Recent Reading

Here's a few posts I found interesting and useful from some recent trawling around the blogosphere:

Feminist Finance on the different financial advice given by men's and women's magazines

The Simple Dollar on how you can help flood victims in Iowa

My Money Blog on the Japanese concept of Kaizen as applied to personal finance.

A guest post at Get Rich Slowly about the benefits of bartering

Blueprint for Financial Prosperity on how to convert a paper I-bond to an electronic one

"WHY DO OTHERWISE NORMAL GIRLS REFUSE TO GO DUTCH?"

A couple of weeks ago, there was an article in the New York Times Magazine by a woman named Emily Gould, about the perils of blogging about personal matters. It's certainly a cautionary tale for any of us whose lives leak out into our internet musings, but what particularly caught my eye was an excerpt from one of Emily's blog posts for Gawker:

WHY DO OTHERWISE NORMAL GIRLS REFUSE TO GO DUTCH?

Last night I almost made a gossip columnist drop her drink in horror with a single sentence. Luckily we were on the roof of 60 Thompson, which is such a classy establishment that the drinks are served in plastic tumblers, so no harm would’ve been done, but my gossipy friend’s gasp drew the attention of another woman in our group, who asked me to repeat the shocking thing I’d said. She, too, did a double take. ‘‘You let a man allow you to pay for your own dinner on the first date, and you’re seeing him again?’’ ‘‘I just . . . I went for my wallet, and he didn’t stop me,’’ I told them. ‘‘I didn’t mind! I like paying for myself.’’ What time capsule are these women living in? Why on earth would you want to feel beholden to a dude for any reason? Sure, free things are nice, but not when they come wrapped in cultural assumptions that men are the wage earners and women are their cossetted [sic] pets. What makes women feel like being asked to pay their own way is an insult?

Gawker, Sept. 27, 2007

What, indeed? Sometimes it's not just about the money, and an unwillingness to buy dinner could be a sign of a larger lack of emotional generosity. But that is a two-way street, and if we all just got used to paying our own way, we wouldn't be looking for these subtexts anyway. It's silly to imagine that people should have to split things 50/50 100% of the time, but let's all be a little more flexible about this! Decide who pays based on factors that make sense, not just some antiquated notion that the man has to do it!

Women and Aging: Expensive No Matter What!

Here's another article I enjoyed from last Thursday's Times:

Nice Résumé. Have You Considered Botox?

We women just can't get a break sometimes. According to this article, if you let yourself age naturally, it will cost you money because you'll be passed over for jobs. If you combat aging with surgery, lotions, injections, etc., that will cost you money too! You can also spend $25.99 (or $14.29 at Amazon) on this book by Charla Krupp called "How Not to Look Old:"

The book is the latest makeover title to treat the aging of one’s exterior as a disease whose symptoms are to be fought to the death or, at least, mightily camouflaged. But the book offers a serious rationale for such vigilant attempts at age control, arguing that trying to pass for younger is not so much a matter of sexual allure as of job security.

“Looking hip is not just about vanity anymore, it’s critical to every woman’s personal and financial survival,” according to the book jacket.

Promoted recently on Oprah Winfrey’s show and “Today,” the book clearly speaks to the fears of professional obsolescence and economic vulnerability among women over 40, at whom it is aimed. “How Not to Look Old” made its debut on the New York Times best-seller list last week at No. 8 in the advice and how-to category.

Ok, on a gut level, this is nothing new to most people, but the article mentions a study that puts it in concrete terms:

In one study on hiring practices, for example, a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology applied to entry-level jobs in Boston and St. Petersburg, Fla., by sending out 4,000 résumés as a female job applicant; the résumés varied the year of high school graduation, which dated the job seeker as being from 35 to 62.
The study, published in 2005 by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, found that younger women were 40 percent more likely to receive an offer of a job interview than women over 50; a woman over 50 in Boston would have to send in 27 résumés just to get one job interview, where a younger woman would have to send in only 19, the study said.
“Seeming young can definitely help your economic status, and that pays the rent,” said Joanna N. Lahey, the author of the study, who is now an assistant professor of public policy at Texas A & M.

Given that the jobs applied to were "entry level," the age discrimination might have involved a fear that the older applicant would be more likely to want more money or not stay in the job very long. Also, the study doesn't prove anything one way or the other about how LOOKING old affects your employability since the candidates were judged on their resume and the age it implied, not their face-to-face appearance. Who knows, maybe a thin, attractive and well-dressed older woman with grey hair and a few wrinkles would be more frequently offered a job than a younger woman who was un-stylish, overweight, and ugly.
But also, you have to remember how this plays out with men: older men are just more likely to be considered "attractive" than older women, and even if they aren't considered particularly "attractive" it doesn't seem to be as big a detriment to their careers. Look at all the major political figures we see in the news lately: there's no accounting for tastes, but Mitt Romney, Barack Obama, John Edwards-- all those guys would be generally seen as "attractive," I'm sure. John McCain? Rudy Giuliani? Dennis Kucinich? Mike Huckabee (at any weight)? Now you're talking about guys who are not that cute. But what about the women who are national figures? Nancy Pelosi? Condoleezza Rice? Maybe not everyone would agree, but I would say they are much higher on the attractiveness scale, and Hillary Clinton looks pretty good these days, even if she is never going to be considered a great beauty and has been the butt of way too much criticism over her earlier fashion mistakes. It's not like attractiveness is 100% necessary to succeed in politics, but something tells me that if we ever have a woman president, she will be well above average in terms of her appearance!

