Women in Finance – My Investing Discoveries

The Carrie Finances: The True Cost of Spending

“Money is not just money, it is a representation of time, of opportunity.”
—Cara Nicole

While I was finishing up my recent rewatch of “Sex and the City” and finally embarking on my first watch of the reboot “And Just Like That,” the algorithm plucked the perfect video out of the abyss and presented it to me: “Financially Auditing Carrie Bradshaw” by Cara Nicole on YouTube.

Much like my first Carrie Finances post back in 2021, Cara’s analysis was spurred by the episode in which Carrie goes to the bank and is denied a loan for being an “unattractive candidate.” After spending $40,000 on shoes alone, she only has $700 in her checking account and $957 in her savings account! (About $1,250 and $1,720, respectively, indexed to inflation from 2001 to 2024.)

In Cara’s video, she notes that Carrie’s shopping addiction laid the groundwork for today’s influencers who have normalized overconsumption. The root of that is having an emotional relationship with money. When Carrie slips and falls in a Dior store in Paris in season six and returns to her Russian boyfriend with multiple bags of merchandise, she says it’s because she was too embarrassed not to. If I slipped in a fancy store, I would simply remove myself from the entire block and never show my face again—and definitely not spend thousands of dollars because I felt bad! (One cookie could probably solve that problem, let’s be honest.)

I’m so glad Carrie is fictional so we can drag her. As Cara notes, “judging fictional characters? That seems like fair game.” In one scene, Carrie says, “When I first moved to New York and I was totally broke, sometimes I would buy Vogue instead of dinner. I just felt it fed me more.” Of course, Carrie is romanticizing her past, but let’s not sugarcoat poverty here. What she’s really nostalgic for is the beginning of her independence when there weren’t complicated relationships and a whole messy life to think about. Scarcity made her decisions simple: food or fashion?

It reminds me of the White Stripes’ song “Little Room”: “Well, you’re in your little room / And you’re working on something good / But if it’s really good / You’re gonna need a bigger room. / And when you’re in the bigger room / You might not know what to do / You might have to think of how you got started / Sitting in your little room.”

The White Stripes was a band that limited themselves to the point of liberation. By setting restrictions on the art they could make as a two-piece band, they created something entirely new. As Jack White’s solo career took off, he had more and more resources available to him, including an entire record label to manage. Without limitations, the music wasn’t grabbing fans as much anymore, and many of my friends eschewed his solo career altogether. I don’t think he’s ever been able to get back into that little room.

Cara also pushes the importance of having an emergency savings fund of three to six months of living expenses, which Carrie clearly doesn’t have. The closest she gets to investing is in the first episode of season six. She is invited to ring the bell for the start of trading at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on the first day that the New York Star newspaper, in which her column is published, begins publicly trading on the exchange.

Afterward, Carrie says to her friends, “It was so exciting, it almost made me want to invest in something!” Miranda chimes in, saying that she doesn’t invest anymore because it’s “too volatile” (even though she’s a lawyer?) and Carrie spits back, “Exactly, I like my money right where I can see it: hanging in my closet.”

I cringed watching this scene of four educated women deny that they needed to invest simply because it’s something men do. Yes, this was the early 2000s, but even Lois Frankel’s book “Nice Girls Don’t Get Rich” from 2005 had better lessons than don’t save and “just invest in clothes.”

Though this is fiction, we consume it—that’s the operative word. We consume this art and expect our lives to mirror it. This also goes for what we see on social media, what we overconsume because we see people constantly buying things that we believe are improving their lives. There’s more value in what you do with your life than what you have. The true cost of spending is what you’re not saving it for, what you won’t have in the future because you want to build up your life now. It’s a trade-off, but do you want to start strong, or end strong? I’m going to try for a balance of both!

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A Money and Music Memoir

Back in 2021 when I was still gathering my ideas for this blog, I started a money playlist. When I was prompted to think about my relationship with money, some of the first things that came to mind were song lyrics. My parents raised me on the blues (my dad’s favorite) and hard rock (my mom’s favorite), so now my brain acts like a very specific music encyclopedia filled with all my influences and the hybrid genres of modern music.

