Laura McDonald - Its your money, honey: a girls guide to saving, investing, and building wealth at every age and life stage

Copyright 2012 Laura McDonald and Susan Misner

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Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

McDonald, Laura, 1978

It's your money, honey: a girl's guide to saving, investing, and building wealth at every age and life stage / Laura McDonald, Susan Misner.

Includes index.

Issued also in electronic formats.

ISBN 978-1-1181332-8-6

1. WomenFinance, Personal. 2. Finance, Personal. I. Misner, Susan, 1971- II. Title. III. Title: Girl's guide to saving, investing, and building wealth at every age and life stage.

HG179.M3247 2012 332.0240082 C2011-906195-3

978-1-118-15748-0 (ePub); 978-1-118-15747-3 (Mobi); 978-1-118-15749-7 (ePDF)

Production Credits
Cover design: Adrian So
Cover photo credit: Thinkstock/Hemera
Interior design: Thomson Digital
Typesetter: Thomson Digital

Editorial Credits
Executive Editor: Karen Milner
Production Editor: Jeremy Hanson-Finger

John Wiley & Sons Canada, Ltd.
6045 Freemont Blvd.
Mississauga, Ontario
L5R 4J3
www.wiley.com

To the little golden girls in our lives who inspire us to
think big, work hard, build, and prosper.

Molly, Sadie, Annie, Anya, and Linna... we love you!

Disclaimer

The material provided in this book is being provided for information purposes only. Nothing contained herein is intended to provide personalized financial, legal, or tax advice. Nothing should be construed as an offer to sell, or a solicitation of an offer to buy a security, a recommendation for any product or service by Golden Girl Finance, the authors or expert contributors herein, or any associated third party, or a suggestion regarding the purchase, holding, or sale of securities. Readers should not act on any information herein provided or implement any financial strategy without first obtaining professional advice from their financial, legal, and/or tax advisors who are fully aware of their individual circumstances and the rules that apply in the appropriate province and/or state.

Preface

Why We Wrote This Book

Every Girl Needs a Financial Best Friend

GoldenGirlFinance.ca launched in July 2010 because like many women (and men), we were bored with traditional personal-finance talk. At the end of a long, tiring day, would you rather read about Brangelina or bank rates, boozy escapades or bond yields? To borrow the words of a certain handsome pop star, we wanted to bring a little sexy back... to finance (yes, finance). Or let's be seriousintroduce it for the first time.

We wanted to make finance fun, fresh, compelling, and engaging. And we wanted to have fun while doing it. Because while we may have expertise, we love a good laugh, a good read, and a compelling story. We tell it like it isjust like you. And you know what? That's sexy.

Ultimately, through our website, through our voice, and now through this book, we will help you learn to strut ; to walk that walk that signals confidencein yourself, in your career, and in knowing that you've got your financial you-know-what together.

We're here to talk about women supporting women to grow in their careers and to grow in financial dominance. (We always did want to rule the world.)

We ask just one thing of you: wake up. Yes, wake up, ladies! You're worth so much more than you know. Adopt this mantra and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

It's time to get tough about our finances, to become aware, and to get engaged. The financial community, the world at large, and we ourselves need to recognize the power we hold in our manicured hands. Because make no mistake, ladies, recognizing your power is the sexiest thing of all.

So let's get started...

Introduction: Turning Smart Girls Golden

Finance and Females

Let's Start at the Very Beginning

We met at a dance class. A Storybook Ballet class, to be precise, for our pre-school daughters. Climbing out of minivans, each of us gripped the hands of little girls in baby pink leotards and elasticized slippers while juggling cellphones, juice boxes, and zip-lock bags of Cheerios (spilling out onto the pavement, of course). Our eyes met across the crowded parking lot. There was a faint recognition, a long-ago memory of double dates, child-free nights, and carefree days. But we digress. Though we had been acquaintances a decade or so ago, we had not seen one another since. And those child-free nights were long gone.

Over the intervening years, each of us had gone on to build our careers, get married, and manage busy households. That day in the dance-studio parking lot, Susan was corralling her two little girls and Laura shepherded three. Five daughters under the age of four. (That's right, you don't want to end up next to our families on a plane.)

As we caught up over cold coffee in take-out cups and commiserated over sleepless nights and harried schedules, something clicked. We knew we were made to work together.

Susan had climbed the corporate ladder to become a top wealth-management advisor. Yet she was dismayed at seeing so many of her female friendsintelligent, educated, capable womenintimidated by investment advisors, unsure of their own finances and wary of economic explanations.

She instinctively knew that someone with a female perspective needed to reach out from the financial industry. A source that would understand women's lingo, would never undermine their opinions, and would assure them that all questions are valid and worthy of a legitimate response. The default voice of finance need not be male, she reasoned. And while the topics are often the same, why not change up the dialogue?

Enter Laura. A successful entrepreneur, writer, and communications consultant, she was financially clueless. Between juggling her job, her clients, and her three young children, Laura was quite content to leave the financial planning up to her husband. And yet, for an educated woman who was used to running her own business as well as a household, that didn't quite feel right.