The Conversation Continues…

Written on September 3, 2010 at 1:05 pm, by Eleanor Blayney

Directions Alliance Conference Call:  September 2, 2010

We had over 140 advisors join in the discussion of our challenges and opportunities in reaching women clients.  Participants had a lot to contribute, so much so that the hour allotted to the call did not allow everyone to have a chance to speak.  We invite those who did not get a chance to share to join the Directions Alliance group on LinkedIn , and to sign up for our next conference call on Friday, September 17^th at noon.  We also have  a Facebook page for the Directions Alliance, as well as a Women’s Worth page.  Please plant your ideas wherever and in whatever way works for you!

Here are the issues and ideas that brought advisors to our second call:

• Frustration with women clients who refuse to address the fact that they are spending too much, and therefore sabotage the work of the advisor to help them reach their goals.  Is there a way to screen out such clients before we as advisors invest considerable time and effort trying to assist them?

While “denial” is certainly not exclusive to women, it may be that women are more often affected by this than men.  As part of Directions’ mission to educate women, we should consider ways to educate them how to be better financial planning clients.

• Circles are a great way to create “safe space” for women to start talking about their money issues.  How, specifically, can we deal with the shame that often prevents women from fully engaging?  So often, they are embarrassed and unwilling to admit the mistakes they have made.

We will be reporting back from our Atlanta prototype consumer circle to discuss ideas for getting “women into the room.”  Scripts for conducting these circles, ways of creating inviting invitations to circle, and techniques for disarming the shame that so often constrains women will be developed.  One participant remembered her experience of consciousness-raising groups during the feminist days of the 70s, and how these groups were successful in getting women to share all sorts of information about themselves.  What can we learn from the format and purpose of these groups to help us in our “Empowerment” mission?  Another participant mentioned her success in holding financial planning groups in a library, as a women-friendly place, and one that has the advantage of cutting across all economic strata.

Related to the issue of safety in circles are issues of compliance, specifically confidentiality and privacy.  What measures can be taken to assure participants that their information remains private?  From a compliance point of view, it would seem that the same rules that apply to seminars or other public gatherings would be relevant. However,  callers were invited to share any specific compliance constraints that they are dealing with.  It is suggested that ground rules be established for any circle conversation, as well as using first names only on name tags or in introductions.

• Why have the numbers of women advisors (specifically CFP®s) stayed so stubbornly low, at approximately 1 in 4?  Some very preliminary data indicates that almost as many women as men are enrolled in financial planning programs at colleges and universities.  What, then, explains the gap which exists at the practice level?

There has been some expressed interest in pursuing this question as a research project undertaken or sponsored by the Directions Alliance.

One participant, a financial advisor who is African-American, is interested in taking this research on the demographics of the advisory community one step further, and exploring the issues faced by advisors (as well as clients) who are members of racial or ethnic minorities.  Another participant commented that the FPA is taking the issue of diversity very seriously, and she is now reviewing 19 applications for a diversity scholarship that her local chapter is awarding.

• Some advisors have seminars that are prepared and approved by their RIA firms or broker-dealers.  Can these seminars be used to engage women, or are circles the better way to go?

One of the principles of circles is the willingness to let participants determine their own agenda and outcomes, with the circle facilitator maintaining certain rules to keep it open and safe.  In this respect, circles are indeed a different way to engage women, and have a purpose and a “feel” that is very different than a seminar.  As advisors, we may be most helpful by first becoming good listeners, before we attempt to teach or educate.

• There were several comments on the topic of whether it makes sense to target a particular age group or demographic for a circle.  One caller mentioned an educational session she ran for a company, in which it was the 20-somethings who were most willing to talk, while older women (50s-60s) were generally silent.

Certainly these cohort differences are important as we invite women into circle conversations; at the same time, one of the philosophical principles of circle hosting is that whoever shows up is exactly the right person to take part in the conversation.

• “WHAT ABOUT ME?”  A comment was made about a national TV and print advisor who has immense following, but leaves many women feeling that she is not talking to them or about their particular circumstances.

When advice is delivered unilaterally from expert to consumer, this  feeling of being unseen and unheard often results.  This is why an invitation to share stories and thoughts in a conversational setting can work so powerfully.  When women are invited to speak whatever is on their minds, they also feel heard.

