Compounding Wealth By Capitalizing On Boomer Gender Differences - Part Iii
The man will be fairly competitive in a situation & want their investments to win short term, and the woman will be actually supportive, wanting to draw the whole thing together, looking at the over arching plan and how their investment fit together. That may be a cause of her dismay, because she may look at the compilation of financial investments and be very confused about how it all fits together and in fact, they may not fit together and she's right to question that. So with a proper respect for these differences, both of them can come to the table, and draw up a plan of attack and shore up what needs to be spun out of the portfolio and what can be retained.
And that is really critical to understand because there is what I think as a fine art of talking about money in
particular. So, if we've established that there are different conversational styles that stem from differences in how men and women are hard wired, when you introduce a topic like money--a subject that has massive import for the couple--I think that you load on an additional set of expectations and potential miscommunication.
So the reward for coordinating our investing with our values is a whole lot of freedom and a whole lot of choices, both now as we are planning our retirements and then as we are starting to live them.
What I am always wanting to ascertain is does a couple's spending support their values and dreams. What are the couple's goals about their next lifestyle and how it will compare to their current lifestyle? How is their savings and investment plan set up to achieve that? It is obviously really important for conversation styles to be recognized as very different and for there to be interplay between those two styles. Because as many people have admitted, there has not been a lot of teaching in the family (and specifically our previous generation) about money and investments.
Often money has been a hush hush topic, often we don't talk about money--that is a dirty subject or something that never should be discussed. It is never something that the children should know about and so forth. So I just want to go over some money messages that tend to retard women's growth and their exploration into the area of investing, in addition to society's socialization:
* money buys you friends,
* the fool and his money are soon parted,
* money doesn't make you a better person,
* we were poor but honest,
* we don't talk about how much money we earn it's rude,
* work hard for everything you have,
* you have to do work that is difficult and stay where you are for security,
* it is not yours unless you earn it yourself,
* Who did she sleep with to get where she is?
Wow! What negativity! The closed down, piggy bank mentality, the watch every nickel many women have been reared with is so limiting. A lot also depends on the messages that get conveyed by our parents. Most often men will handle money in a way that has been modeled after their fathers and women after their mothers. Statistically it does follow gender lines. When asked men and women suggest that there have been people in their family that they look up to regarding money but it hasn't been an open conversation, per se.
Unfortunately I think that a lot of financial decisions occur without their having been a conversation preceding them, which would be a more typical male approach. A male hears a tip he takes a risk, he invests some money, he comes home, he may or may not even suggest that he has done that with his wife or partner.
The women on the other hand will maybe search out some investment options and start to gather her circle of evidence around her to determine if the investment is going to be profitable or not. Will that financial product fit & serve as a solution to their investment or financial problems?
If you don't have that conversation to support why you are taking financial risk and why you are (or are not)making investments, there is a huge chance that misunderstanding will fester and will come out in probably very difficult ways to solve, if each partner is in fact left to their own devices.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Debra L. Morrison Speaks, LLC Motivational Speaker
Phone: 877-BE-WISE2 (877-239-4732)
FAX: 800-620-4232
Email: info@debralmorrisonspeaks.com We can do it Women!™
Click the XML Icon Above to Receive Wealth Building Articles Via RSS!