The article acknowledges the notion that it might be politically uncorrect, to say the least, to play along with any of our society's prejudices about appearance instead of working to change them:

Many people would shun a book if it were titled “How Not to Look Jewish” or “How Not to Look Gay” because to cater to discrimination is to capitulate to it. But the success of “How Not to Look Old” indicates that popular culture is willing to buy into ageism as an acceptable form of prejudice, even against oneself.

Even women who would probably identify themselves as feminists put a value on appearance and youthfulness, while trying to say it shouldn't be a basis for discrimination:

[Faye] Wattleton, 64, described people’s outward aging and their decisions to ameliorate it as personal choices that others should not judge.

“Being a person who has had plastic surgery and goes to the gym five days a week to work my muscles up so they don’t look atrophied as a 6o-year-old, I don’t disparage people who want to maintain their appearance,” said Ms. Wattleton, a former director of Planned Parenthood. “But what I don’t want is a society that tells me I have to.”

Ms. Krupp argues that economic pressures require most women to adopt age-management techniques. As her book puts it: we cannot afford to let ourselves go!

“What are we going to do if we have to enter the work force at a ripe old age?” Ms. Krupp said last week. “Out of necessity, you can disguise the age you are by looking younger, hipper and fresher.”

She added that Americans of one class, religion or ethnicity have often tried on other identities if they appeared to confer some professional or economic advantage.

“There was a book on how not to look Jewish,” Ms. Krupp said. “It was called ‘The Preppy Handbook’ and it was a best seller.”

Yeow! Of course that book would not have been a best seller under a more blatant title...

But back to the age thing, frankly, I think there is a lot more to this issue than wanting to be employed, or how society discriminates. We all want to look young and feel young so we can believe we are that much further away from dying! And perhaps, further away from having to start tapping into our retirement accounts...

Blogroll Updates

Periodically, I try to update my blogroll to add new links, delete inactive ones, etc. This time, I decided to also add a new feature: I have added a "F" to all the blogs written by women, and a "M" to all blogs written by men. Blogs written by teams or couples (or hermaphrodites) get a "MF."

While doing this, I noticed a few interesting things: first of all, my blogroll is a pretty even split of men and women. I was sort of thinking I might have more men, because people are always saying that there tend to be more male bloggers in the finance sphere. Then I thought I might have more women, because I am a woman and I sometimes find that I relate more to the way other women tend to write about finances. But I guess those two things balanced each other out!
The other thing I found funny was this: I have to admit that I don't regularly read every single blog I link to. Some are links that people requested I add, and some are things I found on my own and liked, but I just don't have time to read as many blogs as I'd like to. So when I was adding all my little Fs and Ms, there were a few sites I had to click through to to figure out who they were written by. Most blogs make the gender of the writer immediately obvious-- but some make it downright difficult to determine! There were a couple of sites that I had to really search to determine whether the blogger was male or female. And who knows, maybe I still got it wrong, but clues like talking about how one's clothes fit and wearing earrings, though ambiguous, hint at the writer's being female. (If I've gotten anyone wrong, let me know! Likewise, if you have a sex change and need an update...)

Nina of Sitting Pretty has talked about the difference in how finance articles are written for men and women in a post at BlogHer, and in a guest post at I Will Teach You to Be Rich, where "women and money" was the subject of a series of articles, prompted by Ramit's realization that his audience skewed more towards males. Trent at The Simple Dollar has also written a post on this issue, called Should Men and Women Receive Different Personal Finance Advice. The Digerati Life asks Where are the Female Personal Finance Bloggers and links to Don't Mess with Taxes's take on the topic.

I've never done a reader survey to see if my audience is more female than male, or to ask if my female readers might like to see more posts and links highlighting specifically female perspectives on money. But I thought it would be nice to highlight some of the many blogs written by women and make them easier to find. In the words of my favorite female rapper YoYo, "I'm all about uprightin' upliftin' the woman," at least to whatever extent I can do that with my little blogroll!

"Dating Down"

How could I not comment on this article from the weekend's Style section in the New York Times:

Putting Money on the Table

I've told a few stories here about female friends of mine who were dating men who made less money. There were some reader comments on those posts saying that the experiences I described were atypical, but in New York and other cities, they appear to be more and more common:

For the first time, women in their 20s who work full time in several American cities — New York, Chicago, Boston and Minneapolis — are earning higher wages than men in the same age range, according to a recent analysis of 2005 census data by Andrew Beveridge, a sociology professor at Queens College in New York.

For instance, the median income of women age 21 to 30 in New York who are employed full time was 17 percent higher than that of comparable men.

