Sheryl Sutherland - Girls Just Want To Have Funds: A Womans Guide to Financial Independence

Today we have a world fit for women. In general terms we are healthy and literate. We have political and legal freedom and the right to control our own bodies. The last bastion we have to crack is that of economic independence. There are two ways we can take up the challenge: use our education to gain political and economic clout, and on an individual basis create our own wealth through investing and personal financial planning.

Women around the Western world are gradually acquiring economic strength. As women continue to pour into the paid workforce, they will apply their natural aptitudes in many sectors of society and dramatically influence twenty-first century business enterprises, sexual mores, and family life. In some important parts of the economy we will even predominate. Why? Because current trends in business, communications, education, law, medicine, government and even the non-profit sector, such as the civil service, suggest that the world needs the female mind.

Much of the international economy is shifting from one based on natural resources and physical labour, to one based on goods and services. This opens the international economy to women. Moreover, the rapid growth of international trade and free markets, the expansion of investments across national borders and the devices of the computer age, are enabling the flow of knowledge and money into womens grasp.

Our biggest complaint is lack of time, but what we lose in time we are gaining in spending power. Not just pin money either, as single mothers earnings are essential and in dual income families womens wages supply the difference between just getting by and living comfortably. Ones earning ability is also a great insurance policy in the event of divorce, or widowhood.

Women entrepreneurs in New Zealand are starting new companies at twice the rate of men and stay in business longer than men, with a much lower failure rate.

Today there are few spheres of life where women are not involved, including government. In New Zealand, we are led by our second woman prime minister. On the world scene, 23 states had female heads during the 1990s and fewer than a dozen governments have no women representatives. There is a growing trend towards appointing women to senior positions within government and political party structures.

For at least the next several decades we can anticipate that the economic forces bringing women out of domesticity will strengthen. In industrial societies a wave of educated, confident, baby boomer women have time, energy and money. In their footsteps follow an even more powerful generation of women, who will surpass their mothers in their pursuit of education and careers. In other societies, millions more women are expected to break with the past, gain paid employment and accumulate enough resources to support their children and, frequently, their parents.

It may seem strange to be concerned for the financial future of women after several decades in which women have increased their earning power and financial independence, but it is surprising how many women rely on their partners. This can be a recipe for financial and emotional disaster.

This book has been written to give you what you need to know to make successful investment decisions, while juggling a multitude of roles in a busy life: you know, the life that we sagely say is all a matter of balance, as we pick our elegant way across the tightrope, holding the groceries under one arm and the umbrella in the other.

Happy investing.

Sheryl Sutherland,

June, 2005