Each song on the playlist represents a memory for me: “Addictions” by Lucy Dacus from her album “Historian” is a song about some long-ago failed relationship, with the lyrics, “Buy-low-sell-high kind of guy / Invest your time in what’s worthwhile / Was I a risk without reward or did I make you proud?” The album came out in 2018, the year after I began working at AAII. I recall listening to it on the train into the city, feeling like I was part of an inside joke—I had just become entrenched in this investing language, and it was used in a creative way I hadn’t thought of before. I started to notice other finance phrases seeping into my own writing, like “last in, first out” (an accounting approach). I was beginning to see how this thinking could be applied to all aspects of life—everything took either time or money, everything was a risk, but would it be worth it?

Of course, I had to include the classic “Taxman” by the Beatles. “Revolver” (1966) was one of my first Beatles albums growing up. My dad had the CD, and he would play it in the car for us. Later when I became independently interested, he would let me listen to it on my beloved, consistently broken Walkman. I never took the lyrics seriously until I was an adult, “Should 5% appear too small / Be thankful I don’t take it all.” Now with a financial education, I know that 5% is quite a lot, especially when it comes to fees. In fact, 1% is still too much for you to be paying anyone to manage your money. The Beatles are using satire in this song, assuming the point of view of the greedy government, but many British musicians (including the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, David Bowie and Adele) have had similar complaints about taxes when they reached fame. The more you make, the more they take!

“Suga Mama” by Beyoncé might be my favorite song she’s ever done. In it, she subverts the skewed power paradigm between a man and a woman. Not only does she have enough money to be independent, but she can also take care of a whole man, buying him whatever she wants? Go off, girl. The song practically drips with feminist confidence with the lyric, “let mama do it all.” This is Beyoncé after all! She has proven herself to be capable of more than anyone thought possible, breaking down race, gender and genre barriers to be able to express herself and reclaim her past without feeling trapped in any predetermined box. She has so many great songs about money, and I wish I could include them all, but “Suga Mama” is one I keep coming back to. When I got tickets to see Beyoncé in 2023, it was the first song I started blasting to celebrate! Recently, the friend I went to see her with jokingly asked, “Where are the sugar daddies!!!!!?????” I responded: “BROKE” 😂.

The lineage of influence in music is a fruitful topic for me, so the playlist includes some cover songs along with their originals. In addition to “Credit in the Straight World,” first written by Young Marble Giants and popularized by Hole, we have “List of Demands (Reparations)” by Saul Williams, later covered by my favorite band the Kills. Williams is also a poet and all-around creative person, much like Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince of the Kills, who have deliberately been independent musicians in a greedy industry. The song starts with the lyric, “I want my money back.” Williams says of his song about power and freedom, “I’m tired of the hustle and the make-believe hustle. I’m tired of buying into ideas that divorce me from my potential. I’m tired of having my potential explained in terms of money.” Williams expresses how easy it is for art and hard work to be exploited and lists his demands for getting free from the perpetual capitalistic churn.

I hope you enjoy the playlist! Let me know what songs come to mind when you think about money so we can grow our money music library together.

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Navigating Finances After Widowhood or Divorce

Back when I started this blog, I had to think about who would be considered a beginning investor. Yes, those in their 20s and 30s who are just starting their careers are prime candidates. But what about women who have been married their entire adult lives and never had to primarily handle their finances? In honor of Women’s History Month, I look at how these women can both literally and figuratively get back on their feet after widowhood or divorce.

The O’Mara Law Group’s Stay-at-Home Mom’s Guide to Divorce covers how women can financially prepare for divorce and manage their finances during the process along with what the legal rights of mothers and children are. In order to financially separate from your former spouse, you must take stock of the accounts and information in your name in addition to anything not in your name that you have rights to. These include bank accounts, retirement savings accounts, tax returns, insurance coverage and Social Security materials. You should also consider any property or vehicles you share with your former spouse—and perhaps who’s going to take the nice espresso machine or the robot vacuum!

Lois Frankel, Ph.D., covered avoidable mistakes women make with money in her book “Nice Girls Don’t Get Rich.” Though some of these mistakes seemed redundant or unhelpful to me on first read, her discussion of not having investments in your name is relevant here: “You might just find it easier to comply than to make waves. Or you might be relieved that someone else is willing to handle all of these affairs for you. The fact is, there is no good reason to put joint monies or property into one partner’s name. Doing so leaves one person open to all the gain—or liability—associated with the investment.”

This advice from 2005 is still relevant today, and perhaps even more so with younger generations often running two-income households. Even if both partners aren’t bringing in the same amount of money, combining your finances and investments shows that you trust each other to spend and save wisely for your family. Where there’s no trust, there’s no relationship.