Professor Beveridge said the gap is largely driven by a gulf in education: 53 percent of women employed full time in their 20s were college graduates, compared with 38 percent of men. Women are also more likely to have graduate degrees. “They have more of everything,” Professor Beveridge said.

The shift is playing out in new, unanticipated ways on the dating front. Women are encountering forms of hostility they weren’t prepared to meet, and are trying to figure out how to balance pride in their accomplishments against their perceived need to bolster the egos of the men they date.

A lot of young women “are of two minds,” said Stephanie Coontz, director of research at the Council on Contemporary Families, a research organization. “On one hand, they’re proud of their achievements, and they think they want a man who shares house chores and child care. But on the other hand they’re scared by their own achievement, and they’re a little nervous having a man who won’t be the main breadwinner. These are old tapes running in their head: ‘This is how you get a man.’”

YOUNG affluent women say they are learning to advertise their good fortune in a manner very different from their male counterparts. For men, it is accepted, even desirable, to flaunt their high status. Not so for many women.

“Very, very early in a date,” said Anna Rosenmann, 28, who founded a company called Eco Consulting LA, in Los Angeles, and earns up to $150,000 a year, “a man will drop comments on how much his sales team had made for the year, which meant his bonus was blah, blah, blah.”

But, she said, “that’s not how we were raised.”

Instead, she said, she starts out dates being discreet. “I don’t talk about myself,” she said. “When people ask me, I’m going to be very honest. But I definitely don’t say, ‘My name’s Anna, I’m 28 and I own a business.’ ”

Ms. Rosenmann said that dating considerably older men helps her avoid innuendos from younger men who feel threatened by her professional success. She said that when she has gone out at night with men her own age and has to turn in early to be fresh for work, they have commented , “Oh, Anna’s an adult, she has a real job.”

It's clear that our society's stereotypes about men taking care of women still run very strong and deep. But what struck me the most about the stories in the article is how hard these things are to talk about. One woman mentions a boyfriend who straightforwardly addressed his discomfort about her making more money. But in other cases, the subject is addressed in an oblique manner, through hints about going over one's budget, or by hiding price tags on expensive clothing.
There is also the issue of how you define what is really important to you in a relationship. Nowadays, it seems a bit uncool to admit that wealth might be high on one's list of preferred qualities in a mate. As a commenter on my Bubbles story put it,

After all, if it's OK to not date a person because they are unambitious, broke, and/or have poor money management skills/values (and I think it is OK and necessary to refuse such potential partners), then why is it such a crime to seek a person with the opposite traits?

Men don't seem to have a problem dating women who make tiny amounts of money or none at all, as long as they have other qualities-- that's just the way things have always been. Women seem to be more conflicted about it:

Michael R. Cunningham, a psychologist who teaches in the communication department at the University of Louisville, conducted a survey of college women to see if, upon graduation, they would prefer to settle down with a high school teacher who has short workdays, summers off and spare energy to help raise children, or with a surgeon who earns eight times as much but works brutal hours. Three-quarters of the women said they would choose the teacher.

The point, Professor Cunningham said, was that young professionally oriented women have no problem dating down if the man is secure, motivated in his own field and emotionally supportive.

At least, that’s what their responses are in surveys. Talk about the subject with women a bit older — those who have been out of college long enough to be more hardened — and what you hear is ambivalence, if not downright hostility, about the income disparity.

In one couple that I knew, the woman insisted the income disparity itself wasn't the issue-- it was the man's lack of direction and ambition in his life, and the fact that he hated his job as a barista but was lazy and clueless when it came to trying to find something that better suited him. But what if he had a job that paid $200,000 a year and was complaining that he hated it but kept procrastinating about making a change? Would that have bothered her just as much?

Relationships and money, always such a complicated and fascinating issue...

Women Closing the Earnings Gap

For Young Earners in Big City, a Gap in Women's Favor

Interesting article in today's Times. It doesn't entirely surprise me that young women are starting to out-earn men here-- New York is a city with a lot of single women, particularly well-educated single women who who are ambitious about their careers, or at least want to make a lot of money before they get married and start having babies. I know I have a biased perspective on this, but among friends and neighbors and colleagues here, I've always noticed a trend that the women just seemed more focused on getting their careers going earlier in life while the men were content to coast a little. Of course there were exceptions to the trend, and of course this is just my circle, and I work in an industry that has a much higher ratio of females to males, even in very senior positions, than many other fields.
It's funny, I think my most pronounced reaction to the article was that it made me feel old! There is still a wage gap for older women, which may be caused by a variety of factors, but sometimes when I meet younger women, I am quite impressed by them. It's not like I'm some dinosaur, and I did grow up in enough of a post-women's lib environment that it never really occurred to me that I might not be able to do something I wanted to do just because I was a girl. But I still sometimes think women in the decade behind mine are growing up with an even greater sense of empowerment. I also look at all the personal finance blogs being written by women in their 20s, such as English Major, Tired But Happy, Budgeting Babe, Savvy Saver, Penny Nickel, and others, and I think how much more control they're taking of their finances than I did at that age.
Bottom line: you go, girls.