Another Down-to-Earth Heiress

Consider this a sequel to my last post, in which a woman's family money seemed to be funding some luxuries for an otherwise frugal couple.

This time, the story is about a childhood friend of mine. I hadn't really kept in touch with him for years, but some years ago I was at a party in my home town and met his wife. She was a lovely person who taught in a local nursery school, just really sweet and friendly and exactly the sort of person you'd want your child's teacher to be. My old friend worked in what sounded like a mid-level corporate marketing job. They had a child and another on the way at that point. They were renting a house and hoping to find one to buy. It all sounded totally typical for a young married couple of my general world, which I'll again describe as mostly people who have had a stable, middle-class to upper-middle class upbringing, college grads-- people with many advantages in life but who would not be seen as particularly rich. People who probably aren't living paycheck-to-paycheck, but who have worries about the bigger financial goals in life such as helping kids pay for college, and retirement. People who can't take money for granted.

As in my last story, an offhand remark by the wife made my head spin-- I was telling a story about my own job, with an example of a regular task I had at that time, and I referred to a company name. The wife said "oh! That's my family's business! [Things associated with this company, one of which I had just cited,] are named after my sisters and cousins and me!" This company is not a household name but it's one of those things that is actually pretty major in a behind-the-scenes way, which you notice everywhere once you know where to look. I didn't pry into all the family tree, but from doing a little research afterwards, it appeared that the wife's grandfather was at that time the richest man in the country where this company was founded.

Being the richest man in that country is not like being the richest man in the US-- our billionaires are way richer. But still... he's a billionaire! I guess there is no law that says grandparents have to provide money to their grandchildren, and maybe this woman doesn't get a thing, but even if she is one of lots and lots of grandchildren, she would surely inherit something someday. And at that level of wealth, I'd be surprised if there wasn't some sort of trust fund distributing some money already.

At some point after that party, I asked a mutual friend if he knew about the wife's background. He was aware that she came from money, as apparently a group of this guy's friends always joked about how he must have sold his soul to the devil because he'd gone from being kind of a nerd in high school to marrying this beautiful and wealthy woman! But they didn't even realize exactly how wealthy her family was.

I was just looking up this couple to see what they are up to lately, as I haven't seen them in a while and don't know much more about them other than what their kids are doing in photos posted on Facebook. The wife is no longer a teacher, and has what sounds like a management job at a tech company. My friend seems to still have more or less the same job. When the wife was a teacher, I thought "ok, that is the sort of job that is emotionally rewarding if not remunerative, so it makes sense that she would do that." Obviously I don't know any details about her current job, but it sounds more like the kind of thing people do when they need to make money-- she may find it satisfying in other ways, but I guess it is my own bias showing that I think anyone who has some family money would want to be an entrepreneur, or work for a non-profit, or teach-- in general, do things that are too risky or low-paying to do if you really need a steady income. I wish I could ask her a lot of questions....

Catching up on 2016

A few notes as I do my year-end accounting for 2016. 

The first thing I dug into was the trusts I manage for my mom. Their return was about 9% last year and I was about to pay Mom about $8,000 in dividends. I feel pretty good about this, especially after a shaky start in the first few months I was managing her money when the market was down and I was afraid she wouldn’t understand that it wasn’t my fault! I am also a bit less nervous about my mom’s finances since my grandparents both died in 2016 and she does not have to contribute to their nursing home costs anymore, which was a big expense.

My own personal investment accounts are a bit more aggressive and using the way E*Trade calculates returns, I actually beat the S&P 500 in 2016— 11.4% returns in one account, 10.73% in the other, vs. 9.53% for S&P 500.

I earned more money this year as a result of my new job, and decent investment returns. My total income including salary, bonus, investment income and other odds and ends such as employer contributions to 401k was over $214,000, vs about $188,000 for 2015. I also spent more on various things— food, wine, clothes and a few other small pleasures, but also taxes, as those increased when my income went up. But my total spending only went up by about $6,500, so my net savings for the year ended up being almost $85,000, vs about $65k last year.

I am thinking more and more about how to retire early, or at least downshift to a less stressful job. I like making more money, but it has come with a TON of stress and I’m not sure it’s worth it. Maybe I’ll eventually feel more comfortable in this position, but for these first few months, I’ve been struggling and really not feeling confident that it will ever get better. I’d love to quit, but I’m not ready to admit failure, and I keep telling myself that the longer I stick it out, the earlier I can retire! 

