Always accompany a complaint with a solution or a request for help with finding a solution. 

If you don’t have all the money you need to live your life the way you want, free from concerns about money (my definition of rich) it could be that you’re suffering from one of the following personality traits that aren’t fatal, but are flaws. 

The Hoarder

The good news is that hoarders actually save money, but they don’t invest it or take the time to build budgets that would help them to enjoy their money.  They’re so afraid of becoming bag ladies, they stash away money without thinking about how investing could yield substantially more wealth.  Similarly, they won’t buy things that would allow them to enjoy life a little more because they see it as frivolous or themselves as undeserving.  Whatever the reasons, The Hoarder isn’t living a rich life, even if her bank account says that she can.

The Ostrich

The Ostrich would rather not know how much money she has – or doesn’t have.  As long as there are checks in her checkbook she doesn’t even THINK about money.  She doesn’t keep tabs on bank statements or investments, nor does she take the time to learn about how she could live a richer life by managing her assets better.  She often lives paycheck-to-paycheck, content with knowing she has enough to make it through another month.

The Spender

Money burns a hole in the pocket of The Spender.  Sometimes it’s money she has and sometimes it’s money she gets from various sources of credit – often putting her into deep debt.  The Spender may be exhibiting compulsive behavior. Psychological help could be needed to assist her with diminishing the compulsive spending. Although on the surface it appears that The Spender is leading a rich life, when you scratch below she may not have a liquid nickel to her name and be in for a huge change in lifestyle if she loses her job or when she gets ready to retire.

The Abdicator

At least The Abdicator has the wisdom to get someone to help her manage her money. The bad news is that she turns over full responsibility to that person and rarely checks on how her money is doing.  The Abdicator may hire a professional financial advisor or just turn her money over to a spouse or significant other.  Once she does, however, she washes her hands of it and expects someone else to look out for her best interests.  Once she does look into how her money is doing, it’s often too late – she finds she’s been taken advantage of by either unscrupulous or well-meaning but ineffective advisors. 

The Do-Gooder

Money means little to The Do-Gooder other than having enough of it to loan or give away to people in need.  She may have learned in childhood that “money can’t make you happy” or think that giving away money makes people like her.  In either case, she sees little value in accumulating it.  The Do-Gooder often ignores my maxim, “You can simultaneously do good and do well.”

TAGS: living a rich life, nice girls don't get rich, personality types, Women and Money

Rather than pesonalizing feedback, listen for the kernel of truth and act on it. 

Turn up the heat.  Set stretch goals for yourself and acquire the intellectual tools needed to achieve them. 

Liz’s post made me think; if I had to put myself on the continum between tightwad and spendthrift, there’s no doubt that I’d fall on the spendthrift side.  My husband, on the other hand, would not.  I am grateful that neither of us is too far from the middle, yet our predilections have certainly led to some less than fun conversations over the years.

And we’re not alone.  Some sources say that money disagreements are a factor in 90% of breakups.  Of course, money alone is not usually the issue – underlying the disagreements are all kinds of personal baggage as well as concerns about how the partners treat one another.  M.P. Dunleavy wrote an article for the New York Times the other day where she disclosed that her husband had been throwing out catalogs addressed to her before she saw them.  It seems his rationale was that what she didn’t see, she couldn’t shop for.  Hnmmmm…. (more…)

TAGS: communication, financial freedom, personal finance, Women and Money

Delegate more.  It will help you manage your time, develop your staff, and provide you with additional time for thinking strategically. 

Every time I write about couples and money, I get emails from misogynists taking me to task for suggesting males might overspend. Everybody knows, these gentlemen proclaim, that women are the real spendthrifts.

My email bag begs to differ. I hear from plenty of women who despair about their partners’ inability to control their spending.

A recent paper from the folks at the Wharton School sheds some interesting light on the topic. These researchers constructed a “Tightwad to Spendthrift” continuum and invited people to take a test to see where they landed.

• Overall, 24% landed on the “tightwad” end of the spectrum, which basically means that they find it painful to spend money.  The researchers proposed “that an anticipatory pain of paying drives ‘tightwads’ to spend less than they would ideally like to spend.”
• In contrast, the 15% of respondents who wound up in the “spendthrift” category ”experience too little pain of paying and typically spend more than they would ideally like to spend.”
• The rest of those polled (60%) wound up in the “unconflicted” category. (That doesn’t mean they don’t have money issues, credit card debt or inadequate savings, by the way; it just means that in the hypothetical situations they spent neither more or less than they considered ideal.)

Interestingly, women in the survey were just as likely to be defined as tightwads (20%) as they were spendthrifts (19%). But men were far more likely to be tightwads (29%) than they were spendthrifts (11%).

Of course, this is just one study of self-selected participants who found their way to the Internet test and spent the time to take it. That falls a bit short of the rigor one would expect of scientific polling.

Still, it’s food for thought. What I found more interesting than the gender differences was the fact that so many more people, men and women, wound up on the tightwad end of the scale than on the spendthrift side. For all the attention given to impulse spending and compulsive shoppers, these results indicate that many folks are–as the researchers put it–”frustratingly unable to indulge themselves.”

The key to successful money management is balance, and many people don’t have it. Whether you spend too much or too little, it’s worth the time and effort to address your financial issues.

TAGS: compulsive spending, differences between women and men, spendthrift, tightwad, Women and Money

I gave an interview the other day to Daryl Hannah of Diversity Inc with some advice for those negotiating a job offer.  Here’s the piece he wrote.

TAGS: Interview skills, negotiating pay, Women and Money

I just wrote a comment (below) in response to Carol’s important post.  Salary inequity is a problem that can haunt you your entire career — especially if you believe others will consider you a “loose canon” if you try to rectify it.  There are few things that can’t be explored and even challenged at work if you do so in politically astute ways.  I wrote The Secret Handshake and It’s All Politics to help people with that part.  If you’re petulant or constantly perturbed instead of observant and astute, it’s difficult to change anything.  Carol is absolutely right about finding ways to learn where your salary stands and raises too.  You have to know your worth and assert it.  Otherwise other people take advantage — one of those human nature things!

TAGS: Communication Skills, Pay Disparity, Political skills, salary

Increase your likeability quotient (LQ) by disclosing personal information with which you’re comfortable and allows to see you as a human being, not only a human doing.