Time ran out, long before the ideas did.  Please keep the conversation going online and  as we meet at national conferences.

Our commitment at the Directions Alliance is to take action together on these great ideas and to help advisors improve their outreach to women.  We will be holding a final conference call, to continue our exploration of the important issues on advisors’ minds, on September 17^th at noon EDT.  If you have not yet reserved your place, and wish to do so, please send an email to directionsforwomen@me.com.

The next phase of our important work lies ahead:  creating the agenda for our work together, and developing the tools, materials, strategies, and coaching for advisors passionate about changing the personal finance conversation for women.

Stay tuned!

The Two Faces of Choice

Written on August 25, 2010 at 11:47 am, by Elizabeth Jetton, CFP®

Direction$ is pleased to welcome a guest blog post from one of Eleanor Blayney’s cofounders, Elizabeth Jetton, CFP® . For more about Elizabeth, click here.

I recently read a fascinating interview published online in Knowledge @ Wharton with author and researcher, Sheena Iyengar, a professor at Columbia Business School who wrote The Art of Choosing.

When I ask clients what is important to them about money, often both men and women will tell me, “It’s having choice: being able to do what I want. “ Simple. Choice equals freedom. Or does it?

The psychology of choice is fascinating. Studies indicate how fickle we can be about what we want, whether we are in the grocery store, choosing between jobs or selecting an entrée at a restaurant. We are impacted by what others want; by what our culture values and by competing internal pulls between what we truly value, what we think we ought to value, what our gut tells us and our rational mind is telling us.

There can be a cost to having too much choice. In one of her studies, Iyengar compared 401(k) participation rates for Fidelity funds, which manages billions of dollars in retirement funds. In 401(k) plans where the employees were offered 10 or fewer investment choices, participation in the plan was around 75%.

When the number of investment choices reached 50 or more (Fidelity offers 4500) participation in the plan dropped to 60%. In other words, too much choice can paralyze us. We may lack enough information or context for even beginning the process of choosing. We feel defeated and exhausted before we start. Not a good thing when it could mean the difference in whether or not we have enough money to spend when earning a living is no longer desirable or feasible.

Something else I’ve observed in myself regarding spending money will probably seem so obvious to you. If I don’t go in the store, I don’t have to make a choice of what to buy, so I don’t buy. Duh.

I love to knit. What I really love is yarn: the feel of different yarns, the colors, the vision I have of creating something beautiful, the image of myself relaxing in my favorite chair with a pile of yarn in my lap and the dog by my side. I do not seem to be able to enter a yarn shop without buying something, despite very strong intentions not to buy, because I do not need more yarn. I have accumulated what a saleswoman calls, “SABLE: stash accumulated beyond life expectancy”.

As soon as I enter the yarn store, the “now I must choose” part of my brain engages and I find myself scanning the aisles, not just looking for the pleasure of it, but weighing choices. That is, do I want a silk yarn or alpaca? Blues or reds? The choosing brain vs. the rational “just looking” brain usually conquers me. Maybe it’s the ancient female ancestor still alive in me, who goes “on the hunt”, who is a gatherer of berries, seeds and greens, searching the forest for the next meal, gathering, gathering, gathering. Shopping (for the things, like yarn, that call to me) feels like ancient ritual, feels good, feels like gathering.

I can gather a lot of yarn in a year if I allow myself. And sometimes that leads to the vicious cycle of guilt: guilt for unintended spending. Guilt makes me hungry. Great – now I can feel guilty for spending and for eating.

We’re laughing, right? But this behavior can cost a lot more than plowing through a yarn budget. We won’t make a choice where we need to make it (participating in a 401(k), hiring a financial advisor, etc.) but we will get trapped into choices we would be better off avoiding.

The pull is strong. The gratification of choosing whatever it is calling us- shoes, children’s toys, jewelry, home goods, books, yarn … you name it – can represent the opposite of freedom: addiction, a lack of ability to choose “no”.