My net worth was about $1.17 million at the end of 2016. I’m on the right track for my retirement goals, but not so much so that I can totally relax. I’ve played around with a lot of scenarios in a retirement calculator— the good news is that it does seem like I’d be able to retire at least a few years early, even if I go back to making somewhat less. If I was willing to move to a different part of the US with a lower cost of living and make some big changes to my lifestyle, I could probably retire tomorrow if I felt like it. But I’m not willing to do that just yet, and who knows what the next few years will bring, in terms of my own career, my family, and the political and economic uncertainty in our country.

2016 was a pretty shitty year. It was bad enough that David Bowie, Prince, and Sharon Jones died, not to mention various other iconic celebrities. I lost some dear friends and beloved family members, which of course was more important to me, and I lost a lot of faith in American democracy in seeing Donald Trump elected President. In most other ways, I am happy, pretty healthy, and generally feel incredibly lucky that I have the life I do. When I started this blog, I still thought of myself as “young”— now I’m middle-aged! It’s weird to feel like I’m shifting into a new attitude towards the future, at exactly the point when the future looks bleak in some ways. But I still keep thinking “onward and upward!” Wishing you all, dear loyal readers, the very very best and a happy New Year!

Overheard at the Gym

The women's locker room at my gym is the best place to overhear interesting money-related conversations. (Actually, I suppose the men's locker room could also be a good place, but I haven't had the chance to find out!)
This morning, I caught snippets of a chat between two women who seemed to be discussing the boyfriend of one of them, or perhaps of a friend of theirs. They were saying that the boyfriend always seemed to brag about his money and status, even in the most unlikely situations, for example saying his office had had a leak during Hurricane Irene, but having to specify that it was some kind of executive suite office, not just "my office." But though they seemed to be saying the guy was sort of an insecure jerk, I caught the phrase "Marry him! Marry him!" I guess because he had money.
Then one of the women seemed to be bemoaning the fact that she'd never have a rich boyfriend. The other woman tried to console her by saying "but at least you're already living the life! I mean, Florida, the Hamptons, here [NYC]..." The first woman responded, "yeah, well, I do a good job looking like it," or something like that, saying that she worked in book publishing, where no one gets rich, so she was just keeping up appearances while being broke.

The whole thing was sort of funny, but also really depressing. I'm embarrassed on behalf of all women when I hear people like that talking about their plots to hook a rich husband, and off-handedly acknowledging that it's more important to them to look rich than to save any money in the hopes of actually being rich, or at least financially stable someday.

Bra-llelujah!

Ok, male readers-- just stop right here. This one's not for you. Ladies, read on.

How much would you spend for a bra? And what would make it worthwhile for you to spend a lot?

I personally have not spent a ton of money on bras in my lifetime, compared to the average woman, I suppose. I have always found wearing one extremely torturous-- and I mean EXTREMELY. I have some back pain issues that make it really uncomfortable to have anything digging in back there. I also hate the feeling of something tight around my chest. I also don't like anything itchy and scratchy, or with little sharp spots. And I have the kind of shoulders that straps always slip off of. In short, I'm just very sensitive to all the things about bras that a lot of other people seem to take for granted as something you just have to deal with.
Fortunately, I've often been able to avoid wearing a bra altogether. I've always been on the small side, so a camisole was a fairly viable substitute. But there are times when a camisole just doesn't cut it. And for those times, I have searched high and low for bras that would work.
Here was my list of necessary features:

• Straps that wouldn't slip down, so preferably a racerback style
• Straps that wouldn't dig in
• No lace or anything remotely itchy
• Lightly lined/padded cups for "modesty"
• Preferably a front closure
• No sportsbra mono-boob
• No underwire jabbing into me
  

