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Nice Girls Don’t Get Rich: 75 Avoidable Mistakes Women Make with Money |
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Written by Bonnie Staring
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Saturday, 05 August 2006 |
Money is not a four-letter word
After the success of her best-seller Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office, Lois P. Frankel, PhD is back with straightforward advice on one of the most important bonds a woman will ever make—her relationship with money.
Dr. Frankel believes that a woman’s connection with her money is as complex as all the other relationships in her life. Nice Girls Don’t Get Rich isn’t just a book about financial planning—it’s a book about financial thinking.
While I thoroughly enjoyed her previous guidance in Corner Office, I approached this new edition with a sense of trepidation. How was my relationship with money? Sometimes I felt like are happily married, sharing life’s ups and downs... other times it's a blind date in a velvet-covered biker bar gone horribly wrong. Dr. Frankel makes women examine their beliefs, behaviours and outright ignorance when it comes to the world of finance, just as she had done by uncovering those “nice” routines at the office.
What this book points out is that despite being told that “nice” girls needn’t worry about such things, women have to be grown up about money in order to achieve their financial goals. That is, if we actually do have goals. Dr. Frankel grabs my attention at the outset with a bold section heading that Frankel asks the question, why aren’t you rich?
This author clearly understands that before we can negotiate our way through behaviour modification, we must first establish our personal definition of wealth. How much will it take? How much do we need? How much do we deserve? All are good questions, and each of us has our own “nice” and “honest” answers to them.
In order to assess how one’s behavioural checks and balances line up, readers are asked to indicate a true or false response to 42 statements about money. Here are a few examples:
- I’m comfortable asking for the salary or fee I deserve
- I avoid shopping when I’m feeling down or blue
- My financial well-being is amongst my top three priorities
Responses yield measurable results in seven different areas that contribute to a woman’s financial well being. Higher scores indicate areas that behaviours are on the right track; low scores illustrate that niceties need to be nipped in the bud.
Who is responsible for the beliefs that have led some women to financial ruin? After researching the messages boys and girls receive in early childhood, Frankel finds that all learned common rules like “save for a rainy day” and “don’t spend more than you have”. But girls got more bonus rules, such as “money doesn’t buy you happiness” and “girls just aren’t good at math”.
While women have enjoyed more opportunities in the past few decades than ever before, our beliefs about money haven’t caught up. Whether we believe that our partners will take care of us or that somehow everything will turn out fine, there are 75 ways that women fall into the “nice” girl trap.
Using client cases, Dr. Frankel demonstrates how these mistakes work against our financial health. Here are a few of the things that “nice” girls do:
- Manage your egos, not your wealth
- Spend money to save money
- Give away your time
Along with each behaviour definition are coaching tips to help the reader avoid making this mistake in the future. These are straightforward and developed so that they can be put into action immediately. (One phone call made by this writer reduced a loan’s interest rate by 3%).
Frankel helps readers reduce financial stress by taking an emotional subject and presents it matter-of-factly so readers can identify these account-depleting “nice” behaviours and work toward building a healthy relationship with their money.
Nice Girls Don’t Get Rich shows readers that being “rich” is indeed possible. It’s all in how you define it—and plan for it.
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http://www.womencandoanything.com
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