Freedom is the ability to choose not only “yes”, but to choose “no”. To feel the empowerment of serving a grander goal, like money for your future, or money for a long desired trip or building reserves so you can have true freedom even if times get a little rough. You can achieve these goals because you exercised your choice to say “no” to the pull of “more” and exercised your choice to say “yes” to not spending. Additionally, you have the choice to say yes to , but to saving, to calling an advisor, to raising the question with your friends or an advisor about money, to appreciating all that “yarn” (insert your own passion) you’ve already acquired.

The choice to love what you have, just like your mother told you, is perhaps the greater freedom. The power of choosing “none”, a statement of personal independence. I’m still a work in progress, because I’m human. It helps to talk about it!

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Our first Circle for women is taking place in Atlanta, GA on September 15th. We will also host an Advisors’ Circle that same day to provide advisors with some of the tools they need to change the conversation about personal finance for women. Click here to learn more.

The Direction$ Alliance: Planting the Seeds

Written on August 18, 2010 at 10:32 pm, by Eleanor Blayney

Notes from the August 11th Conference Call

Approximately 90 advisors were welcomed to the first conference call for the Direction$ Alliance on August 11th.

In keeping with our mission to change the conversation about personal finance, the Founders of Direction$ tried to model the call itself on some of the principles we believe are essential to hosting conversations that matter. We did not bring a business agenda to the call, nor a developed menu of services that Direction$ will offer to its community. Instead, we brought ourselves, our personal stories, and our passion for improving the way financial planning advice is delivered to women. There were no expected or desired outcomes, except for clearing the space where community participants could share their ideas, interests, and issues.

The art and process of hosting meaningful conversations includes a step called “harvesting” where the participants’ comments are gathered to set the priorities for what the community would like to accomplish going forward. It is not yet time for the harvest, though we can already see that it will be rich and abundant. This first conference call was instead a sowing of seeds, as will be the two conference calls to follow on September 2nd and 17th. Our focus now will be to see which seeds take root in our community, and to direct the wisdom and resources of the Alliance toward cultivating these ideas.

Here is what was planted on our call:

• A sense that many of us individually have been searching for community support in our efforts to serve women: “This is an idea we have been waiting for, for a long time…”
• Recognition that women clients and prospects can be resistant to our best efforts to keep them engaged
• Need for women-centric presentations, outlines, workbooks that advisors can use in their outreach to women prospects
• Interest in face-to-face networking – at a Direction$ sponsored conference or at association conferences – in additional to online networking
• Need for a collaborative, nationally distributed “blueprint” of ways to get women talking about money. Request for a “turnkey” process of engaging women.
• Guidance on working with women who are part of a couple seeking financial planning advice
• Observation that the best ideas on serving women will go nowhere without consistent marketing
• Request for more information on circles – how they are conducted, number of participants, and how these are different from seminars and workshops
• Interest in available research on gender styles and differences that can inform our efforts; Interest, too, in initiating needed research that has not yet been conducted
• Desire to create “break-out” sessions on our conference calls, allowing call participants to focus on subjects of special interest
• Possibility of developing a Direction$ brand that could identify and distinguish Alliance members in the eyes of the woman consumer, as advisors who are committed to changing the personal finance conversation for women.

We will be building on these ideas and shares in our next call, as well as hearing from advisors who may be joining us for the first time.

For those of you interested in listening to the recording of the session, please call (712) 432-1065, then enter the code: 940063. You will then be able to listen to approximately 50 minutes of the call. (Unfortunately, the first part of the session was not captured, but we promise that this technical glitch will be gone for the September 2 session.

The Founders of Direction$ — Eleanor Blayney, Elizabeth Jetton, and Peg Downey – want to thank everyone who took part in this call, and to encourage you to keep visiting the website, for announcements of upcoming Direction$ speaking and circle events, and for sharing your ideas and thoughts. You can also follow us on Facebook on the Direction$ Alliance community page. (Note to advisors who cannot have Facebook accounts due to BD compliance concerns: you do NOT need to set up an account in order to follow our community page.) You can also follow our bite-size comments on all things female-friendly on Twitter: @directions4her.

We are listening … let’s keep the conversation going! Please post your feedback in the comment section below.

