Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Women & Money

I'm reading the Suze Orman book "Women and Money" right now and I must say it's quite motivational. Especially for me, as I tend to ruminate and agonize over every little decision - more than usual when it comes to money, even.

I know plenty of marriages where the husband is in control of all the financial affairs, particularly if the wife is a stay at home parent. In our household, it's kind of the opposite. The Evil Twin works and I manage the finances. I pay the bills, make financial decisions, etc. I maintain our insurance information too - health, car and home - even though our health insurance is through the Evil Twin's work. He brings home the booklets and forms and I'm in charge of reading it all over and deciding what option is best for our family. I then fill out the forms and he signs them and drops them off at work.

In fact, during the last open enrollment, his HR person complimented him on being the only person who had filled out their forms correctly. He had to correct her and tell her it was the wife who did the paperwork! Like I said, I'm a sucker for details.

In reading Ms. Orman's book, I am feeling more empowered to do something about our cash money that just sits in a money market account offered by our bank. The interest is pathetic, so I plan to open a new account today with a different institution - which offers far more interest. I also paid off all our credit card debt, which wasn't much. I finally realized spending more in credit card interest than you can make on a money market account is just plain dumb. I'm better off getting rid of the debt, then applying the payments I was making to my money market account paying US interest instead of the other way around.

I highly recommend this book, even if you have a pretty good handle on your finances already. I've been doing ours for 16 years, but have often been paralyzed by fear to invest or change anything and that has cost us potential money (interest). Plus, I've learned more about IRAs and Roth IRAs too - which is one savings option I did not have much knowledge about previously.

I'm not finished yet, but I can tell I'm going to learn a lot more about money by the time I wrap up my reading! Off to open a new account!

6 comments:

  1. I'll send you some money to invest in the stock market for me. Please note I can only send $10.00 and expect to retire in 5 years so please do your best.

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  2. My wife once let me look at the finances so that I could feel "involved."

    3 Ativans later, I declared that I would never look att he balance book again.

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  3. Behind every successful man is a very wise woman handling his money. Otherwise, he'd just buy beer with it and piss it all away ;)

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  4. I handle the finances too...when I met my husband he was adding a 1 to all of his check book balances so he would feel better about his small amount of money and rounding the amounts of the checks he wrote. I threatened to take our CD out last year and our CU met the competition.

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  5. You have picked a wonderful reference for financial advice. Suze Orman is amazing. When I find a job and have some disposable income I may start all over again.

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  6. My husband and I payed off our last credit card with our tax refund. Talk about freedom!

    When it comes to the daily stuff, Chachi is the go to guy. I handle the cleaning and the groceries. Somehow, he considers it a fair trade.

    If the book turns out to be a 'must buy', please let me know. I'll add it to my list.

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