You may also need to build up your personal credit score after a divorce, especially if you have been a stay-at-home mom for a while. Besides the number of credit cards you have, your credit report will show any student, personal or auto loans in your name, your mortgage and any other type of debt. In Erin Lowry’s “Broke Millennial,” she says to “think of a strong credit score as an insurance policy for your financial life. A strong credit score proves to a lender that you’re reliable, which directly correlates to favorable loan terms.” This will also help if you need to apply for a new apartment or refinance your mortgage.

In order to be independent, you can build up your credit score by taking advantage of pay-later options like Afterpay, Klarna and PayPal Pay in 4. Most of these companies that allow you to pay later also don’t charge you interest if you pay within a certain period, meaning that you will still be spending the same amount of money whether you pay for it all when you buy it or stretch it out over four or more payments. This personally helped me to increase and maintain my good credit score before getting a real credit card.

If you have recently been widowed, there are short-term things you should focus on before moving on to long-term issues. In the first six months after losing your spouse, it’s important to build up an emergency fund to cover unexpected expenses and fuel your independence. This fund could also help to pay for any funeral costs. You will need to create a budget with just you and your needs in mind, something that will take some time to adjust to after losing your spouse.

Assess what your expenses are and the monthly amount you will need to stay financially afloat. Ensuring your mortgage and bills are paid, all financial accounts are correctly titled, beneficiary information is properly updated, taxes are covered and continuous health care coverage is maintained are all tasks that require your attention now. Further down the line, you can review your investments and change any rules according to your life stage. Decisions like buying a new house, moving to another state or changing careers should also be put off until you have had time to think through them and adapt to your new life.

If you are nearing retirement, make sure you have a plan for how you will spend it solo. This could involve moving closer to extended family so you’re not isolated, or having family come and stay with you more often since you will have more time to spend with them. Don’t be afraid to lean on family and friends during this time, especially for help with any financial hurdles. Though you shouldn’t be seeking investing advice from family, a trusted member could accompany you to meet a financial adviser or planner who can professionally help you navigate these hard times.

Take advantage of other financial resources for women. Read more about widowhood and retirement at AAII’s Retirement Investing.

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I read this so you don’t have to! Nice Girls Don’t Get Rich by Lois Frankel

This book review exists thanks to former AAII finance writer Matt Bajkowski who fished “Nice Girls Don’t Get Rich” by Lois Frankel, Ph.D., out of a bargain bin for $1, handed it to me and said, “For the blog!” The first thing to know about this book is it was published in 2005, so it’s full of antiquated advice—much of it geared toward married women. However, I thought it would still be a helpful exercise to see what was being touted to women in the early 2000s and if I could learn anything new that I haven’t from the many other finance books that now exist by women, for women.

Frankel covers women and wealth, getting in the money game, taking charge of your financial life, spending your money wisely, learning money basics, saving and investing for future wealth, maximizing your financial potential at work and playing it smart with your money. Chapter one encourages women to define what “rich” means to them. Frankel believes that women are given conflicting messages about money: We are told to spend wisely and save what we can but also be nurturing and helpful to others, creating a “double bind.” To get us out of this double standard, she points out another, “Whereas a woman may be called a ‘rich bitch,’ there are no similarly pejorative terms to describe a man.”

A table in the book presents the differences between how men and women use money. According to the table, men use money to prepare for the future, while women use money to create a lifestyle in the present. Likewise, men ask for “what they want” but women ask for “what they think they deserve.” Though these are a bit absolutist and don’t apply to everyone, I personally think this moment from Mad Men shows the difference even better!

The first chapter also has a self-assessment to determine where you are at on your personal finance journey. Each statement fits into a category that corresponds to a chapter of the book. For instance, #9 is part of the “taking charge of your financial life” category: “I have a plan in place for how to survive financially if something catastrophic were to happen (sudden loss of a job, loss of a spouse or partner, etc.).” Adding up the true statements in each category leads to a total score. My score of 24 landed me in the middle: “You’ve made a good start, but you’re nowhere near the finish line. Focus on those areas where you still have difficulty with becoming financially independent. You’ll find that small changes pay big dividends.”

I guess by 2005 standards, I’m slacking in the personal finance department (probably because I don’t balance my checkbook!). But I’d say a lot has changed since then, even if the low-rise jeans have cycled back into rotation. My higher scores in the “spending your money wisely” and “saving and investing for future wealth” categories signal that I’m on the right track.

It wouldn’t be an early 2000s book without a whisper of “the media” that was beginning to take over our lives. Frankel’s “Sex and the City” reference was a welcome surprise, “If you were to be the media’s ideal representation of the perfect woman, you would be thin, blond, and twenty-five. Kind of like the women on Sex and the City. The only stock you would own would be a ‘stockpile’ of Manolo Blahnik shoes!”

Speaking of women and bad spending habits, the chapter about spending your money wisely has pages upon pages covering the same problem in different fonts: “emotionally driven purchases,” “impulse buying” and “guilt shopping trips.” It almost reads like her publisher wanted her to fill out this chapter with more mistakes women were making to make us all feel worse about ourselves! We have a lot more clarity now around the way women spend money, which practically stimulates the entire economy. Women using their money to create a lifestyle in the present doesn’t have to be a bad thing for personal finance, it just needs to be balanced out with more of an eye on the future.

The discussion I found most fruitful was around giving and how women are taught to avoid being greedy: “Ask yourself whether you have what you want, what you deserve, and what others have. If the word greedy comes to mind, exorcise it from your vocabulary. Women who worry that they’re just being greedy are usually the last ones who should be worrying about it. Greedy people don’t think of themselves as greedy. They simply insist on receiving everything they think is due them—which is usually more than they deserve in actuality, and that’s why we call them greedy!”

As a chronic overthinker who has been told “Wow, you think about a lot of things,” I like to apply this lesson to other aspects of my life. If I’m consciously thinking about something, it means I care about it and I’m willing to allocate my own precious time and brainpower to it. On the flip side, it means that someone who doesn’t think about those things probably doesn’t care or doesn’t have the capacity to handle them. In terms of money, this would mean they are blindly taking advantage of a system that already works for them—they never had to think twice (or even once!).

As a Jewish woman, Frankel also discusses tzedakah and using money to do good: “I’m a huge believer in sharing one’s wealth—whether it’s a wealth of time, money, or resources. In fact, in Jewish households there’s often something called a tzedakah—a small box into which you put money for the less fortunate. Interestingly, the word tzedakah is the Hebrew term for charity … meaning justice or fairness. So it’s not necessarily true that you share money because you are altruistic; rather, you feel it’s the right or just thing to do.”

Despite the overload of anti-shopping advice and some old URLs that no longer go anywhere, I enjoyed seeing how all of Frankel’s ideas fit together. “Nice Girls Don’t Get Rich” emphasizes the importance of financial thinking for women to address the causes instead of the symptoms, but it leans heavily on the idea that women can be rich if they just act a little more like men. I’ve read enough books that discount this idea entirely, so I don’t want to put too much anachronistic pressure on the book itself. If it weren’t for this book and Frankel’s work, women wouldn’t have had this stepping stone to get where we are today in the world of money.

Shop my investing library at Bookshop.org!

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A Look at Top Gender Equality Funds

I haven’t been thinking much about my investments recently. To be frank, there is a lot going on that demands my attention and my portfolio isn’t at the forefront of what I care about right now. I check my Charles Schwab brokerage account very infrequently, to the point that I have seen some green where there used to be red. This behavioral technique of looking at my account less has given me an illusion (or delusion?) of hope.

However, it has been a minute since I checked in with the sustainable investing world. My sustainable investing strategy requires a review twice a year, so I will be analyzing my portfolio at the start of the new year. One of my rules is anything I choose to invest in should have an As You Sow gender equality grade of C or better, since many of the promising candidates that I found in the past are lagging in that area. Only two of the five index exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in my portfolio have A grades for gender equality. So, I went to As You Sow to find the top gender equality funds with grades of A to see how they compare and if they’re suitable investments.

The top four funds on the list as of November 12, 2023, were the Impax Ellevate Global Women’s Leadership Investor fund (PXWEX), the Boston Trust Walden Balanced fund (WSBFX), the Green Century Balanced fund (GCBLX) and the Amana Income Investor fund (AMANX). All four have grades of A for gender equality and civilian firearms, meaning stocks held within the funds do not support the production of civilian firearms with their investments. The gender equality score looks at gender balance in the leadership and workforce of a company and equal pay for employees.

Here’s a breakdown of the gender equality score for Impax Ellevate Global Women’s Leadership:

The further score criteria analyze the holdings of the fund based on how safe a company is for workers, whether there is sexual harassment in any form, how the rights of employees are protected, if business practices are both ethical and compliant and how diverse the company’s suppliers are, including women-owned businesses. Gender equality isn’t just about women, it encompasses the well-being of all genders.

When it comes to the other As You Sow grades, these funds vary widely. Many have high grades for tobacco but are inconsistent on the prison industrial complex. Deforestation and fossil fuels aren’t as big of a concern for some of these funds either. Amana Income Investor has a military weapons grade of F, while the rest of its grades are A and B.

Every time I look at these As You Sow grades, I am reminded of the meaning of intersectionality, something I mentioned in a previous blog post about why I care about sustainable investing. Intersectionality is the acknowledgement that everyone has their own unique experiences of discrimination and oppression, considering gender, race, class, sexual orientation, physical ability, etc.

Though these funds are focused on investing in companies that are promoting gender equality, some seem to be literally missing the forest for the trees, with deforestation and fossil fuel grades of C and D. Just because a company is doing its part to change in one area of environmental, social and governance (ESG) doesn’t mean it will do so across the board. The impact of deforestation and fossil fuels on the earth is one of the largest contributing factors to climate change. In turn, the people who bear the brunt of climate change are those who don’t have access to resources needed to survive due to gender and class inequality, racial oppression, lack of physical ability and homophobia. Everything is connected, and we are all individually impacted by the world in our own unique ways.

Now let’s look at these funds using AAII’s Fund Compare tool. Something interesting I noticed right off the bat is that most of these funds were incepted in the late 1980s or 1990s. Most of the funds that fit my investing strategy are much newer funds on the market, so they don’t have as much return history to look at. The two funds with better return grades are also less risky compared to their category: Amana Income Investor and Boston Trust Walden, with category risk indexes of 0.89 and 0.90, respectively. Green Century Balanced and Impax Ellevate Global Women’s Leadership have poor return grades and are riskier investments compared to their category. This usually isn’t the case with investing: If you take more risk, you are usually rewarded with higher returns.

Unfortunately, none of these funds fit my current investing strategy. All four have expense ratios of 0.77% or higher, while my cutoff is 0.60%. When it comes to As You Sow grades, the only fund that comes close is Green Century Balanced, with just a military weapons grade of C dragging it down. I have said previously that gender equality will be the hardest category for funds to grade well in. It is the longest-standing, most deeply ingrained issue in our society, and will therefore be the hardest to counteract and eventually dismantle through investing. The rest of the grades for fossil fuels, deforestation, civilian firearms, the prison industrial complex, military weapons and tobacco are all for man-made, more tangible things that are somewhat easier to pinpoint and avoid. The act of isolating gender equality as an issue on As You Sow instead showed just how connected every aspect of sustainability is and, to me, makes sustainable investing all the more important.

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I read this so you don’t have to! Financial Feminist by Tori Dunlap

“This is going to sound harsh, but you literally cannot afford not investing.”
—Tori Dunlap

When I started planning this blog back in 2021, Tori Dunlap’s “Financial Feminist” podcast was the first resource I found that was speaking directly to me. Through her company Her First $100K, Dunlap has made it her mission to educate women on investing and empower them to take control of their finances. As someone with the privilege to grow up with parents who taught her about money (and had enough money to constructively talk about), Dunlap made it her prerogative to take up space as a woman in an industry dominated by men, providing information catered to women. It’s not just a title; by definition, she is a financial feminist.

These days, I tend to consume podcasts more for entertainment, so having access to Dunlap’s brain in the form of the book “Financial Feminist” was exactly what this overstimulated millennial needed. The book covers the emotions of money, spending, making a financial game plan, debt, investing, earning and living a financial feminist lifestyle. I found the chapters on the emotions of money and investing to be the most fruitful, but if you are just starting to get your finances together, this book has everything you need.

In the first chapter, Dunlap discusses how women learning about money is a direct threat to the patriarchy: “The patriarchy realizes that when a woman gains the knowledge to build wealth, soon it will have no control over her life or decisions. Her financial independence is a threat to the status quo. So, the patriarchy demands we tax ourselves. It weaponizes our altruism. Recent research suggests that women are expected to behave altruistically and, given that they disproportionately occupy societal roles involving caregiving and subservience, are punished for deviating from that norm to a much greater extent than men are. Thus, women may internalize altruism as their instinctive response, even at their own expense.”

Even if a woman doesn’t identify as a caregiver, the roles that have been established in the body politic dictate that if she doesn’t pour her life and money into helping people, she is selfish. Meanwhile, there is no expectation for men to fill this role. They are taught to get a good, high-paying job and let the rest fall into place. I wonder if this is partly where my passion for donating came from, this inherent need to … just care about other people? Wow, revolutionary!

Dunlap continues that women “need to challenge men’s gender roles in the process, or we’ll be left with a society of individualistic assholes where no one cares about anyone. Financial feminism isn’t just about a woman’s right to decide what she does with her money, without the current socialized pressure to exist in service of others. It’s also about each of us demanding that the people who have access to the most money (i.e., men) actually start thinking about their existence in service of others.”

Men have taken advantage of women’s physical and emotional labor for centuries. Ever since women joined the workforce during World War II and were given access to “the world of men,” they have been shifting their role in society. No longer are women forced to be caregivers, secretaries or teachers in service of others. Now women can, quite literally, do anything they want for work (while still getting paid less than men). However, men haven’t had any reason to change their societal roles along with us; some men still expect their women coworkers to serve as their secretaries, believing that all women have this need to serve, even if that is not in their job description. Instead of having women “lean in” and act more like men in the workplace, Dunlap believes this should be flipped, and men should level the playing field by doing the emotional labor that women do every day. Now that’s feminism, baby!

In the words of Bobbie Barrett from Mad Men:

When it comes to spending, women are more often shamed for spending money. I’ve seen countless videos of women hiding their spending habits from their husbands, getting rid of the evidence before he comes home, thinking this is peak humor. Instead, it makes me physically ill! Dunlap says, “The real kicker here is that the spending power of women drives the majority of the economy. We’ve been marketed to since we were young girls, a constant narrative to get us to spend money … Women are the most marketed to but then are shamed for spending!”

Not only are women trained from a young age to consume, told that spending money on ourselves will improve our lives, we are stimulating the economy as I write this. Somewhere, right now, a woman is getting her nails done, and I’m sure they look incredible! By doing so, she is contributing to someone else’s living wage. Another woman is buying something overpriced at Anthropologie just to feel something. Me? I’m just trying to finish this blog post, but I’ll probably buy some collagen gummies I don’t actually need at Target later (they taste really good 😆).

But seriously, if it weren’t for women spending money to be respected by society, there would be no $580 billion beauty industry, and there would be no stocks for companies like Target, Ulta or Sally Beauty. These are stocks that I’ve read news about in some of AAII’s model portfolios—men spend money in the beauty industry in their own way, knowing that it’s a lucrative investment, and then women are shamed for carrying the economy on their backs. What’s the difference? Both are investments: Men are making money on that money, while women are investing the money in themselves first, and investing in another person or establishment for those beauty services.

Dunlap does a great job of cutting through the patriarchal, financial jargon in this book to simplify how we think about investing. She says, “When it comes down to it, investing is simply putting money into financial products … with the expectation that they’ll make us more money.” She also squashes anyone’s fear about losing money in their investments, “Investing for the long term—twenty or more years—raises your prospects of seeing a return on your investment to 100 percent … In fact, during every single twenty-year period (yes, even during the Great Recession), investors made money. Long-term investing—steady, patient, consistent—does not lose. It never has.” It was great to see such an important and frank discussion of long-term investing after hearing about it for years at AAII (just a tinge of confirmation bias here!).

So far, I was loving this book, but to my dismay, there wasn’t much airtime given to environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing. Having a sustainable investing strategy, to me, is the most financially feminist thing you can do with your money. Not only did it make investing so much easier for me when I was starting out by narrowing the field of investments I could consider, it also cut through a lot of the patriarchal bullshit I knew I would have to deal with as a woman starting to invest. It gave me the ability to say, “No, I’m not going to invest like every man has told me to. I’m not going to just throw all of my money into an index fund that’s filled to the brim with companies that couldn’t care less about me, my community, the earth and our well-being. I’m going to do things my way.”

As Dunlap says, “We work to increase our income and get paid fairly: for our mental health, our financial goals, and our own stability, and to make society better.” Being financially independent isn’t about making the most money in the world (millionaires and billionaires are gross, and they should definitely pay dividends). Ultimately, investing is about making your money work for you so that you can live your life without worrying about your next paycheck. A girl can dream!

A (Very) Brief History of Women in Finance

This article is dedicated to my grandma who started her own tax business in the 1950s.

When I set out to create this blog, I knew that I would be taking up space as a woman in an industry that not only is dominated by men but that women were intentionally kept from participating in for most of history.

During World War II, over six million women started working outside the home in the U.S., making up 37% of the workforce by 1945. However, a woman couldn’t have her own bank account until the 1960s, and even then, women didn’t have the ability to fully control their own finances until 1974 with the passing of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. Before that, women’s access to money was almost entirely through men—their husband or, if they weren’t married, their father.

In 1967, businesswoman Muriel Siebert was the first woman trader to join the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), and she went on to also be the first woman in charge of an NYSE member company. Often called “the first woman of finance,” Siebert criticized white men for relying on the way things had always been done. She said, “men at the top of industry and government should be more willing to risk sharing leadership with women and minority members who are not merely clones of their white male buddies. In these fast-changing times, we need the different viewpoints and experiences, we need the enlarged talent bank. The real risk lies in continuing to do things the way they’ve always been done.”

Geraldine Weiss, otherwise known as “the grande dame of dividends,” started an investment newsletter in the 1960s called “Investment Quality Trends.” Like many women writers before her, she concealed her gender by publishing the newsletter under the name G. Weiss so she could ensure that it would be taken seriously by men. It wasn’t until 1977 when she appeared on the talk show “Wall Street Week with Louis Rukeyser” that her identity as a woman was revealed (what a badass!). AAII created the Weiss Blue Chip Dividend Yield screen from the strategies outlined in her 1988 book “Dividends Don’t Lie.” You can read more about Weiss’ investing strategy and how the screen works here.

Fast forward to today, 51% of women are now in charge of their household’s finances, but 63% still wish that they could know more about investing and financial planning. The wealth and income gaps between men and women still exist (and are even worse for minority women, with Black women holding a college degree making 38% less than white women without one), and along with them comes the historical burden of the financial literacy gap. Women made up only 24% of finance leadership roles as of 2021.

Source: “2021 Women and Investing Study,” Fidelity Investments.

Though women of any age or career stage can be judged based on their gender, young women likely get the most resistance when trying to enter the world of finance. I stumbled across an article about Lauren Simmons, who just out of college at age 22 became the youngest woman trader on the NYSE. She was also only the second Black woman to have such a position. She went on to start a streaming series called “Going Public” that chronicles the journeys of several company founders as they raise money for an initial public offering (IPO).

Despite everything working against women when it comes to money, women are often touted as better investors than men. An article by Lara Coviello and Daniel Crosby states, “In a nutshell, women tend to exhibit more self-control in their spending and have a more disciplined approach to investing, while men are more likely to invest based on gut instinct, and therefore make less rational decisions when it comes to managing their assets.”

Of course, not all women and men will fit this bill, but the numbers don’t lie! In the same article, the authors note that “Women trade 23 percent less frequently than men, but, on average, women outperform men by 1.3 percent more during bear markets.” An article from Merrill cites other advantages women have when it comes to investing including being patient, choosing a “balanced investing approach” and not being afraid to ask questions.

To any women who haven’t started investing yet, the odds are stacked in your favor. Just occupying space in the world of finance as a woman is an act of protest against systemic oppression, the rest is up to you!

More financial resources for women:

Financial Feminist podcast
Ellevest
The Budgetnista
Clever Girl Finance (read my book review here)
Women’s Institute for Financial Education (WIFE)
Women’s Bond Club

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I read this so you don’t have to! Clever Girl Finance by Bola Sokunbi

I found “Clever Girl Finance” by Bola Sokunbi when searching for beginning investor books, and I hesitated before buying it. Though the world of finance is dominated by men, particularly white men, I wondered if financial literacy needed to be gendered at all. Sokunbi answered this question within the first few pages of the book, saying that “despite [women] earning more than ever before, we are paid significantly less for doing the same work as our male counterparts in nearly every single occupation and industry. On average, women earn about 20% less than men … On top of that, we are living longer than men by an average of 5–10 years, which means we actually need more money for our financial well-being in retirement than men will.”

This reminded me of a comment on a video by YouTuber Elena Taber covering investing for beginners:

While reading, I did find it easier to learn from someone with similar life experiences as me. I had a feeling that nothing was being left out that might apply to me specifically.