A Different Kind of Wealth

Written on August 15, 2010 at 10:42 pm, by Eleanor Blayney

Six days and it’s still not quite real yet, but there was a massive fire destroying the townhome where my daughter, son-in-law, and grandbaby lived. They are safe. This is the first, last, and most important consideration. But just about everything they owned was lost to the fire itself, or to smoke and water damage. We’ve been reminding ourselves over and over that it’s all just “stuff.” At the same time, it was a lot of stuff – computers, photos, family documents, clothes, furniture, jewelry. There will much rebuilding, both literally and figuratively, in the months ahead.

It’s said that nature abhors a vacuum, and the truth of this has never been so powerfully apparent to me. In that void created by the loss of their house and their belongings, a flood of community support has come pouring in. Many of the people offering food, places to stay, toys, and baby gear do not even know Elizabeth and Brad, but their generosity and concern has been no less genuine. When thanked, they push off our gratitude with a simple “I’m sure they’d do the same for us, if our situations were reversed…”

In the financial advisory world, we talk a lot about capital – how to invest and manage it. Usually we are referring to financial capital that is easily valued in dollars, and considered necessary for our lives and our goals, such as educating children or retiring comfortably. But here at Direction$, in keeping with our vision of changing the way we talk about and view personal finance, we are enlarging our definition of capital to include not just investment and savings accounts, but human and social capital as well. Your human capital is the aggregate of your education, experience, skills, and passions, which can be put to productive use in the workplace, in return for earnings and benefits. Social capital, according to the ecological organization, EarthEconomics, is defined as “the underpinning and core fabric of communities,” providing benefits in the form of safety, security, friendship, and a sense of civic identity.

Both alternative forms of capital – human and social – are incredibly important as supporting and sustaining resources, and deserve as much attention and management as our 401(k)s or mutual fund accounts. For women especially, social capital is often an essential resource, because of the fact that their financial and human capital is often diminished by the years they spend out of the workplace, raising and caring for family members.

The hard fact is that women need more resources for their longer lives, but have less, in terms of financial assets, when they arrive in retirement. Elderly unmarried women – including widows – depend on Social Security for as much as half their income, compared to men for whom Social Security covers about 39 percent. For a quarter of unmarried women, Social Security is IT: their only source of income.

What does a financial planner say to a woman who faces a radically reduced lifestyle in her later years? “Well, I’m sorry but you cannot afford to live?” This is unacceptable. We are problem solvers, not buck passers. Even if our own clients are unlikely to be in these straits, they may have mothers, aunts, sisters, and female friends who need support.

To answer these women, we need to become more knowledgeable about available community resources: what is available to the elderly in terms of shared or cooperative housing? What medical services or clinics offer cost-free services? Is there a job bank or coordinator placing seniors in paying, part-time work? What, in other words, is the social capital that can provide safety and security to our women friends, clients, neighbors, even ourselves?

Because this capital does exist, even if the bank won’t give you a debit card to draw upon it. It’s our obligation to find it, grow it, and invest in it. Speaking for my kids, I can say that the goodwill and support of their community is now their greatest asset.

Click below to follow the Women’s Worth community on Facebook.

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Direction$ Alliance Update

Written on August 11, 2010 at 12:41 pm, by Eleanor Blayney

Note to advisors: We have had reports from some of you who have not received our follow-up email from the call.  If you are on our list or attended our call, make sure that DirectionsForWomen@me.com is added to your contact list so our emails to you won’t end up in your Junk Mail. Otherwise, please email us at the above address and ask to be added to our list.

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This afternoon, Direction$ hosted a conference call with more than 100 financial advisors to discuss “Changing the Conversation of Personal Finance for Women.”

It is an exciting development to engage all these minds in our initiative, and we look forward to future calls in September.

We will be harvesting the comments and ideas shared during the conference call and posting this harvest in another blog, to appear in the next few days.

Here is a summary of the initiatives Direction$ is pushing forward, and we would love your input and feedback on these ideas. Please help us to continue the conversation by commenting below.

• Continuing coverage in the press, both professional and consumer, to bring more attention to the financial planning needs of women and the role of Direction$ advisors in changing the way we work with women
• Building partnerships with experts in disciplines distinct from financial planning, such as linguistics, gender studies, psychotherapy, cultural anthropology, behavioral finance, neurology, storytelling and narrative artists. How can these disciplines help us speak to women more effectively and understand their attitudes and issues with money, risk management, wealth?
• Building an amazing, conversation-changing website that will be a vibrant, exciting place to start, continue, and extend the different discussions we want to have around the subjects of women and money. We see this website as the go-to place for women consumers and the advisors committed to serving these women, for the empowerment, education, and engagement necessary to help women become strong and competent financial decision-makers.
• Development of college level curriculum on women-centric financial planning issues.
• Launching prototype consumer circles in Atlanta and the Washington DC area to refine and develop our circle philosophy and process, as the way to create safe space for women to have conversations about money.
• Thoughtful reflection on what you are telling us you want and need in an advisor community.
• Development of business models that can support and grow our passion for changing the conversation around personal finance for women.

Again, please use the comment section in this blog to give us feedback on these directions, and the role you might like to play as we move forward together. Feel free to also continue the conversation in our “Direction$ Alliance” community on Facebook. There you will find forum discussions on such topics as “Engaging your women clients throughout the relationship.” You can either go to Facebook and search for the “Directions Alliance” group, or simply click here to visit the Directions Alliance community on Facebook. Once you arrive at the community, please hit the “Like” button and begin participating. There is strength in our numbers.

We hope — if you took away nothing else from the conference call — that you are nevertheless clear about the vision of the Direction$ Alliance as a member-driven and inspired community. Our goal is to create a place for us to meet and start exchanging our experiences and wisdom to make us all better planners and advisors to women.

With our deep appreciation,

Eleanor, Elizabeth, and Peg

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Ladies: Put down your to-do lists, and no one will get hurt…

Written on July 24, 2010 at 6:56 pm, by Eleanor Blayney

Like most women, I love to-do lists.  They give such a sense of control and focus.  The charge I get with crossing to-dos off the list is so great, that sometimes my first item is to make a list.  Check!

My problem, however, is that I can never find my lists.  They exist all over the place – on restaurant napkins, old envelopes, the back side of meeting notes, at the bottom of my purse, in my glove compartment, or beneath the perma-paper layer on my desk.

Lists are linear, and I am not a linear thinker.  My ideas tend to radiate outward from a single idea, sometimes disappearing into the ozone.  I’ve been accused of being just ever so slightly ADHD, but then my accuser didn’t get my creativity.  I liked it better when my book-publishing consultant, after insisting that I take some kind of personality profile so he would know how to work with me, called me a “shiny object” person.  As he explained,  “You are the type who picks up every shiny object you see.  Problem is, with every new object, you risk dropping the ones you already have.”

Clearly I need the discipline of lists, without sacrificing my creative flair to their linear tyranny.  So I have given a lot of thought to the ways lists can be made to work for busy multi-taskers (in other words, for most women).  Of the dozens of shiny ideas I came up with on this subject, I managed to hold on to the following:

• Expand your list to include not just the urgent, but also the important.

Too often, our lists consist just of what we must do, right now.  These urgent items cannot be omitted:  if we don’t sign the permission slip for the field trip or get the oil changed, we risk the consequences of future breakdowns, whether of the emotional or the mechanical variety.

But step back from the daily grind for a minute and think about what is important to you.   Writing a book?  Taking a course?  Putting in a garden?  These are things that don’t necessarily need to be done NOW, but will nevertheless give you far more satisfaction when they are accomplished than the urgent stuff.

• For your each of your “important” items, identify a first step that is manageable and can be done today.

Unfortunately the important things often never get done, because they are large, aspirational, and have no time constraints.  So decide on the very first, concrete step that must be taken on your way to accomplishing that important goal.  It may involve making a phone call, setting up an appointment with a professional, or staking out regular time on your calendar. Get the ball rolling today, and the momentum of that first step may propel you past your inertia.

• Eliminate any and all items that don’t “belong” to you.

“What are you talking about?” you ask.  “If it’s on my list, of course it’s mine.”  Maybe not. Take a good critical look at your list, and see if there are any to-dos listed, not because you want or need to do them, but because you think you should.  Some obvious examples might be “Go on a diet” or “Put more into my 401(k)” or “Pay off my credit card.”   All these may be worthy actions to undertake, but until you can express and view them as something you desire, they are doomed to reappear on your lists forever, with little purpose except to make you feel bad. One way to transform these items is to ask of each one:  “Why?”  “Because I want to be healthy.  Because I want to be able to enjoy my retirement.  Because I want to be able to choose how I spend next month’s paycheck.”  Again, this is another way of enlarging your list, to give full berth to what you want to do and be.

• Share your list.

One way to get things accomplished is to delegate – an activity that many women find difficult or awkward.  There may be items on your list that must be done or you want done, but there’s no to-do list law that says it has to be you who does them.  This is primarily applicable to the urgent items – who else can help you tick these things off?

But another way of sharing your list – particularly the important items – is to find a trusted friend, or circle of intimates, who are willing to help you — and those items on your list  –  get moving.  As incentive, there is nothing like having to be accountable to those who care about you.

You’ll note that this blog is virtually free, for once, of financial ideas and tips.  (They’re on a piece of paper somewhere, probably in my gym bag…)  But it is all about building your confidence and control – both necessary requisites for smart management of your money.

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Tell me the truth, do I look broke in this?

Written on July 15, 2010 at 12:30 pm, by Eleanor Blayney

The similarities between budgeting and dieting are pretty obvious.  Both are decidedly female subjects, reliable ever-green topics for women’s talk shows and magazines.  Most men don’t obsess about these subjects, at least not in these terms.  They may profess interest in “personal financial strategies” or “regimens for getting ripped,” but rarely do they admit to the humbler, more prosaic activities of counting either pennies or calories.

Both budgeting and dieting are governed by very simple rules and have very simple solutions, which apparently few people ever follow or believe in.  If they did, the trillions of dollars spent on products and promises to get our waistlines slimmer and our bank accounts fatter could be redirected to something more socially redemptive – like curing cancer or eliminating world hunger.  Maybe it is our female aversion to math that is behind it all.  In the case of both budgets and diets, success comes when we take basic equations, and make them inequalities.  To get richer, take the $ inflow = $ outflow equation, and make it  an inequality:  $ inflow > $ outflow.  To get thinner, do the same thing with the calorie intake = calorie expenditure equation, but this time make the first term less than the second.  What could be simpler?

If you don’t do math, then try something just as easy:  write everything down.  Everything you eat, everything you spend – write it down.  It’s almost like the act of writing induces a caloric burn, on one hand, and stops the money burn in your pocket, on the other.  You eat less and save more,  just by putting pen to paper.

But there is at least one important difference between dieting and budgeting, or more precisely, between the underlying compulsions that drive us to them: namely overeating and overspending.  The difference has to do with visibility.  When I eat too much for too long, it shows.  It makes it harder for me to walk upstairs; it makes sharing a seat on the bus or fastening my seat belt on a plane a difficult and even embarrassing activity.  Not so when I overspend.  I move through the world quite easily – some would say too easily – even when I am overburdened by debt or unpaid bills.  It is almost impossible to know how much money people have or don’t have by the front they put to the world.  Millionaires drive used Fords, and destitute dames wear Prada.

Another difference – there is a now surgical solution for excessive weight that does not exist for excessive spending, even though both are clearly hazardous to your health.  Obese adults can now have gastric bypass surgery, which makes their stomachs smaller and limits the body’s ability to absorb food. If, after bypass surgery, you eat too much, you feel really sick.  Can you imagine a similar procedure for overspenders?   Something a surgeon might embed, maybe in your feet or fingers, that made it way too uncomfortable to shop at the mall or on the internet for more than a few minutes at a time.  If you did manage to spend too much anyway, you would find yourself regurgitating all that stuff you did not need and could not absorb, or rather, afford.

I have heard, however, that gastric bypass surgery does not work, if the person undergoing the procedure does not change her attitudes about food.  In other words, without revising  the way a person thinks about food, no adjustment of her digestive system is going to work in keeping the weight off. Undoubtedly, the same would be true of any mechanical solution to overspending.  Without really wanting what results from controlled spending, even a surgically-altered overspender would still pack on the debt.

I guess there is no avoiding it, when it comes to  overeating or overspending.  At the end of the day, they are simple struggles of mind over matter.  And until those afflicted really focus on what does matter – health, wellbeing, and physical and emotional freedom – no program of personal discipline has a chance of success, no matter how many times it is featured on Oprah.

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Circles Can Change the Conversation

Written on July 11, 2010 at 12:49 pm, by Eleanor Blayney

We need to change the way we talk about finances with women. This is not a slight against our gender. I’m certainly not suggesting we lack the intelligence to comprehend personal finance. But women perceive and learn differently from men. In particular, research has shown that men prefer to learn independently, while women learn well in supportive, collaborative environments. Men are apt to charge ahead and learn while doing, whereas women prefer to stand back, listen, and observe. They want to read the manual, so to speak, before turning on the computer or launching the program.

The field of sociolinguistics, and more particularly, the work of Deborah Tannen, professor of linguistics at Georgetown University, shows that men are much more comfortable speaking in terms of “one-up” or “one-down.” They have an inherent need for competition and hierarchy in order to understand where they fit in the world. Women, on the other hand, are much more collaborative: they seek common experience and want to put themselves on the same emotional and intellectual plane as others.

The male need for hierarchy, for locating themselves in the pecking order, may explain why the language of personal finance—and most particularly that of investing, long dominated by men—is invariably put in terms of winning and losing. It may explain, too, why my male clients are more apt to evaluate investment performance in terms of benchmarks. They want to know if they have done better or worse than a given standard, such as the S&P 500 or the Dow, whereas female clients, when presented with investment results, are more apt to ask: “But what does this mean?” And they are not asking for that meaning to be measured in basis points.

Women are more contextual and less absolute than men. In my experience, they want the context for advice and find it easier when I preface my counsel, as I invariably do, with the phrase: “It depends.” It depends on your risk tolerance; it depends on your family situation; it depends on where you want to live.

My male clients are less patient with context and usually want more definitive, shorter answers. They want the bottom line. Men are the ones who, when asked by their wives or girlfriends if they look good in a certain dress, will simply answer “Sure” or “Nope.” Women know, of course, that the better answer begins with another question, such as: “What do you have to go with it?” or “Where do you plan to wear it?”

How can women’s preferences for commonality, context, and consensus be brought to bear on financial advice? The answer, I strongly believe, lies in circles, the process of women coming together with a common purpose. Throughout history, women have been attracted by the productive potential of circles. In colonial times, women gathered for sewing circles or quilting bees to assist in setting up the household of a couple about to be married or to have a child. Yesterday’s sewing circles and bees have evolved into today’s book clubs, recipe swaps, scrapbooking clubs, giving circles, and investment groups. The popularity of these groups among women is unquestioned and growing.

Learning about money in a community of women makes the work seem easier and even enjoyable. A circle setting where women come together to discuss the financial issues unique to them, such as living alone or coping with the negative financial consequences of divorce, is immensely empowering. It is also a safe place to discover one’s financial identity and to find answers to what women may fear are dumb questions. Through sharing and relating, women gain autonomy and knowledge to bridge the gap between their capacity and confidence.

Excerpted from Eleanor Blayney’s book Women’s Worth.

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Money as Metaphor

Written on June 23, 2010 at 11:14 am, by Eleanor Blayney

In my recently published book, “Women’s Worth: Finding Your Financial Confidence,” I talk about money as grease.  Nothing more, nothing less: it’s just grease.  It does nothing on its own, but it’s essential to making things work.

Consider another metaphor for money:  namely, money as matter. As a popular title for blogs and columns, “Money Matters” refers both to the financial subject of the commentary as well as to the fact that money can make a difference in our lives.

In musing about money metaphors, however, let’s first be literal about the meaning of “matter.”   Understood in its scientific, physical sense, matter refers to substance that has density and occupies space.   This type of matter can exist in three states – solid, liquid, or gas – depending on its temperature.

Now think about the state of money in your life:  is it solid, dense, immoveable?  Or is it vaporous – constantly escaping or even disappearing into thin air?  Or something in between: a fluid that has no shape of its own, but takes the form of whatever (or whomever) holds it?

