Every time I watch the Olympics, I find it thrilling. Certainly the mastery of the sports awes me ─ the athletes make it look easy but we know it’s not. The desire to be champions is at the core of their success but desire is merely a dream without discipline.

You can’t teach someone the desire to be a champion – and clearly we can’t all be Olympic champions but we can be the best we can be at whatever it is we do. And, we can teach our kids to do the same. If you are a parent trying to raise kids with a strong work ethic, here are some ideas to consider:

• Limit TV ─ “what”, “when” and “where”. I think some TV, even on weeknights after homework was finished is fine but consider this: The Nielsen Company show kids aged 2-5 now spend more than 32 hours a week on average in front of a TV screen. The older segment of that group (ages 6-11) spend a little less time, about 28 hours per week watching TV, due in part that they are more likely to be attending school for longer hours.

Watch it with them and discuss what you saw.

Think carefully before letting your kids have TVs in their rooms, if they do, you lose control of the “what” and the “when”.

• Keep the computer in public space. Computers should be used in a part of the home where your kid may have to IM “pos” (parent over shoulder) at any time.

• Let them know you are interested. Keep up with your kids’ teachers and assignments. I’m a big believer in the role of parent as homework “coach”, not doing the assignment but making the time to check that it’s been done as well as to serve as a resource as needed.

• Be clear about your expectations. They don’t have to get all A’s but they should work to the best of their ability.

TAGS: LinkedIn, work ethic. raising children

Last Sunday’s New York Times carried an article that while not as disturbing as news coverage about Haiti, health care reform and a host of other issues, was disturbing nonetheless. The article, The New Math on Campus, discussed the fact that women outnumber men on America’s college campuses and made the point that although this fact was good news for women with regard to academic achievement, the social implications were less than ideal. According to the article, many young women will do whatever it takes to get a man. Whatever it takes includes “hooking up” for the night and then sending a text, often ignored, offering a reprise. It also means looking the other way when a boyfriend cheats because if she expects fidelity, he’ll disappear.

Wow! What are these women thinking? My conclusion is that they are not thinking at all. If they don’t expect more from a relationship than sex, then that’s all they’ll get. If they are willing to let the men they meet to take advantage of them, then they shouldn’t be surprised when it happens. If they expect respect but don’t respect themselves, it’s not going to happen. I’m a firm believer that anyone, male or female, can “date” (and even marry) if he or she is willing to establish standards that are low enough.

Am I missing something?

TAGS: college, LinkedIn

I’m an incurable romantic – except when it comes to money. 

So, if you’re getting married and don’t want the romance to fade when the wedding and honeymoon are over – give each other the gift of a copy of your credit report and a conversation with a certified financial planner.

Divorce lawyers say money issues – not sex, not infidelity – are the top reasons for the breakup of a marriage.  So help make your marriage last by assessing your and your intended’s assets, debts and other liabilities before walking down the aisle.  That means laying your financials on the table:  how much you each make and pay for everything including car notes, student loans, credit cards, child support, manicures, rounds of golf and anything else that is a recurring expense in your life. 

Financial specialists encourage couples to “know the score” – each other’s credit score that is – so there’s no misunderstanding about each other’s financial circumstances.  Those scores will impact your goals and habits.

Some money specialists even say you need to look at each other as assets – to better assess what your financial life together represents.   Are you a spender and he’s a saver?  Do you have an important goal in mind – like buying a home in the next year but he’s content living in an apartment because he’d rather spend money to travel?

A  pre-marital counseling session or two with a certified financial advisor will help you both get to the heart of the matter regarding love and money:  get your own financial house in order before you say “I do”. 

Money experts say among married couples usually one spouse has good credit and the other doesn’t.   If  that’s the case with you and yours, a financial counseling session before walking down the aisle will help you both see why  the “good credit spouse” should be the Chief Financial Officer of your new household.

Here’s to your health and wealth.

TAGS: love and money, Marriage

When it comes to money – what kind of saver are you?

Several years ago I came across a great, straightforward answer to that question.  It was in financial education literature from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas which is one of the network of twelve banks and their branches that make up the Federal Reserve system (http://www.dallasfed.org/ca/wealth/pdfs/wealth.pdf)

The publication outlined four types of savers:

• The planner saver – a person who controls spending and budgets to save.
• The struggler saver – someone who has trouble staying afloat financially and finds it difficult to save.
• The denier saver – a person who sees no reason for a budget because they don’t see themselves in trouble financially.
• The impulsive saver – a person who unfortunately spends today like there’s no tomorrow because their attitude is that tomorrow will take care of itself.

