Costco Connection - March 2007

book excerpt

Rewrite the story
history has handed you
By Suze Orman

THERE ARE COUNTLESS examples throughout history and from various cultures of how women have been disinherited and disenfranchised, so it’s no wonder that women today struggle with their money. It’s a foreign experience. Throughout the ages, it was the man’s job to bring money into the family. If you were to lay out a historical graph that charted women’s evolution from non-earners to earners, our new roles as income producers would barely rate as a blip. It’s that new.

And yet women have come so far so fast in the workplace since the beginning of the women’s movement. Who could have predicted such rapid, dramatic change in such a short time? At work, we have overthrown traditions that were centuries—millennia—old.

So why is it that we haven’t made the same evolutionary leap when it comes to our personal finances? In my opinion, it has a lot to do with the fact that despite what was going on outside in the world, inside the home traditional roles held tight. Those roles dictated that men handle the finances. Look around— many successful career women today most likely had mothers who abdicated their role in

major financial decisions to their husbands, as their grandmothers did and their great-grandmothers before them. The beat of history marches on.

But we have to use the past to propel us into a new future—we must rewrite the story that history has handed us— so I am asking you now to see yourself as an agent of change in your own life and on a global scale. This change is necessary and urgent, given the world we live in today. Consider these realities of our twenty-first-century life:

• Social Security is going to replace an even smaller portion of retiree incom e needs in the decades ahead. What that means is that you are going to have to rely on yourself in retirement much, much more than your parents and grandparents did.

• With the divorce rate hovering around 41 percent, many women at some point in their lives will be solely responsible for managing their money. That also holds true for the increasingly large segment of the female population who delay mar-

The Costco Connection Suze Orman’s new book, Women & Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Destiny, is available in Costco warehouses and online at costco.com.

MARC ROYCE

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riage or choose not to marry at all. And, of course, this also includes the growing number of single-parent households.

• Even in the marriages that work, money is more of an issue than ever before, especially in homes where there is a stay-at-home mother—making ends meet on one income is a huge challenge these days. I can tell you that the only way to make it work—and I mean the marriage, not the finances—is for both partners to share responsibility for the money decisions. Otherwise, you will be undone by money arguments.

• Women on average live about six years longer than men, so it is statistically likely that at some point in your life the family finances will be your concern—and yours alone.

• We are also expected to live a lot longer than our parents or grandparents. At the same time, our mothers and fathers are also living longer. That’s the good news, but it comes with additional responsibility. Your parents may well

need your financial help to maintain their lifestyle as they age or to pay for care they could eventually need.

You get the idea. This isn’t your grandmother’s world anymore. We are trailblazers.

For the sake of all the mothers who came before you and for the sake of the daughters who will come after you, I’m calling on you to move out of the past and into the future, armed with knowledge and confidence. That means leaving behind old attitudes, old excuses, and tired alibis for not becoming as fully competent and able in the area of personal finance as you are in every other role you inhabit in your life. If you are asked to describe yourself without using the words mother, grandmother, daughter, or your job title, I want to hear you say, “I am powerful, I am secure, I am in control of my financial destiny.”

No more hiding behind excuses. It’s too easy to hide. No shame, no blame. Allowing shame to hold you back—too easy. Blaming others rather than taking responsibility for yourself—too easy. Today I am asking you to do what’s right, not what’s easy.