I found some bras at the Gap that were close-- a racerback style, front closure, light padding. The had underwires but I was able to cut them out with a pair of sharp scissors. They were almost bearable to wear but the straps had a little metal loop and stitching where they joined the cup-- totally unnecessary and totally itchy. I bought two anyway, but then over the years I had them mostly sitting in my drawer, I seemed to gain some weight and was suddenly a B cup rather than an A.
I bought another style at the Gap that was pretty good for comfort, but the straps were always falling off my shoulders. It was actually meant to be a convertible bra that you could wear with the straps crossed over, but since the closure was in the back, it was almost impossible to get into without either all sorts of contortions or a friend to help you out.
I bought many other bras along the way and had bra-fitting ladies make sure I was buying the right size. I did research online. I tried sportsbras, despite the dreaded mushing effect. Nothing worked.
And then... Bra-llelujah!
That's what it's called-- the SPANX Bra-llelujah! Full Coverage Front-Close Underwire Bra. Oh my god, it was different! The straps are wide and soft and stretchy. The chest strap is wide and soft and stretchy. The cups are padded and comfy and even though it has underwires, they don't dig in. There's one little place on the chest strap where there's a bit of decorative stitching that I wish they'd left out, but it's not too itchy. It closes in the front. It's my dream bra! I went shopping with a friend who wears bras that would drive me up the wall and claims she can forget they're on, and even she went bug-eyed when she tried on the Spanx bra, saying how comfortable it was. But here's the only thing that bummed us both out a bit-- it costs $62.
Most of the bras I've bought were probably in the $20-30 range. I think once I may have spent closer to $50. I'm don't think I've ever spent $62. But I did not hesitate for even a second before I bought it.

I can't help thinking that the woman who founded Spanx is brilliant. The bras aren't their main claim to fame-- it's the "shapewear"-- but she's obviously realized that comfortable undergarments are something that is very valuable to a lot of women. This isn't to say that price isn't an issue at all-- but she also started an lower-priced offshoot line called "Assets" that is sold at places like Target and Loft. Those bras didn't look quite as comfortable to me, but if I have a chance to check them out in a store, I will.

There's one other thing you may be thinking: "that Spanx bra may be comfortable, but it isn't the sexiest-looking thing..." All I can say to that is... no, it isn't. I guess if your intention is to have someone want to rip your bra off, it doesn't matter how comfortable it is while it's on. But on the flip side, I'll probably look sexier while wearing the Spanx bra because I won't constantly be squirming and breaking out in hives and grimacing in pain.

I only just recently bought the Spanx bra, so I'm still waiting to see how it will hold up under repeated washings-- if it doesn't, I may start to regret the $62 more. And it does have some competition from another bra I bought the same day, which is now my #2 runner-up comfy bra: Warner's Womens Invisible Bliss Front Close Bra. It's only $32 and a little cuter, though still not quite Agent Provocateur material. And with bras costing around $200, that's where you should go if you want Spanx to seem cheap.

Papal Encyclical About the Economy

You know everyone's got the economy on the brain when even the Pope weighs in:
Pope Urges Forming New World Economic Order to Work for the ‘Common Good’

More than two years in the making, “Caritas in Veritate,” or “Charity in Truth,” is Benedict’s third encyclical since he became pope in 2005. Filled with terms like “globalization,” “market economy,” “outsourcing,” “labor unions” and “alternative energy,” it is not surprising that the Italian media reported that the Vatican was having difficulty translating the 144-page document into Latin....

In many ways, the document is a puzzling cross between an anti-globalization tract and a government white paper, another signal that the Vatican does not comfortably fit into traditional political categories of right and left.

“There are paragraphs that sound like Ayn Rand, next to paragraphs that sound like ‘The Grapes of Wrath.’ That’s quite intentional,” Vincent J. Miller, a theologian at the University of Dayton, a Catholic institution in Ohio, said by telephone.

“He’ll wax poetically about the virtuous capitalist, but then he’ll give you this very clear analysis of the ways in which global capital and the shareholder system cause managers to focus on short-term good at the expense of the community, of workers, of the environment.”

Indeed, sometimes Benedict sounds like an old-school European socialist, lamenting the decline of the social welfare state and praising the “importance” of labor unions to protect workers. Without stable work, he noted, people lose hope and tend not to get married and have children.

Well, that's all very interesting. But I really think he should be more focused on how to get all those rogue nuns to stop doing reiki...

Links I Liked

A few recent items of interest from around the blog world and beyond:

April Showers Bring May Flowers @ Fabulous Financials

Amortization Schedules and Principal Repayment @ My Money Blog

A Step-By-Step Guide to Creating a Deal-Finding Homepage @ The Simple Dollar

Do Rich Women Spend Less Than Rich Men? @ The Wealth Report

Properly Destroy a Credit Card @ Bargaineering

'I-Bond' Payments Get Wiped Out from the Wall Street Journal

Book Review: The Secret Currency of Love

Back in December, I posted a link to an essay I really liked called The Accidental Breadwinner. That piece was excerpted from a book called The Secret Currency of Love: The Unabashed Truth About Women, Money, and Relationships. A sharp-eyed publicist picked up on the interest the book generated here, and was kind enough to email me the manuscript so I could review it.