So, what type saver are you?

To accumulate, grow and preserve your money takes discipline.  While it’s important to have a savings account, don’t forget to get on track to also have an “emergency fund“:  3-6 months worth of living expenses (12 months worth if you’re self-employed) in an account where you can easily access the money if there’s a critical need. 

Regardless the type saver you are – you can improve your savings goal by remembering this bottom line:  you must always earn more than you spend.  Or said another way, let spending less be your goal.  That’s a healthy state of fiscal readiness and takes your savings to another level: investing. 

If saving to invest and investing to build wealth is your goal – http://showmomthemoney.com/personalgrowth/7traits.htm take a look at what’s described as the traits of very wealthy people and how those traits translate into building wealth and sustaining it. 

Wealthy people tend to be:

• Persistent.  For anyone, on the way to achieving a goal, you will face obstacles, right?  Wealth  is achieved by negotiating one’s way around or through numerous obstacles persistently.
• Businessmen and women or investors in businesses.  Think about it.  The richest people we’ve heard about all own companies and when asked say – to create wealth, you must involve yourself in business because that’s where the money is.
• Innovative.  Innovation ensures you’ll be among the ones who come up with new ideas and new ideas can create wealth.  They tend to do what they absolutely love and love it so much that they forget they’re actually working.
• Leverage.  They know when to let go and they know not to try and do everything themselves.

It appears that wealthy people also share the philosophy that to whom much is given, much is expected – and therefore share the trait of giving back by supporting causes in which they believe.   Finally, they value and participate in continuing education since extremely wealthy people tend to believe that the greatest asset in the world is your mind.

Here’s to your health and wealth!

TAGS: improving savings goals, saving money, traits of wealthy people, types of savers

Does the date October 27^th, 1997 have any financial significance to you? 

It was the day the Hong Kong stock market collapsed.  The Hang Seng Index plummeted, causing massive selloffs in financial markets around the world and initiating a 554-point plunge on the Dow Jones Industrial Average.  It was the day automatic trading curbs or collars as they’re also called — went into effect.  The protocols of those curbs have now changed, but back then, they would halt trading for half an hour if the market fell 350 points; for an hour if down 550 points. 

Those curbs or collars — had never been used before that day.  The Dow shot past the first collar.  Trading halted for 30 minutes.  When trading resumed, so did the freefall – like a hot knife through butter, the Dow lost another 200 hundred points.  Down 550, with less than half an hour left to the closing bell, trading was halted for the day.  The financial repercussions were felt around the world. 

Working that story as a financial journalist absolutely solidified my commitment to work from that day forward in ways to positively impact the financial futures of women because that day – investors, particularly women – needed to have had a plan in place to take advantage of  “the sale” – the bargain-hunting or bottom fishing opportunities that such an incident (market meltdown) creates. 

There’s nothing like a financial crisis to get everybody’s attention and change attitudes.  The current recession is the money madness everyone’s dealing with right now but the lessons hopefully learned from 1997 are being remembered:  reassess, reorganize and realign your financial plan to ensure your own financial future. 

Money has long been a gender-specific arena.  But, today’s women of all economic circumstances must learn the art of negotiating the best possible use of what money we have, and, the confidence to make a significant portion of that money grow for us into the future. 

When it comes to money, women have unique needs in three areas:  investment planning, retirement and business ownership.  We have lower salaries, longer life spans and fewer pensions.  Those facts add up to the need for a financial plan and action.  And, since we have a longer life expectancy, we need to seek a more balanced portfolio.  Money is power and we’ve simply got to become equal to the task. 

Twenty years ago, when my first marriage ended in divorce, I assumed all family debt in order to keep order in the timely and fragile area known as personal credit.  The job of reconstructing life – emotionally and financially – was enormous.  Post divorce the dollar reserves were small.  I’d made a lot of money and lived as many Baby Boomers did – with the confidence that there was more coming from where it had always come – my earning ability, which had been the primary support for the family.  My financial knowledge background was modest back then but my financial future needs were totally dependent on me figuring out how to do what needed to be done in a short amount of time.

Women face different life circumstances than men:  lower salaries, longer life span, fewer pensions, interrupted careers for care giving of children or elderly parents.  We need to realign ourselves in order to embrace change on our own behalf.  We cannot afford to wait for change to come.  We must become agents for change.

