Brynne Conroy - The Feminist Financial Handbook: A Modern Womans Guide to a Wealthy Life

Copyright 2018 Brynne Conroy

Published by Mango Publishing Group, a division of Mango Media Inc.

Cover and Layout Design: Elina Diaz

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The Feminist Financial Handbook: A Modern Womans Guide to a Wealthy Life

Library of Congress Cataloging

ISBN: (print) 978-1-63353-808-5 (ebook) 978-1-63353-809-2

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018952303

BISAC category code: BUS050000BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Personal Finance / General

Printed in the United States of America

Praise for The Feminist Financial Handbook

Conroy is an awesome writer and fierce feminist.

Emily Guy Birken , author of End Financial Stress Now

The Feminist Financial Handbook is a unicorn among finance booksone that endeavors to recontextualize sensible financial basics within an acknowledgment of the myriad forms of oppression within our society. I wholeheartedly applaud Brynne Conroy in her efforts to transform both the role of the finance information world as it exists and the inequalities of the world. Brava!

Becca Anderson , author of The Book of Awesome Women and Badass Affirmations

In The Feminist Financial Handbook , Brynne Conroy provides women with a comprehensive guide to living a wealthier life that contains actionable advice while not sugarcoating real issues that impact women such as the gender pay gap and the impact of divorce. This book is a valuable read.

David Carlson , author of Hustle Away Debt and founder of Young Adult Money

One of the leading voices in personal finance, Brynne Conroy perfectly sums up what it means to be a woman in the twenty-first century. Money affects every part of our livesfrom the way we dress to how we can support ourselves and our familiesand Conroy does a perfect job of highlighting how the pay gap, discrimination, and the motherhood penalty affect womens money differently. This is the perfect book for the modern woman looking to understand her finances on a societal level (and how to fight back).

Tori Dunlap , editor at Tomorrow Ideas

Too often, we forget that women have very unique financial needs. The Feminist Financial Handbook remedies this problem nicely by tackling issues modern women face when planning for a secure financial future. If youre a woman struggling with the reality of money in the patriarchy, this book can help you break free and live your best financial life.

Miranda Marquit , money expert, financial journalist, and political activist

Conroy has done her research and given a platform to the rich and diverse experiences of womanhood and our relationship to money. This truly is the feminist financial handbook for the new wave of intersectional feminism.

Erin Lowry , author of Broke Millennial: Stop Scraping By and Get Your Financial Life Together

Conroy goes beyond blanket, modern-day notions of #girlboss to not only explore, but redefine what financial well-being means to different people. Meticulously researched, forward-thinking, and contemporarily feministwhich includes ableism and non-traditional populations The Feminist Financial Handbook not only serves as a practical guide, but as a platform of empowerment to the oppressed and underserved.

Jackie Lam , owner of Hello Freelancer

To my children.

Table of Contents

In the kitchen of my childhood home, my mother kept a poster of the famous We Can Do It! Rosie the Riveter image in a prominent spot. My sister and I grew up eating our Cheerios and Pop Tarts under the benevolent gaze of Rosie, eternally rolling up her sleeves to get shit done.

It was no accident that Rosie enjoyed such pride of place in Moms house. My mother wanted to make sure my sister and I both understood that we could do anything we put our minds to. She hoped we would learn early on that women are strong and capable, despite social messages that would make us feel less-than, just because we were girls. Our Rosie poster was part of Moms pushback against a patriarchal system that so often keeps women from achieving their full potential.

But even though the examples and lessons I learned at my mothers knee (and Rosies portrait) were important, formative, and feminist, they did not go far enough.

For instance, though I learned as a child that women earned eighty cents for every mans dollar, I did not understand that the larger gap facing women of color must be highlighted rather than treated as a footnote.

Though I knew I would likely face discrimination as a woman, I did not understand the intersectional ways in which I was privileged as a straight, white, abled, cisgender woman.

And though I believed in the importance of financial equality for women, I did not understand the ways that I benefited from other types of financial inequality.

In short, I did not understand that financial choices grew more constricted the less you looked like the iconic, glamorous, white woman we call Rosie the Riveter. Rosie is supposed to represent womens strength, but an image that pigeonholes women into a specific physical appearance is no way to celebrate and inspire all women.

I start with all of this to explain why I was so delighted to see an updated version of Rosie gracing the cover of my friend Brynne Conroys new book, The Feminist Financial Handbook which you now hold in your hands.

With this book, Brynne has created something that we desperately need: she has written a handbook on finances from a feminist perspective, and she invites all women and non-binary individuals to create a new financial future for themselves within it. Her commitment to intersectionality in this feminist handbook is represented by the Rosie of color on the cover, inviting all women, not just white women, to identify with this iconic image of feminine strength.

You can always find books geared toward helping women to improve their financial lives. Some are condescending, mansplanations of finance, couched as an important help to us little ladies and our emotional lady-brains. Some offer pink-jacketed rah-rah enthusiasm claiming to help the modern woman have it all! Some are deep dives into the real financial difficulties and challenges facing specific groups of women. But none of them look at finance from an intersectional feminist perspectiveuntil now.

As you read through The Feminist Financial Handbook , Brynne will walk you through the unique financial challenges and concerns facing women in the US and Canada. Many of these issues will be ones you are familiar with (and pretty damn sick of), and Brynnes explanations and recommendations will give you new tools for dealing with old problems.

Other issues will be surprising to you, often because they either do not affect you personally, or because you have never had the specific language to describe or discuss them. You will also learn excellent options for mitigating those issues that were once invisible or surprising and are still largely unrecognized by our society as a whole.