Women’s Worth :: Directions For Women

Women’s Worth

What is a Birthday Worth?

December 16th, 2011

This is a reposting of one of our favorite blogs to date. Eleanor wrote it back in October of 2010, and since then she has celebrated her 60th by completing the Marine Corps Marathon (click here to read her post about her recent marathon experience.)

In November, I turn 59 ½. This is of absolutely no interest to anyone, except maybe to kids under the age of 10 who think half-birthdays are significant enough to merit another round of gifts. It might also catch the careful eye of a financial planner, who will tell me that on that day I can now dip into my retirement funds without paying a surcharge to the IRS for the privilege of spending my own money.

Oh, yes … and then there are the life insurance companies. They will take note of this otherwise ho-hum day, by rounding my age up half a notch for purposes of assessing me a fatter premium.

Actually, I myself am interested for more or less the same reason as the life insurers – for I, too, will greet 59 ½ as the beginning of turning 60. I intend to celebrate that BIG one by … what else? … training for and running a marathon. It’s just a matter of persuading my knees not to card me at the starting line and thus declining to serve me.

I don’t really relish turning 60, but I honestly cannot think of a better age to be at the moment. I love having so much time in my column – not time ahead certainly, but time behind me and all the experiences and lessons of the past. It makes me a wiser mother, a more loving friend, and a better storyteller. The degrees of separation between me and just about anyone else, at least here in the US, are down to just one or two. If I haven’t met you yet, I know someone who knows you, or someone who knows someone who knows you. If I have in fact met you, but don’t remember, I have a built-in chronological excuse we can both laugh about without my needing to apologize.

This is abundance. I am rich in experience, and each day, month, year adds to my stockpile. To be able to say this — in an economy where scarcity, loss, and promises of the same for the indefinite future are daily headlines — is pretty amazing to me.

I just spent two days with my good friends and colleagues doing some strategic planning for our business, Directions. It was the best business meeting I’ve ever been to in my professional career, as well as the most unusual. All of us are Certified Financial Planners, but we spent virtually no time on our balance sheet or income statement. The “Show Me the Money” mantra that is usually the touchstone of business strategic planning was entirely absent. We did not count revenues or itemize expenses; instead we took an inventory of our beliefs about women and their planning needs. We rejected the notion that our work is about women and money, and embraced the notion that we are concerned with women’s worth, which is a much larger concept that includes not just financial assets, but their intelligence, their experiences, communities, faiths, families, friends, work, and legacies. We agreed that our purpose is to help women (and the world) appreciate this worth – that it is indeed an asset that never goes into deficit, but grows in value over time.

So while my 59 ½, then 60^th birthday may indeed be momentous to the IRS, life insurers, AARP, and movie theaters wishing to entice me with their senior discounts, I expect to celebrate quietly for an entirely different reason. Never before has my worth been greater, and never after will it be any less.

Categories Women and confidence
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putting the dollar sign in its place

by Eleanor Blayney

May 31st, 2011

I’ve never learned to speak or read Spanish, but I have always been intrigued by the way the language uses punctuation. In the case of questions or exclamations, the punctuation marks “?” and “!” are inserted, upside down, at the beginning of the sentence. You know right off the bat where the sentence is going, so there is no mistaking the tonal upbeat that should come with the end of the sentence.

In this age of instant messaging, texting, and email, we have lost the guidance of voice or gesture in our communications. All of us have a story of a good message gone bad — where we have sent a quick comment, meant humorously or ironically or benignly, which is completely misconstrued by the recipient. Without a facial expression, or the sound of a smile in our words, our readers are sometimes at a loss as to how to understand our meaning. Into the breach of vocal expression have jumped all sorts of emoticons, smiley and frowning faces, punctuation pictures and abbreviations. The meaning of a simple statement such as “I’m looking forward to seeing Mike tonight,” followed by a LOL, takes a complete 180 when instead you insert : < ( at the end.

There is, however, one sign in our language that provides no clue as to how we should feel about what follows. It’s the dollar sign. Neither upbeat nor downbeat, the $ is tonally neutral. Its only job is to identify a system of currency denomination. Boring…

Or is it? It’s said that nature abhors a vacuum, and so do our emotions. Few of us can resist loading up the money sign with all sorts of affective meanings never intended by this unpretentious symbol. We see the “$” as a good thing, an evil thing; a source of joy, power, status, acceptance; a prison of misery, greed, oppression.