We women always have a plan – even in the midst of multi-tasking careers and managing home and family.  We have “what-to-do-if” scenarios for just about everything.  Not enough of us, however, have a clearly stated financial plan that allows us to take advantage of financial opportunities such as the massive selloff of October 27^th, 1997.   And, despite that missed opportunity – widely lamented by investors who weren’t positioned or able to respond to their advantage – how many of us in the nearly 12 years since then – have restructured our fiscal strategies to be beneficiaries rather than victims of market fluctuations and volatility? 

Here’s to your health and wealth.

TAGS: 1997, bargain hunting stocks, business ownership, current recession, gender specific money needs, Hong Kong stock market, investment planning, lower salaries, Market meltdowns, October 27th, pensions, personal credit, protocols, retiremet, trading curbs

I am enamored by the concept and the term of “paying it forward“.  It was popularized by Robert A. Heinlein in his book Between Planets, published in 1951.  The expression is used to describe the idea of asking that a good deed be repaid by having it done to others instead of you.  When it comes to money – the expression specifically means the creditor offers the debtor the option of  “paying” the debt (forward) by lending the amount to a third person instead of paying it (back) to the original creditor.

So, in the spirit of this concept, I invite you to share your financial knowledge, what worked and didn’t work for you, and how you’ve successfully managed your personal finances in order to provide some money management principles to which younger women can aspire.  And as you do this – remember the person who gave you an early loan in the spirit of providing financial guidelines. 

Since 90% of all women – married or single - will be responsible for their own financial future, young women must get the education needed to take control of personal money management reins for whatever reason. The reasons are far reaching, they’re global and almost always accompanied by daunting – if not massive – financial dilemmas (divorce, downsizing, stepfamilies, birth, death, aging or frail parents, career changes, children, career ceilings) that compromise women attaining and maintaining their lifestyle.

I have a serious commitment to teaching financial independence to young women.  My husband and I have four daughters – his two and my two – between the ages of 31 to 36.  We’re working to change their psychological approach and attitudes about money – from the traditional and loving but misguided idea that they don’t really need to know – to encouraging them and impressing upon them the importance of becoming educated about how to take care of themselves financially independently.

Their financial plans and ours share some vital components that go into the paying it forward category.  Women should:

• Show proactive leadership in early investing through such vehicles as investment clubs and scheduled gatherings in order to share information (and build momentum for understanding) about wealth building.
• Make a commitment to identify and partner women and wealth as a means of fostering entrepreneurship.
• Understand that financial independence and romance can peacefully co-exist.
• Use extreme care regarding co-mingling money, assess your own risk tolerance and know the risk tolerance of your spouse or partner.
• Actively support and continue building wealth while integrating work and family life – remembering that time away from work (as women bear children or take leaves of absence to care for elderly parents) means an interruption in the accumulation of pension funds.
• Give the children in our lives an early lesson about investing and the magic of compounding by giving them stock as gifts (a share in a company whose products they use and know gives them a real sense of ownership early) and/or a 529 Plan that pays for continuing education in the future at today’s prices.
• Work toward improving the sad equation of lower salaries for women for comparable work.

We’re living longer and will be able to afford it if we make a plan, get educated, stay educated and truly know that it’s never too late (and certainly never too early) to get started securing a financial future.  We can do this. 

My generation got used to the idea of being “superwomen”.  We raised children while simultaneously nurturing a career and keeping romance alive with a long-time or second chance spouse or partner.  We even began accepting the fact that it was okay to be good to ourselves!  That concept was – and still is – a tough one.  Most of us then and now were/are conditioned to just keep going and going and going.  We need to believe and pass along to younger women as Emerson wrote:  “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”

Within each of you is the ability to create wealth for our financial futures.  We have successfully run the home and workplace infrastructures simultaneously. We function in chaos sometimes but tend to finish in style.  Being persistent on behalf of our families (while still being good to ourselves) is key.  It will help you get a plan, get a financial life and make long term contingencies.  The ability to be pro-active instead of reactive is the foundation for financial staying power.

Pay forward the idea of getting an authentic financial life.  Find other women with similar needs and the desire to secure their financial future and pool the resources of your collective wealth of knowledge.  Make that commitment today.

Here’s to your health and wealth!

TAGS: creating wealth, daughters, entrepreneurship, financial dilemmas, financial independence, financial knowledge, Paying it forward, risk tolerance, superwomen, work and life integration

Overheard on a New York City bus:

Late thirty-something year old mom to her three or four year old daughter: “Honey, do you see that building over there with the flags? That’s where Daddy asked Mommy to marry him.”