If you like reading personal finance blogs, you will find a lot to like about this book-- some very talented writers tell their money stories with a lot of introspection and candor. But I have to say up front that if you like reading personal finance blogs, you may also be slightly disappointed in the book, as I was.

The book is divided into 3 sections: Money and Romance, Money and Family, and Money and Self. I thought the Romance section would be the most interesting, as relationships are such fertile ground for money issues, but as I made my way through it, I came to a realization: the problem with some books is that they are written by WRITERS. I found that too many of the relationship essays ended up being very similar: young struggling female writer is trying to make ends meet, always falls hard for the type of guy who is not a big earner, anguishes over inner feminist voice telling her it's okay for her to be the breadwinner while inner not-feminist voice tells her it would be really nice to have the man pay for things so she won't have to have a day job and can still enjoy an upper-middle class lifestyle while writing full-time.

Not all writers come from the exact same socio-economic background, but let's face it-- many are well-educated and come from families with some level of comfort and privilege, though usually not the kind of great wealth that allows total freedom from having to make a living. Writers want to spend lots of time writing, but it's hard to make it pay the bills-- hence that insidious desire for a man to swoop in and take care of them. (All the women in the book seem to be heterosexual.) And sometimes writers seem to embrace a supposed freewheeling artistic personality, happily professing ignorance about the nitty gritty of finances while reveling in the sensual pleasures afforded by expensive things. I would have liked the book better if there had been some "as told to" stories from women who represented a broader spectrum of society.

But if you can get beyond that, there are some great moments in this book, and a wide variety of money dilemmas are explored. Publishing exec Joni Evans writes about her high-profile divorce from a man who had been her boss. Ann Hood writes about keeping separate accounts in her relationships: after being married to a man who obsessively tracks their spending and makes her pay for her share of everything, she finds love with someone else who just has different financial priorities and budgets only $5 for family Christmas presents.
Lucy Kaylin loves a man who is pursuing his passion, but then she finds herself wondering if she can handle his disregard for money:

Kimball was the sort of guy who'd sooner gouge out his own eyeballs with a fork that publicly split a check and figure out the tax. And he found the unseemly settling up one is expected to do each month with the utility and credit card companies to be such an unremitting buzz-kill that he tended those relationships haphazardly.

After she and Kimball marry, she makes repairing his finances a pet project, trying to remind him about late fees and questioning him about whether he can afford all his purchases:

Having thrown my lot in with his, I made it my mission to put his financial affairs in order and transform him into a fit life partner.

But it backfires. He eventually tells her she has to get off his back:

I'm 39 years old; I've been taking care of myself for a long time. And maybe I'm not perfect with money but I'm not irresponsible. I've always had a roof over my head and everything I needed. I'm fine. And you can love me or not-- that's your choice. But you have to stop trying to change me, because it's not going to work.

In the end, Kimball manages to turn his low-paying passion into a more lucrative job and the couple now owns a 3-bedroom coop in Manhattan-- happily ever after!

I actually found the second section of the book the most powerful: Money and Family. The best pieces explore the shifts in financial attitudes that can occur when people have children. Jennifer Wolff Perrine tells a wrenching story of having a baby with a surrogate mother. Lori Gottlieb's piece, called Planned Parenthood, will resonate with those who have wondered how that mother of octuplets could contemplate bringing more children into her family. Gottlieb has a child as a single mother, via expensive inseminations. Then, with her finances even shakier than they were before the first child, she debates with herself about having another one.
This section of the book also gets into relationships with parents and other family members, including a piece by Yolonda Lawrence about how she dealt with her family looking to her for handouts since she'd achieved a level of success above their own:

Though I'm single, I wasn't alone when I spent my money. In my head, my family was always along for the ride. Every time I threw down a credit card at Barney's, I'd see my mother's face. Or hear my stepfather's voice, "Things have been a little slow. They cut back on my hours, so your mother and I can't take a vacation this year." I'd sign my name and my throat would choke with guilt. A tape played in my brain on a constant loop. "Guess what Yolonda, you're not just a disgusting daughter. You're a disgusting human being. How can you achieve financial freedom without giving your family the same opportunity? Yes, your work is sporadic, and you haven't saved for retirement-- but it's up to you. Free your family from the binds of middle class life."

