Women, Money and Emotions

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This book is written in honor of my late mother, Esther, who was the backbone of our family, to all my sisters -- June, Bev, Lois and Carol May (deceased). Mom raised seven children and took care of the family finances. She knew if the price of butter, catsup, etc., was up or down and the price in each store. She had to make every penny count with that many mouths to feed. At a very young age I learned at my father’s knee about inflation and planning ahead. My father had great foresight and often predicted the outcome of things. He also had a keen business sense, but not the wherewithal to apply it in his lifetime. I would hear him discuss corporations and what they should and shouldn’t do and how this would affect things and the people that worked there. He would discuss the pro’s and con’s of unions. He felt women were his equal. From him I got my business sense.

So what does happen to our knight in shining armor? Answer: He falls off the horse, gets derailed, etc.

Many times we, as women, feel that a man will take care of us financially -- and to a certain extent that may be true for some women, at least for part of their lives. No one plans to get divorced, have a husband fall in love with another woman, or worse yet run off with one your daughter’s age. Heaven forbid -- that can’t happen to us. And now days, it may even be another man. Or the charming, cheerful husband you dearly love gets cancer or has a heart attack and is dead within the hour, or the doctor says he has six months to live. That hardly gives you time to put your financial life in order, nor are you equipped to think straight even if you did have the time. Emotionally you are on your last leg, so to speak. The importance of putting your financial house in order before this happens cannot be stressed enough. You will see examples of this in our interviews in the back of this book. Money isn’t everything but it sure helps. It pays the bills -- it puts food on the table!!

During a death or divorce one is very susceptible to bad information, bad advice and bad actions on the part of both the advisor and yourself. Uncle Henry, boyfriend Joe, and local insurance agents, CPA’s, or bankers don’t know everything. What’s more, they could probably care less if you lose your money or your purchasing power. What always threw me is why people call CPA’s for investment advice -- they do taxes. You don’t call a broker for tax advice, or a doctor for dental advice. If you call a broker for tax advice, they will say call your CPA, and CPA’s should do the same when it comes to investments.

A woman should always have a basic knowledge of her finances. She doesn’t have to be a financial genius -- there are not too many of those. But let’s repeat, she definitely needs to know the basics. You are not in a good frame of mind to make character judgments at this time and will most likely go with the wrong person and the wrong investments. People, human nature as it is, seem to go to extremes in this regard. They usually become really conservative and lose their very valuable purchasing power, or they get careless and wild with their monies, spending as if there is no tomorrow!

Married at a young age, I learned in a hurry if I wanted something extra, it was up to me to go out and earn the money to buy it. Having seen my mother handle all the finances in our home growing up, it did not seem inappropriate for me to handle the finances and my husband seemed to have no interest in the matter, although it was unusual in those days for women to work and handle family finances. I remember one of my bosses being shocked when I told him I was shopping for car insurance. So I had financial responsibility at an early age, having married at nineteen. We did very well with our resources and had a home almost paid for after 9 years of marriage. But disaster struck and a scandalous divorce took most of the assets and transferred them to my ex-husband. Then I learned the high cost of emotions getting involved in financial decisions. I learned that when you are under emotional strain, you do not usually make intelligent decisions. Unfortunately for women, they have not usually had the support they need in times of crises. The system is not generally set up in favor of women even in this day and age -- at least not in reality, it may be in theory. As too many women have found out, theory and reality are two different things -- and reality is what hits you in the face.

At the age of 28, I found myself starting all over again. A wonderful new husband, but little money -- he had been divorced also. Fortunately for me, he felt women were superior beings of some sort. I used to ask him if he was for real or a figment of my imagination. He loved the stock market, and when an opening came up for me to work at a brokerage firm, he encouraged me to take it even though I was very skeptical. I was working at a CPA firm at the time and did not see why there would be a difference, but he assured me there would be. He said he felt my personality fit the job. It was a lively place with lots going on and you had to have a curious and active mind, and it helped to like people too. I worked as an assistant for 9 years. He encouraged me to get licensed and I did that over a period of 2 1/2 years --studying during vacations and holidays. However, that was only half the battle as women were generally not hired as brokers. However, I once again lucked out. I believed if you learned all you could -- tried as hard as you could -- did more than was expected of you and didn't complain about it -- the good old capitalist system would kick in and someone would give me a chance. And indeed that is what happened! One of the young brokers who started after me and was pro-women was asked at that time to become sales manager for a young struggling regional firm in Minneapolis. He had taken note of my work and said I could come and work for him as a broker. He worked his way up to president of that firm and grew it to a much bigger and very successful firm. I worked hard for him and was their top broker for 3 years and on their board of directors. I have been in the firm’s "Partner’ Club" every year since 1975. There are only two of us in our firm who have accomplished that.

And then another tragedy hit -- my husband of l6 years died of cancer. For some reason, I lost my respect for my own money and became careless in my investment decisions. I felt without him nothing else was really important. A long hard emotional struggle ensued before I came to the reality that this poor judgment and carelessness on my part had to end if I was to ever retire. From 43 to 57 the years had flown and suddenly I realized I was not getting any younger and I had better wake up and take myself in stride.

I had always been rather conservative but in my grief I had taken wild chances and invested on a whim or on someone touting an idea without carefully checking it out and protecting myself with good basic sound investment practices. Now I realize I should have gotten a professional money manager till I got on my feet emotionally or invested in the many wonderful mutual fund families we have. This way I would have growth, diversification, and a solid base, and if I wanted to speculate, I could do it with a small amount of funds. One’s risk capital, I feel, should always be limited to the amount that you can afford to lose. This is somewhat deceitful, too, because after tragedy you seem to feel this amount is bigger than it really is. You don't think of the long-term consequences and time unfortunately does not let