Daughter: “Oh.”

Mother: “If you were getting married tomorrow, which of the boys in your class would you marry? Would it be Tucker or Nolan or Carlson or Spencer or….”

Daughter: “I don’t know.”

Mother: “I think Nolan is the sweetest. He’d take the best care of you.”

Hmmm…. Think about the messages that little girl is getting about marriage and what it means.

On the other hand, I’ve recently heard about two young women who’ve made the choice not to marry the guys they’d been seriously dating when it came time to make the final decision. One came to the conclusion that her fiancé’s attitude about money was so fundamentally different than her own that they would never be able to reconcile them. The other realized that her fiancé’s marriage proposal, coupled with a “request” to convert to his religion meant she’d have to give up too much of herself.

Smart women. Better to give serious consideration to these and other issues important to you before you marry than to try to solve them afterward. These women know that, married or not, it’s up to each of us to take care of ourselves.

TAGS: Marriage, mothers and daughters

I believe in assets -  of the wallet and of the heart.  Let’s take a moment to count the one’s of the heart and why we should count on them.  

I was the recipient of an extremely nurturing form of perfectionism that came from the loving hands of my 20-year old mother.  Vivien (Vicki) Baxter married my Dad William (Bill) Dickerson (with her parents’ permission) three weeks before her 17^th birthday.  When I was born, I became her real life doll and she took exemplary care of me.  Everything she did for me and with me was as perfectly orchestrated as she could make it.

Perfection had been an important and early discipline for this child bride to master.  Though she was the teenage wife of a young Army/Air Force lieutenant who was just a few years her senior, she was a military wife now – in the midst of “older women” already in their 30s! 

Her perfection for being stylishly appropriate was one of my Mom’s greatest assets.  She practiced what she learned on me.  Where did she learn this grown up sense of the life and style she wanted to provide me?  From my Dad. 

 The story goes:  A few weeks after they were married, he arrived home to change into his military dress uniform and pick up Mom for a squadron party.  He found her dressed like the 17-year old that she was – in her best pleated skirt, white Angora sweater, matching socks and black Mary Jane shoes.  Dad told her she looked beautiful and that he’d like her to save the outfit to wear when just the two of them went out to dinner because in the Air Force there was a sort of uniform for wives too.  “The older women usually wear a cocktail dress,” he said.  “Let’s go get one for you!”

 And so it was that every Friday of those early months of my Mother’s married life that my Dad would take her shopping for her “uniforms”.  One Friday it was for hats.  Another it was for shoes.  The next – for suits.  Yet another for purses and so on.   And so it was with that history and evolution of my Mother’s perfectionism into which I was born and grew up. 

My parents have been gone nearly six years now – first Mom then Dad six months later.  They’d been married 61 years.  This story is always a special memory to me for how tenderly Bill brought Vicki into the world of older – women of a certain age.

 It was this environment that taught me to recognize the value of different kinds of assets in our lives.  Money is an asset and certainly matters.  We should make deposits into our savings and retirement accounts on a regular and committed basis.  

But memories matter, too.  They’re priceless assets and should be considered valuable deposits into our emotional bank accounts.

 Here’s to your health and wealth!

TAGS: Assets, emotional assets, mothers, parents

I’m going to start this column the way I always end my weekly message:  “Here’s to your health and wealth.”  I figure since April is officially National Financial Literacy Month - I wanted to  send you double good wishes for your physical and fiscal well-being.

April is when there’s an all out effort to highlight the importance of being financially well educated and teach Americans how to not only establish – but maintain healthy financial habits.  People talk about saving money but I like to up the ante and talk about the lofty goal of  “wealth building”.

The measure of wealth is definitely individual but the process by which to do it is the same.  Wealth to one person can be the ability to buy a home where the master bedroom has a bathroom.  Wealth to another is having stock in certain companies.  In our current state of economic disarray – wealth can simply be defined as having whatever amount of money is necessary to keep the lifestyle to which you’ve become accustomed or to which you’ve chosen to downsize.

Building wealth means making decisions that will position the next generation in one’s family to continue building on it.  In order for them to continue the “wealth building” – they must be taught the disciplines and habits that keep it growing.  Money skills are some of the best assets caring adults can offer growing children.  Since the dawn of civilization, the person in the tribe or community who could count or knew numbers was highly revered. 