The emotive power that we give to $ can literally stop us in our tracks, unable to move beyond it to what is really important. I, like many women I know, often fix on prices instead of attributes when I shop. The first (and sometimes the only) thing I look at is the $ on the price tag, failing to consider quality or what I really want or need.

It’s important to look at the emotions we bring to the $, so that we can ultimately look through the money to what we really value. In my case, I was raised by parents who were young adults during the Great Depression. Prices of goods were unstable and falling, so it was natural to look closely at costs: Today’s $5 item was likely to cost only $4.50 tomorrow.

I carried this sense of scarcity and extreme price sensitivity into my own adulthood, where it no longer served any useful purpose. My mother’s frugality looked like plain cheapness in me. The irony, however, is that one of my most closely held dreams is to become a philanthropist: sharing wealth with others who need money more than me.

A dollar sign may signal value, in currency terms, but nothing else. It has little to do with the priceless values that govern our lives. Too often, however, we get the two forms of value confused, compromising our principles for prices. For true financial confidence, we need put the $ in its place – as an abbreviation which by itself carries no emotional significance – and consider instead deeper questions of worth.

Categories Personal Finance for Women
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Sticker shock can leave us stuck

by Eleanor Blayney

May 16th, 2010

It’s said sometimes of materialistic, unlikeable people: “She knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.” She has, in other words, neither taste, nor class.

But then this is something I could say legitimately of myself, though my friends assure me I am reasonably likeable and, when I choose to be, entirely classy. The problem is something other than my chronic flare-ups of materialism. It has to do more with my persistent tendency to worry about money – a tendency I believe I share with millions of other nice, classy women.

More to the point, I worry about what things cost. It’s nothing new, and I probably inherited it from my Depression-reared, and Scottish to boot, mother. But I’ve noticed this cost fixation rearing its hydra-heads more frequently this past year, as I wrote and published my first book. There were so many services I had to buy in order to get this book done. I had all the ideas I needed on what women should know about personal finance, but I did not have the graphic design or editorial skills to put a fine polish on those ideas. Nor did I have the marketing skills to know how to get the right people in sufficient numbers reading, buying and talking about my book. This meant most of the time I was not writing was spent interviewing experts and consultants to see how they could help me.

But after just a few minutes of their pitch I stopped listening to what they could do, and started fretting about what it would cost. Sometimes, I would even interrupt them, in a hurry to know what the price would be. I’d try to be casual and nonchalant, even though I was desperate to know, “So, I know you might not be able to give me a definite figure, but about how much are we talking here?” When I actually caught myself saying yes to one consultant because the price was right without my having any real sense of exactly what her services entailed, I knew I was in trouble. Time to step back and start thinking again about value, about what mattered to me.

A kinder aphorism than the one quoted above goes like this: “A man will pay $2 for a $1 item he really wants, where a woman will pay $1 for a $2 item that she doesn’t really want.” This I think sums up our female confusion with price and value. If the price is good, then the service or item itself must be good.

In all fairness to us women, I think we are more apt to suffer value blindness when we are unfamiliar with the things we are pricing. If you’ve never bought a car before, or a hi-def TV, or like me, are a first-time author, mother, business owner, it’s hard to understand the worth of what we are buying. Over the last few decades, women are acquiring things, going places, taking on roles and responsibilities, that they never have before.

The enlargement of our lives is exhilarating but also overwhelming, and it is not surprising that we sometimes default to a familiar vantage point from which to take in all this newness. What’s familiar but not at all enlarging, is what we have in our checking accounts. “Can I afford it?” becomes much easier to answer than “Do I want or need it?” But letting a “yes” to the first question become an automatic “yes” to the second is a dangerous habit for us. As a matter of fact, just as harmful is denying your needs and wants because you don’t have the money.

As women, our first step toward financial confidence is to look at our ideal lives, leaving all considerations of cost completely out of our assessment. What do we want our lives to look like, what would be included, what would be left out? This picture shows us what we value most and what we should be willing to work and pay for, regardless of its dollar cost. We do not have to wait until this ideal life goes “on sale” before we reach for it.

We do not have to settle for less.

Categories Personal Finance for Women
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Look who's talking…

by Eleanor Blayney

May 12th, 2010

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.

Categories Finding a financial planner, Personal Finance for Women
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Our Mothers, Our Selves

by Eleanor Blayney

May 8th, 2010

Here’s a paradox to think about this Sunday, as we celebrate the amazing lives and contributions of our mothers:

Motherhood is the largest and oldest industry in this country, producing the major source of our country’s wealth: namely, our nation’s human capital. Mothers bear, and for the most part, raise the children who will become tomorrow’s leaders, entrepreneurs, workers, and parents.

Why then, as creators of this enormous wealth, do our mothers so often come to the end of their lives with so little of it? Why do so many women in general, and single mothers in particular, live out their last years completely reliant on Social Security benefits, compared to elderly men and fathers who are much more likely to have other sources of income?

One answer comes obviously to mind: children cost money – a lot of money — that would otherwise be available to mothers for their own retirements and self-care. The average cost of raising a child to age 18 in this country runs approximately $240,000 according to the Department of Agriculture – far more than most women have put aside in their retirement plans, if indeed they even have them. And because more mothers than ever before are raising their children as single parents, these costs are often not shared, falling to the female parent.

But beyond the hard costs of raising kids – the shoes, the food, the medical care – there is another, greater, but less visible cost: that is, the opportunity cost of motherhood. This cost, defined by financial textbooks as the cost of an alternative that must be foregone in order to pursue a given action, is the earnings a woman foregoes when she chooses to be a mother. Even if a woman does not leave the labor force to have children, there is still likely to be lost earnings in the form of lesser pay. This might be because she now must work part-time or because she is likely to choose less well-paying careers in administration or teaching for the greater opportunity these jobs afford for maintaining work-home balance. Or perhaps she is hesitant to ask for a raise or for what she is worth because she doesn’t want to “push too hard” in case she decides to have another child.

These lost earnings compound when you consider important benefits, such as Social Security, disability coverage, and contributions to 401(k)s, are a function of income level as well as time in the workplace. Workers often do not receive benefits if they work less than half time. Retirement contributions to employer plans can only be made if there is earned income. Social Security payments are based on the “highest earnings” over a 35 year period, which can unduly penalize even high income women if they have some no-wages years in that period because they left to care for children.

This potent cocktail of circumstances leaves a bad headache of financial worry for so many mothers. Compared to fathers, they live longer, work just as hard if not harder, but have less for their later years. All the Hallmark cards and FTD arrangements in the world cannot dispel their bag lady fears.

So what can those of us who are mothers, have mothers, and/or care about our nation’s mothers do? Actions range from political activism, to increasing social and workplace awareness, to simple (and earlier) financial planning. Here’s what these might look like:

• When Social Security reform is next publicly debated, as it inevitably will be, make yourself heard in support of giving mothers work credits for the unpaid labor of motherhood. A year or two or five spent out the workplace to raise children should not count as zero earning years in computing a mother’s retirement benefit.
• Speak up and out for workplace policies that are friendly to working mothers: flex-time, working from home, a bank of unused sick leave contributed by other employees that can be drawn upon by mothers after childbirth.
• Educate bosses and managers that the old rules of productivity no longer apply. Face-time is not an indicator of commitment or effectiveness. While you are at it, you might remind them that the companies who recruit, promote, and do everything to retain women (and thereby mothers) have been shown to be more profitable.
• Make sure that the mothers in your life are adequately insured, particularly when it comes to disability and long-term care, and are taking full advantage of retirement benefits available directly or as a spousal benefit.
• Help mothers understand that self-care, in the form of getting trusted financial advice, is not selfish or pointless, but is in fact another way to take care of her offspring. The money that Mom spends to prepare for and fund her retirement years is money that her children won’t have to pay.

Finally, after the brunch or breakfast in bed, how about a quiet talk with Mom (or a conversation with yourself) about what those later years might look like. How does she want to live? Where and with or near whom? What does she want to be doing? How does she want to be cared for, in the event of illness or disability?

Helping her envision her future may be the first and most important step toward planning for it. Now that’s a gift.

Categories Motherhood, Women work
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Come hear my presentation on Wealth Management for Women

by admin

May 7th, 2010

For those of you in the Washington, DC/ Northern Virginia area, please join me on Monday, June 8th, at the Evo Bistro in McLean, VA to hear me discuss the important ways women are different when it comes to thinking about and managing their money. Copies of my book, “Women’s Worth: Finding Your Financial Confidence” will be available for purchase and signing.

Hope to see you there! Click on the link below to get all the details.

Wealth Management for Women

Categories Personal Finance for Women
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