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The differences in how men and women approach financial education were shown, once again, while visiting with married friends this past weekend. I was blessed with one of those rare unplanned drop by visits that you can only do with the oldest and dearest of friends while in Houston over the weekend. Don’t you love those relationships? Anyway, I shared that I am writing a book when the talk led to what is going on with my financial education for women company.
The first words out of Lisa’s mouth were “Don’t make it boring! You have to make it fun. That is why I don’t like to learn about investing.” Rob’s advice was to be sure to include some core investing information, and then we wandered off into discussing index funds. “There it was again”, I thought, as I drove toward home through the beautiful huge oak trees lining Tanglewood Boulevard: I created Financial Woman because men and women really do learn and process financial education differently.
How do you make yourself delve into a pretty boring subject, like financial education, and make it interesting? I think the answer lies in starting with the end result of investing well: financial security. Of course, there are all of the personal reasons that each of us have, such as college for children or grandchildren, a nice home, or second home, the ability to provide nutritious meals, travel to Europe and so forth. But, let’s face it; food, shelter and financial peace are some pretty compelling reasons for committing to a little time each month on what can be a dry topic, like financial education.
List your own end reasons for embracing your financial education today. Create some time and space in your life to focus on where that hard earned money is either decreasing or increasing. I promise I’ll do my best to make Financial Woman as fun and engaging as possible, but with a little boring sprinkled in.
I agree-Women view money different than men. I was at the Woman’s Conference put on by Maria Shriver and had the privilege of sitting in on a workshop with Susi Orman. She asked the question- how many of you have debt- Every woman stood up! My boyfriend- who attended the conference with me was not only the only man in the room- but he has no debt. He was amazed and left inspired and she was all over that debt!
Julia,
Hello and thank you for your comment. I ‘ll bet the Women’s Conference was awesome!
I do believe that there is good debt and there is bad debt. I have to say that anyone who has a home financed, which is almost always a good idea, in my opinion, especially at low interest rates, would have had to stand when asked that question by Suze Orman; so it’s a little bit of an unfair question, unless she specified credit card debt for personal items and entertainment. The bad debt is credit card debt, of course, for personal items.
On the other hand, credit cards have financed many entrepreneurs for the short term I am hearing more and more. Listen to my radio show with Lorin Beller Blake of Big Fish Nation at Financial Woman Radio on blogtalkradio.com if you get a chance.
Thanks again for your comments! I love hearing from you!
I believe that they do, Stephanie. Thank you for your question. In general, women tend to want to link their financial plans to specific results, such as a home, whereas men are more focused on investment performance.
Excellent article! I have already been searching for something similar to this for a long time now. Thank you!