

There can also be room within this interdependence to allow differences in financial styles. She’s a saver, and he’s a spender? Once the joint goals and household expenses are paid, and there’s any money left over, then it may be time for the couple to divvy up the remains and go their separate ways. She gets to save, and he gets to spend, without having to check in with the other about the use of extra money.

As a relationship expert might say — and this financial advisor would concur — there is nothing like a measure of separateness to make hearts, as well as finances, grow stronger.

An earlier version of this article was posted on WomensMedia.com.

Both rational and irrational decisions can be subdivided into long-term and short-term ones. Possible financial choices can, therefore, be represented by the following Money Action Graph:

You have likely done this in your mind if you’ve ever bought a lottery ticket. Imagine a sum about five or six times your annual income (or what you think your annual income should be) and assume that I just handed you a tax-free check for that amount. Take no more than three minutes—first thoughts are important—to write down, in order of priority, six things you would do with the money. Try to set aside any ideas about what you should do. What do you want to do?

Your answers likely ranged from the sensible to the frivolous, from fulfilling long-term objectives to indulgent whims. Consider the very first thing on your list. Does this tell you something important about what you believe money is for?

There are generally four ways in which we use money:

• Spending
• Purchasing
• Hoarding
• Investing

Relating these uses to the Money Action Graph above, our new graph would look like this:

Let’s consider each of these activities and the kinds of beliefs that underlie them.

Spending. This word is often used in the context of buying everyday, inexpensive items without much forethought. Since women are often responsible for fulfilling the daily needs of a household, most of us engage in this activity when buying food or other necessities. However, we also spend as a form of recreation or entertainment. Have an afternoon free? Let’s go shopping! And off we go buying products and brands we did not even know we wanted until we were told we did by a multibillion-dollar marketing industry.

Purchasing. The activity of purchasing may seem similar to spending, but the formality of the word alerts us to a difference. We usually talk about purchasing when buying big or important things: homes, cars, or life insurance policies. I have never talked about purchasing a bag of Doritos. There is a deliberateness—an underlying rational process—that motivates purchasing.

Hoarding. Hoarding involves keeping something of perceived value for a very long time. It stands in contrast to spending in the sense that it involves holding onto something as opposed to letting it go. When we think of famous hoarders, George Eliot’s Silas Marner comes to mind. He was a greedy man fascinated with gold, a tangible form of wealth that seems even more concrete, solid, and safe than money.

Investing. Investing is a long-term use for money and requires careful, rational consideration. No doubt some investments are made impulsively, but arguably the investor in that case is more of a purchaser or even a spender, buying an attractive idea without careful review of what she is getting.

Using some real-life examples of what women do with their money, the more detailed Money Actions Graph might look like this: