An Invitation to a New Conversation

“I want to get involved…”
“How can I be a part of the Direction$ Alliance?”
“I think we’re going to have a great conversation…”
This is what we are hearing from those of you who want to change the ways financial advisors talk to women about money. What this change will look like is entirely up to us, as a community, and is limited only by our energy, commitment, and imagination. We know that women’s financial planning issues are different, as are their emotions and experience with money. They learn differently and they want money to do more in their lives than be just a number they have to reach in order to retire or be independent.
So what changes are conceivable? What is possible? What is practical? What will help you be a better financial planner to women, and what might help women become better financial planning clients? These are just some of the questions we will be discussing in a series of conference calls we are planning in the next two months. You can take part in all of the calls, or just one, if time and scheduling is a factor. The dates for our calls will be:

  • August 11, 2010 at 3 pm EDT
  • September 2, 2010 at 2 pm EDT
  • September 17, 2010 at noon EDT
Please reserve your space on one of the conference calls by:

1) Sending us an email: DirectionsForWomen@me.com

2) Entering your preferred date(s) in the email’s subject line

You will then receive an invitation and call-in instructions. Please be aware that long-distance charges apply for the call, so it is recommended you join the call via your mobile phone so you can avoid these charges (assuming you have the right plan!) You will also want to be by your computer so you can view presentation files.

Looking forward to our conversation!

What’s New?

Our founders recently had an interview with Olivia Mellan and became the cover story for the August 2010 edition of Investment Advisor magazine. We are grateful to Mellan who told the story of Direction$ and graciously offered her own support of our mission. Click here to read the full article, or read a few of the article highlights below:

Majority Report

by Olivia Mellan

Direction$ [is] the brainchild of three experienced, visionary financial planners—Eleanor Blayney, Peg Downey, and Elizabeth Jetton—who want to help advisors make their offices feel safer and more attractive to women, to help women “get in the door” emotionally, and to facilitate the kind of dialogue that will encourage women to do preventive financial planning for themselves and their loved ones.

How do you envision Direction$ benefiting today’s advisors?

Eleanor Blayney: In our view, the financial interests of women can be best served by qualified, competent advisors. Women need relationship and eye contact with an advisor they can trust. One of the goals of Direction$, therefore, is to help advisors rethink their outreach to women, to go where women are in their lives, rather than expecting women to come to them. This may involve rethinking every aspect of what they do—from the look of their offices, to their presentation materials, to the services they offer, to the skill sets and networks of allied professionals they develop.

At the same time, we want to talk to women, to make financial planning feel safe to women. We hope to deliver them into the hands of qualified professionals who agree that we have to change the conversation.

Elizabeth Jetton: There is so much rich material on how women think, relate, and make financial decisions in the fields of behavioral finance, cultural anthropology, mythology, psychology, and so forth, that we would love to enlarge planners’ thinking by introducing ideas and concepts from these other areas.

Peg Downey: Over the years, I’ve come to understand that men and women are really different. And it’s time now for women to be empowered to handle their finances competently. We want to create new models to demystify finances for women. The whole field of finance needs to be rethought in this way.

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Click here to read the rest of the article.

Click here to learn more about Direction$, LLC.

Click here to read about the founders of Direction$.

To watch some of Eleanor Blayney’s educational financial videos, click here.

To read about Eleanor Blayney’s recent mentions in the press, click here.