Sokunbi covers your money mindset, how to get your money organized, budgeting, debt and loans, investing, credit, protecting yourself, making more money and key financial actions. Each section has helpful “Take Action” checklists with activities you can do to understand your relationship to money based on how you grew up, what you want to accomplish with your money, tracking your spending, creating a budget, getting your student loans under control, outlining a retirement savings plan and more.

I was most drawn to the chapter on budgeting and saving, especially how much is recommended to have in emergency savings. Sokunbi mentions budgeting apps as a simple way to start, but cautions “it can detach you from closely monitoring your finances if you don’t make a conscious effort to do so.” She says that you should have “three to six months of your essential living expenses in emergency savings. This includes living expenses related to your housing, transportation, and food needs” and the range is dependent on if you’re partnered (three months) or single (six months).

Regarding where to keep your emergency savings, Sokunbi suggests that they should be “easily accessible and liquid so you can get to it when you need it without having to wait and without having to worry about how financial markets are performing. Therefore, it shouldn’t be tied up in investments like the stock market or in real estate. An interest-bearing savings account or a certificate of deposit are good places to keep this money.”

But what I really appreciated about this breakdown is how Sokunbi highlights the behavioral aspect of saving, “You also want to make sure that you are keeping your emergency savings separate from your other financial goals. Blending your savings goals together can get confusing, and in the event you have to use your savings, taking the money out of a comingled account can make you feel like you are setting yourself back with your other goals as well.”

Though I could take or leave the gendered jokes about handbags and shoes (Carrie Bradshaw would love this book), overall I found Sokunbi’s writing style extremely informative and easily accessible. The “Take Action” sections are the most valuable part of the book, and I’ll be returning to them throughout my investing discoveries.

Shop my investing library at Bookshop.org!

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Hereditary Financial Habits: Introduction

You can listen to the audio of this post!

Before I got my first paid internship as a college student, money was something that was just out of my reach. Like many kids, I was given an allowance by my parents to do chores around the house. I would empty the dishwasher, set the table for dinner, take the garbage out, etc. I appreciated that there were also things I was expected to do that I didn’t get paid for, like doing my own laundry and cleaning my room. I would get paid for the things I could do for other people, but the things I didn’t get paid for had to be self-motivated; it was a great way to build discipline.

I learned from a young age that being independent and doing things for myself was an asset to me. To this day, I will try my hardest to solve any problem that arises before asking for help (yes, sometimes to a fault, but I’m working on it!).

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve noticed more similarities between me and my parents in the way we think, the way we conduct ourselves socially and how we interact with the world. Some of those things my dad will address as “the family curse,” others as his “insanity,” but one of the ripest that I want to break down further is what financial habits, if any, I inherited from my family.

Unfortunately, my grandma on my mom’s side died when I was very young, so all I have is stories about her. As I grew up, I learned that she was an accountant and started her own tax business in the 1950s. It wasn’t an easy time to be a woman, let alone a businesswoman. She was the only woman in her accounting class, and people questioned why she wasn’t getting a teaching degree instead. But she proved all of them wrong, and she went on to meet my grandpa on my mom’s side, who was active in his parents’ phone and answering service business. My mom’s parents ran the phone business together, and my grandma kept her tax business on the side up until the 1980s when my mom recalls a little old lady about four feet tall coming to the office asking for my grandma to do her taxes because she couldn’t possibly go anywhere else!

On my dad’s side, his father died very young, so we never got to meet him. But his mom was around for a little while after I was born. She was big into investing, and when she passed, she left her estate to my parents. My dad told me that when he was 15, his mom bought him stock in IBM Corp. (IBM) to get him into investing. To keep him engaged, she also had him oversee her dividends! My dad would have to verify which amounts were going into her account and match the dividend depending on the company and the month. They had a manual bookkeeping spreadsheet (on paper!) of when the dividends were expected that he helped to maintain.

So I grew up with a lot of business-minded people in my family. But how did that affect how I view money?

As a kid I used to think that my parents would always have enough money to take care of me, that money was something infinite, but I quickly learned that wasn’t the case. My parents had just made good decisions with their money and gotten lucky. I think the biggest lesson I learned from growing up in this environment was to save. When I started making a steady income, I was big into saving because I wanted to be someone who had reserves if something went wrong. If I had a sudden health issue and couldn’t work, I wanted to make sure I could live for at least a year on my savings. It also strikes me as an extension of my need to be fiercely independent; I didn’t think of asking anyone else for help if I fell on hard times, I expected to be able to handle everything myself.

How did you view money growing up, and how did that influence your relationship with money and investing?