Unfortunately, the real problem isn't her parents-- it's her drug-addict brother, who borrows money from her until the author finds herself getting into debt.

There's lots more quotes and interesting stories I found myself jotting down, but I don't want to spoil it for you! And I'm also skipping that step a real book reviewer is supposed to do, where you check the advance proof against a finished copy of the book, so I don't want to risk including any more quotes that might not be 100% accurate!

But bottom line, whether or not you find yourself sympathizing with every writer in this book, there is a lot of honesty here. These women rarely cite hard numbers for their earnings or expenditures, but they express feelings-- pride and shame and delusion and insecurities-- that all of us have felt, which is, in the end, what makes the book a compelling read.

It's available at Amazon here.

"Dating a Banker Anonymous"

Today's grossest story from the NY Times: It's the Economy, Girlfriend, which is about a support group for women who are dating investment bankers.

Dawn Spinner Davis, 26, a beauty writer, said the downward-trending graphs began to make sense when the man she married on Nov. 1, a 28-year-old private wealth manager, stopped playing golf, once his passion. “One of his best friends told me that my job is now to keep him calm and keep him from dying at the age of 35,” Ms. Davis said. “It’s not what I signed up for.”

[She and other women] shared their sad stories the other night at an informal gathering of Dating a Banker Anonymous, a support group founded in November to help women cope with the inevitable relationship fallout from, say, the collapse of Lehman Brothers or the Dow’s shedding 777 points in a single day, as it did on Sept. 29.

In addition to meeting once or twice weekly for brunch or drinks at a bar or restaurant, the group has a blog, billed as “free from the scrutiny of feminists,” that invites women to join “if your monthly Bergdorf’s allowance has been halved and bottle service has all but disappeared from your life.”

If you read the blog, you'll get the sense that this is all rather clever satire, but I wonder if the women attending these meetings really think so?

It's not that I don't sympathize on a certain level-- layoffs and a tough economy definitely put stress on relationships, and people in certain industries are much more likely to feel like they're next on the chopping block. But please-- "it's not what I signed up for?"

Gross. Gross, gross, gross.

The Accidental Breadwinner

I really enjoyed this piece in the NY Times this weekend: The Accidental Breadwinner, by Karen Karbo.

I DIDN’T set out to be the breadwinner. I assumed that one day a guy would come along and I would marry him and, well, he’d take care of it. This is one of the fundamental ways in which men differ from women. Growing up, boys assume they’re going to make the money, or at least half the money. Rare is the boy who imagines that marriage will spell a free economic ride and so nurtures his incredible hotness to that end.

But it doesn't quite go that way. She marries a man she calls the Cuddle Bum:

The Cuddle Bum hated his job — and who could blame him? He wanted to get into another field, perhaps one that required his going back to school.

In the meantime, we decided that the Cuddle Bum would be the househusband. My role as breadwinner was thus made official. The Cuddle Bum’s idea of his role involved pouring a bowl of cereal for each child before school, playing videogames for 10 hours, and then grudgingly making dinner at 6. For almost a year, I told him that wasn’t working for me, that if he wasn’t going to care for the entire household the way a wife would (vacuum on Mondays, dust on Tuesdays ...) then he needed to go back to work. Much of the time, I expressed this wish to the back of his head as he tried to slay two-headed ogres on the TV.

When we divorced, he wanted alimony, child support and the house — the house that was purchased with my money, in my name. During one of our last conversations, I wept with incomprehension. He wanted my house? Whatever happened to the way people divorce in the movies, where the husband packs a bag and moves into a sad hotel, leaving his wife (whom he supported) in the house?

She works it all out in the end with a different man:

The day Jim and I moved in together, I gave him a formal accounting of how much our monthly nut would be; he would pay for himself, and I would pay for my daughter and me. Since then, he has written me a check for his portion on the 15th of every month. Sometimes he buys the groceries, and sometimes I do. But he always pays for both of us when we go to the movies, and spends lavishly on buttered popcorn and Milk Duds. I am always touched by this.