Let’s start with the heavy, solid side of your money.  Do you feel locked in when it comes to your finances?  Perhaps you have assets that are not easily sold, such as real estate, or tangible property such as artwork, jewelry, or vehicles.  Or do you have assets or income that are encumbered?  You can’t move or do much with these assets, because they are not entirely yours – instead they belong, in part, to your creditors or bill collectors.  In this state, money is indeed tight.

At the other extreme is the money in your life that behaves like gas: it keeps escaping and seems to take no discernible shape whatsoever.  No sooner in your hand or bank account, then it evaporates.  This money moves quickly, feels hot, even catches fire.  Are you the type who, when you get money, it immediately burns a hole in your pocket?

What about your money as a liquid?  We often talk about the liquidity of our assets, meaning that we can quickly access these resources and realize their value for other productive purposes.  But beyond availability, money as liquid can be shaped or channeled to whatever purpose you choose.  It can, for instance, be used to pay down debt thereby unlocking the frozen energy of your solid assets.  It can stabilize an otherwise volatile financial situation where your money seems to always disappear into the ozone.

Ideally the money in your life should flow but also be purposefully contained.  Like water, you don’t see it, but see through it, to the things you want for your life.

As your first step to financial empowerment, take a few minutes.  Don’t think about dollars or account titles or investments, but think metaphorically about your money.  What state is it in?

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Here’s Looking at You, Kid!

Written on June 10, 2010 at 9:11 pm, by Eleanor Blayney

Do you have a photo of yourself that you really like?  I am not talking about a picture that makes you look good  — younger, slimmer, smoother, less tired than you are now – but a picture that makes you feel good: one that puts you in touch with your own internal strengths and values.

I have one such picture.  It shows me sixteen years ago, running my first and likely only, Marine Corps Marathon.  Not a flattering picture at all, it shows me at mile 13 of the run, soaking wet in the pouring rain, with baggy knees.  Even I can’t read my face very well: was I triumphant for having reached the halfway point, or dreading the next 13 miles knowing how exhausted I was already?

I was carrying a lot of pain that day, and not just in my feet and knees.  I had recently lost both of my parents within a fifteen month time period, my only child had just left for her freshman year in college, and my husband and I had separated six weeks before.   The roles that had defined me up to that point were gone:  I was no longer a daughter, a wife, or a day-to-day mother.  I remember during one of my training runs before the marathon, having to stop because I started hyperventilating.  I had panicked at the prospect of being newly alone.

Nevertheless when I look at that picture I always feel a certain amount of pride.  Sure enough, I am alone in that photo.  No-one is running by my side.  But I am also out in front, ahead of five men!  I like to think they are looking at me with varying degrees of respect, curiosity, even annoyance that some “girl” was pacing faster than them.  Given that I was, at the time, trying to make it as the only woman partner in a four-partner firm in a thoroughly male-dominated profession, this picture is a perfect visual reminder of what I was facing.  I was running hard, often exhausted but determined and energized as well.  My “aloneness” as a woman made me singular and unique, and definitely attracted attention.

This picture has powered me through many of the difficult times I have inevitably faced in the years after that marathon.  Particularly when I find myself facing something new and unfamiliar, I remind myself that feeling alone and fearful is a necessary consequence of stepping out in front and taking responsibility for my own life.

Taking charge of personal finances is, for many women, an unfamiliar but necessary task.  Their first step should be one of self-empowerment,  looking within to their internal emotional and psychological strengths, before they tackle the business of counting and building their financial assets.  What makes you run?  What sets you apart and keeps you moving forward?  Can you summon up a photo, a mental image, of a time when those internal assets were clearly in evidence?

As women, we know that wealth is never just about dollars, returns, and gains. It’s about our self-worth, and our ability to recognize and memorialize that unique value. But none of that is possible if we don’t commit to taking action. What is it that you’ve had in the back of your mind to do in order to get your financial house in order? What’s standing in your way? Knowledge? Hiring an advisor? Confidence? I would like to encourage you to do what it takes to begin achieving your financial goals. It’s a long way to the finish line of this marathon, but you get there by taking one step at a time.