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Excerpt from Women & Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Destiny
By Suze Orman
For years now, I have been in the privileged position of talking to thousands and thousands of women a year—from the callers to my TV show, to those who come to hear me speak, to those who write me e-mails on my website, to my very own friends and family. So I hear, see, and feel your fears, insecurities, and troubles, very often firsthand, and I have come face-to-face with this painful truth: For all the advancements women have made in the last thirty, forty years—and without a doubt they are remarkable accomplishments—I am stunned by how little has really changed in the way women deal with money. There are huge disconnects in play here—between what we know and how we act; between what we think and what we say; between our ability as achievers and our financial underachieving; between how we present ourselves to the world and how we really feel about ourselves inside; between what we deserve in our lives and what we resign ourselves to; between the power we have within reach and the powerlessness that rules our actions.
In 1980, when I was hired as a financial advisor for Merrill Lynch, I was one of the few women in the Oakland, California, office. In the eyes of my (male) boss, that made me the perfect candidate to work with all the women who walked through the door. Back then, women who came to a brokerage firm looking for financial advice had, for the most part, either inherited money, received it in a divorce, been widowed or were suddenly thrust into a position of helping their parents handle their money. In only a few instances had women come in with money they'd made on their own. No matter the circumstances that brought them to the brokerage firm, they all had the same reason for being there: They did not want the responsibility of managing their money. I always felt they hired me simply to babysit their money for them.
More than 25 years later, the story is much the same. Regardless of the gains in our financial status, I know and you know that women still don't want to take responsibility when it comes to their money. Yes, women are making more money than ever before, but they are not making more of what they make. What do I mean by that? Your retirement money sits in cash because you haven't figured out how to invest it properly, so you do nothing. You've convinced yourself that you'll be working forever, so the value of each paycheck becomes meaningless—after all, there will always be another one. Your closet houses the wardrobe of a powerful and stylish woman, but the dirty secret is that your credit cards are maxed out and you don't know how you're going to pay them off. But it's not just about saving and investing. It's about not asking for a raise at work when you know you are being undervalued. It's about the fear and loathing you feel when it's time to pay the bills every month because you don't know exactly what you have, where it's going, and why there isn't more left when it's all said and done.
 Suze's last-ditch advice that could save your family's money!
Excerpted from Women & Money by Suze Orman Copyright © 2007 by Suze Orman. Excerpted by permission of Spiegel & Grau, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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