Good Enough Mother: Money and Me:
Why It’s Time To Own My Future (video)

(This is a sponsored post for SheSpeaks and Prudential.)

Money and me. I have never had a great relationship with money. I’m pretty sure it harkens back to my experiences with long division in the 6th grade. It was a struggle then and even though I don’t have to do long division anymore, the memories of staying after class (complete with tears) are still with me.

My husband, on the other hand, is a businessman. He lives numbers and breathes spreadsheets. So for the last two decades, I pretty much abdicated all of that and let him handle it.

It wasn’t always that way. When I was a young woman, I did manage my own money but found very little joy in doing it.  

Before I go on, let me say this: life changes in an instant. It seemed like only a moment ago I had a big job and little kids. I spent years working for major media companies and along with the stress, came a steady paycheck.

Then in 2006, I lost a big job. I had a major surgery. I started my own business and working for myself brought with it other unique challenges (cash flow anyone?).

The last decade brought with it more major shifts in my life; two kids in college, an eye at downsizing our current living situation and more.

When Prudential asked me to help spread the word about the challenges women face in their financial life, I said absolutely. And in doing the research I realized I was not alone.

Women face 4 major challenges when it comes to financial security:

  1. The Wage and Income Gap: Even at this late date, women earn 79% of what a man does.1 If we earn less, that means we have less to invest.
  2. The Investment Gap: As women, we tend to love security. That works against us in terms of investing as we tend to be more conservative when choosing where to put our money.2
  3. Living Longer and Living Alone: Get this: women retire with 67% of what men have but we LIVE LONGER!3 That means there is a chance we could outlive our money.
  4. The Time Gap: Women spend on average 28 hours more a week on household chores than men.4 That’s real work and it’s work that is uncompensated.

Okay, so how do we change this? Well, we have to start by Owning Our Future. For me, that means pulling back the big, hairy scary curtain on finances and address the good and the bad in my financial life.

I was fortunate enough to sit down with Meg Morales, a Prudential Financial Professional and I am thrilled to say I feel better already! We have a game plan and it starts with a budget. Not to say I didn’t have a budget before but it was a little loose…. We’re going to tighten that up so we can then figure out how much I have to invest.

Take a peek at this video for more on my meeting with Meg!

  

If you’re interested in setting up a meeting with a Prudential Financial Professional, click here to get started today!

Sources:

  1. Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Historical Income Tables Table P-40: Women’s Earnings as a Percentage of Men’s Earnings by Race and Hispanic Origin, 2016
  2. http://fortune.com/2016/05/11/sallie-krawcheck-ellevest-launch;
  3. Prudential Retirement analysis; National Center for Health Statistics, Health, United States, 2015: With Special Feature on Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities. Hyattsville, MD. 2016.
  4. Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, October 2016, http://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?queryid=54757.