I’m a Baby Boomer.  Are you?  If so, together we are part of the largest mass graying of America in the country’s history.  79 million of us were born between 1946 and 1964.  About 10,000 of us a day for the next 10 years or so – are turning 50.  And a lot of Boomers are playing financial catch-up as a non-affordable or dramatic lifestyle downshift to retirement looms in the midst of loosing long saved money as the recession enters its 17th month.

But in today’s difficult economic times of high unemployment – there’s another big factor that impacts stretching hard earned dollars:  longer life spans.  More than 5 million Americans are over the age of 85 and at least 26 million are age 70.  While we celebrate that elders are living longer, they worry about outliving their savings – knowing that their nest egg can be gone with just one, life threatening illness.  Meantime, Baby Boomers who have been on course, saving enough money for their own later years – find themselves strained trying to fill the money gaps for the generation above us (our elders) and the one below us (our children) – thus the term “sandwich generation”.

These circumstances coupled with the natural erosion of investments and now the recession’s impact – means everyone must commit to maximizing what you have.  That’s why making money concerns and solutions a “family affair” – is crucial. 

Make this month of April your Financial Literacy money “ah-ha” moment.  How each of us commits to handling our personal money really matters.  Wealth building gives us the ability to invest in one’s self and one’s community.  Passing along that attitude and actively teaching money management skills to the next generation are what create a healthy mindset for accumulating and sustaining wealth.

Here’s to your health and wealth.

TAGS: baby boomers, financial literacy, investments erosion, longer life spans, multiple generation households, recession, wealth building

Here’s another great question, this time from reader Rebecca:

Now that I have a two year old daughter I’m seeing how easy it is to say, “It’s not nice to… .”  I’ve tried substituting other adjectives, but I wonder if the message is the same even with different words.  Do you have any suggestions for how to raise a strong, leading girl rather than a nice girl? 

As a matter of fact I do, Rebecca!  The last chapter of my book, See Jane Lead, is dedicated to raising ours daughters to be leaders, but let me give you a few tips here:

• Focus more on desired behaviors than characteristics.  “Nice” is a characteristic, not a behavior.  When we tell a child to be nice, she might not even know what that means other than to stop whatever she’s doing in the moment.  Behaviors, on the other hand, can be measured and practiced.  So let’s say your daughter just grabbed a toy from another child.  Rather than say, “That’s not nice” or “Be nice,” express the alternative behavior in which you want her to engage.  For example, “We don’t grab toys from other children.  We ask if we can please play with them.  Why don’t you ask now if you can play with that toy?” 
• Use “I” messages.  Let your daughter know which behaviors you do like and don’t like without attaching a characteristic to them.  Examples: ”I really like it when you are quiet while I”m talking on the phone” or “I really don’t like it when I see you playing on my computer when I haven’t given you permission.” 
• Indicate cause and effect.  Here’s where children learn the ramifications of their undesireable behaviors and develop more appropriate alternatives.  Again, you can avoid the “it’s not nice” phrase by saying something like, “When you hit another child it can hurt them and make them feel badly.  Can you tell me why you’re upset right now?” 
• Observe and honor your daughter’s natural preferences.  Children often act out when they’re asked to be someone or do things that aren’t natural for them.  Self-confidence comes from being seen for who we really are and and encouraged and rewarded for pursuing our unique proclivities.  For example, is your daughter naturally outgoing and sociable?  If so, providing outlets for interaction will give her confidence in this arena.  If not, providing opportunities for playing with just one or two friends at a time will develop her social skills.  A book I highly recommend is Nurture by Nature by Tieger and Tiger. 
• Enroll your daughter in a self-defense class.  Two years old may be a little young but within a year or so she can begin to learn skills to protect herself.  It’s not just the self-defense aspect, but these classes also impart self-confidence and provide a healthy outlet for physical energy.
• Develop a bedtime ritual of telling your daughter what made you proud of her that day.  This is an opportunity to reinforce the behaviors you want to see more of.  For example, “Today I was so proud of you when you helped Daddy rake up the leaves on the front lawn” or “Today I was so proud of you when you stayed with the babysitter when Daddy and I went out.” 
• Encourage and reward independence.   You can do this in small ways such as at a restaurant by suggesting she speak directly to the waiter, in an elevator but asking her to push the button for the floor to which you’re going, or giving her the money to hand to the checkout clerk. 

I’d love to hear from other thin pink line bloggers who might have more advice for Rebecca.