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According to Housing.com95 percent of the time, women they are the key people who decide to buy a house or rent an apartment. As baby boomer men die out over the next five to eight years, women will control a whopping $32 trillion of the nation’s wealth. Sadly, many women are not at all prepared to handle what is in front of them.
I recently interviewed Dr. By Patricia Ross, founder Girl Power Finance. Her home page explains how we get into debt and what the costs are:
No one ever thinks, “Oh, I want to go into debt.”
We’re like, “I’ve got to have those shoes…” We pull out our credit card and the next thing we know, we’ve paid three times what they have—and the card still hasn’t been paid off.
What is “Financial Menopause”?
Ross further explains on his website,
Debt is like a bad ex. It won’t go away no matter how much you pay or for the reason and pay some more.
It’s a silent dream killer.
Bringing you the worst kind of budget hot flushes.
This leads to financial menopause.
“Financial Menopause” is the fear of not having enough money, especially like you approach retirement.
‘Don’t pat me on the head and tell me I don’t have to worry about it’
According to Ross, the main problem women face today is that the options for managing their money are so short-sighted and unpredictable that many of us do not know what to do or where to turn. While women will have this financial influence, few know how to wield it effectively.
Ross describes her experiences and what led her to start Girl Power Finance.
I am a qualified professor of English. I started this business (Girl Power Finance) by writing books on finance, money management and retirement. I had the big guys basically pat me on the head and say, “Don’t worry about modern portfolio theory or how money works.”
So getting patted on the head really freaked me out a bit. No one can do that. No one likes to be patted on the head, sidelined and cornered and told, “You don’t need to know because you’re not smart enough, you’re not good enough, you don’t have enough, whatever, to be able to handle this kind of knowledge . [And that’s why] women say, “You’re fired, baby!”
To back up her claim, Ross shared a rather staggering statistic:
When women lose their husbands, 70 percent of them fire their former financial advisors.
Those dirty little undercover financial advisors and stock traders don’t want you to know
According to Ross, if women (or men) actually learn how fees work in their stock portfolios or 401Ks, they would never agree to these terms. When these people play the stock market on your behalf, they make money even as you experience huge losses. They don’t want you to understand that they gave it your money at risk to earn a steady income by trading on your behalf.
Additionally:
The stock market is a gamble because it goes up and down. Everyone loves it when it goes up because we make money. [When the market is going down] we are afraid of how suddenly you can lose 20 percent or more of your entire investment. That’s $200,000 to a million dollars. That’s a lot of money.
If you’re in the stock market, you’re gambling. It’s like going to the tables in Las Vegas and saying, “I’m going to win a lot or I’m going to lose a lot.”
Games about risk and safety
Ross recommends a balanced approach to his clients money management which includes a portfolio with a certain degree of risk. The choice really comes down to how much security you want vs. what risk are you willing to tolerate. The less risk you are willing to tolerate, the more conservative your investment strategies should be.
Overcoming Financial Menopause
Ross shared a story about one of her clients who is a very successful entrepreneur with a massive real estate portfolio. Despite her considerable wealth, she still feared that she would have enough money to retire.
Ross describes the symptoms of “budget surges,” “monetary mood swings,” and “horrifying nightmares” of financial insecurity as symptoms of financial menopause.
This is exactly what her client was experiencing. When her client said she was in her 70s and worried about having enough money to retire and not have to worry about it anymore, Ross responded:
Sister, it’s financial menopause. When we start to worry about whether we will have enough or not, we go down that road, and it’s not a good road that makes us wrinkle.
Everyone laughs when I talk about it, but it’s because it’s true. As if we have enough gray hair and wrinkles, we don’t want our bank accounts to shrink either.
Starting point
Ross recommends that you start focusing on your talent, your current portfolio, and your financial goals. Start your investment journey by working with what you know, what you like and what you trust. Assess your level of risk and adjust it investment strategy appropriate.
Your ultimate goal is for your passive income stream to become your primary source of income as quickly as possible.
Her final advice is:
We are the masters of money in the universe, but we just don’t know it yet. No matter where you are on your financial journey, take what you know and build on it. Knowledge is power, so educate yourself. Weigh the pros and cons. This is what makes us strong. This is what gives us strength and keeps us out of financial menopause.
Bernice Ross, President and CEO of the company BrokerageUP and RealEstateCoach.com, is a national speaker, author and trainer with over 1,000 published articles. Read about her broker/manager training programs for women, by women, at BrokerageUp.com and training her new sales agent RealEstateCoach.com/newagent.