The essay is adapted from a piece included in a forthcoming book called The Secret Currency of Love: The Unabashed Truth About Women, Money, and Relationships, which will definitely be on my reading list! Here's the description:

Money. It affects us all, so why is it so difficult to discuss? Even as daily headlines broadcast ever more alarming news about the fate of the American economy, few people are willing to acknowledge the enormous impact that personal finance has on their private affairs. Until now.

In this compelling anthology of original essays, some of the country's most respected women writers reveal their deepest feelings about money and how it affects their most intimate relationships—with parents, children, spouses, siblings, and ultimately with themselves. They examine the childhood experiences that set up lifelong, and sometimes self-destructive, financial habits. And they divulge how all the intangibles—romance, status, power, security—become tangled up in their financial lives.

The essays in these pages are written from many different perspectives: a single woman trying to reconcile feminism with a secret desire to be supported by a man; a wife with radically different spending habits from her husband's; a divorcée who has become the family's chief breadwinner; a single mother struggling to make ends meet. They also explore complicated social issues. Sheri Holman (The Dress Lodger) reveals how she fell in love with a homeless drug addict. Leslie Bennetts (The Feminine Mistake) weighs the social and emotional costs of giving her children a private-school education among the super-rich. Bliss Broyard (One Drop) ruminates on the intricacies of maintaining friendships with wealthier friends. And Amy Cohen (The Late Bloomer's Revolution) considers the price—financial and otherwise—of having a child on her own.

Witty, nuanced, and startlingly intimate, The Secret Currency of Love offers a transformative look at the delicate nature of love and money. This riveting collection will spark debate by inspiring readers to reexamine their own emotional connection to their finances. As Americans struggle to make rational choices in a frightening economy, these brave, revealing essays by some of today's most esteemed writers provide insight into how a modern generation of women is defining itself in the new social economy.

Overheard at the Gym

I can't help myself! I have to share some of the funny conversations I hear that relate to money, even against the advice of some commenters.

This time, I was at the gym, getting dressed after my morning swim. A group of women were talking about dating. One of them swore she would henceforth only date men taller than 5'9" and then proceeded to tell a series of stories about her nightmare experiences with short men, one of whom she believed was trying to compensate for his lack of stature by being "extremely aggressive" about trying to make out with her after their date. She declined his advances but as she was telling this story, she happened to mention that this guy had spent $400 on the dinner they'd had. I couldn't quite hear how she was relating the money aspect to his aggression-- the standard themes are either
"He bought me an expensive dinner and I'm outraged that he thinks that entitles him to sexual favors!"
or
"He bought me an expensive dinner so I can't help feeling slightly guilty that I'm not giving him sexual favors."
In this case, who knows, maybe she was thinking "He spent $400 on dinner hoping it would make me forget that he was short."

Anyway, the $400 dinner comment set all the other women off-- obviously money is a more compelling issue than height! One was talking about a guy she only went out with once because on their first date, he asked "So, should I put this on a credit card and you give me cash for half? Or do you want to put it on your credit card and have me give you cash for half?" Another date ended with a shared cab ride-- the girl lived further away so the cab dropped the guy off first, and he jumped out without giving her any money towards the fare.

Obviously the tone of the conversation was that these women believed men have to pay for dates, period, and that anything else is tantamount to an insult. This always gets on my nerves. As has been discussed many times in this blog's posts and comments, there's more than one way to do things, and more than one reason people might or might not want to share the costs of a date. As far as I'm concerned, it's common courtesy for whoever did the asking to offer to pay for the date, and it's common courtesy for the other party to offer to chip in at some point, if not on that date, perhaps on the next one. If the guy really wants to pay all the time and can afford it, fine, but if he doesn't/can't, it doesn't necessarily mean he doesn't respect you! What should make him question his respect for you is a prima donna attitude towards sharing costs.

The thing about these situations that always does seem a little tacky is ASKING someone else to chip in. It's an awkward thing to have to do, and the person being asked is always going to feel a bit disappointed that they aren't getting a free gift! So the best thing for everyone, in my opinion, is always to volunteer to split the check, or say you'll get the next one. You avoid putting the other person in the uncomfortable position of having to ask you for money, and you avoid putting yourself in the unpleasant position of being asked. You get to feel generous, while the other person can graciously accept or decline. And it's a comfortable way to embrace equality between the sexes while still allowing plenty of opportunity for the good old fashioned male ego to assert itself by paying the check.

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.