About mice, change and other pests: how do you cope?
I am not big on resolutions, remember? You may as well know that I am very, very hung up on promises – I promise something, I do it. There is one promise I made here which I have not followed through; well, not very closely anyway – to build a resource for you, the reader. This is why, I will stop teasing and will publish a book review (or directly book inspired post) on Thursdays.
I probably haven’t had the opportunity to mention this one yet, but I am a great admirer of short books because these are parsimonious and distil the thoughts of the authors. Do I like War and Peace? Yes, I do although the older I get the harder it becomes to stomach Tolstoy’s dislike not only for women but for people more generally. Do I think that it could have been shorter? I do but this is another story. I most certainly think that the Harry Potter books are far too long as well (wow, I managed to put War and Peace and Harry Potter in the same paragraph). Continue reading
What is your money blueprint?
In Nice Girls Don’t Get Rich there are ten statements that are unfinished; completing these may go some way towards supporting you to figure out your money blueprint. The statements are:
I am not rich because…
And that is because….
Being rich would make me feel…
When it comes to rich people, my parents always told me…
If I focused on getting rich, it would make my partner/spouse feel…
A rich woman is one who…
What keeps me from taking more risks to get rich is…
When it comes to handling money, I….
I feel money is…
A rich woman strikes me as… Continue reading
A Nice Girl changing her money profile
Last week I told you about my scores according to the test in Nice Girls Don’t Get Rich. I also told you what the verdict of the test was and that I did ‘get moving’ as instructed in no uncertain terms. What I didn’t tell you is what my reaction to the score was, what I discovered and where I am today. This is what I’ll do in this post.
I am an avid reader and until recently I, like most people around, read paper book. I hardly ever write on the book – for me this is disrespectful to the author of the book and to the book. I like my books in good condition, read but not shabby and used. Having this attitude, you may imagine what strength of emotion and speed of thinking can make me write in the margins of a book? Very strong! I have written in two books in my entire life – and this, as it happens is one of them. When I opened it last week to write the post I saw the following:
‘Tragedy!’ – written after the interpretation of the test results. Continue reading
Nice girls don’t get rich! Or do they?
Today I looked at my shelf and there was a modest book peeping shyly back me. The title of the book is Nice Girls don’t Get Rich: 75 avoidable mistakes women make with money by Lois P. Frankel, PhD. I remember buying this book; it was shortly after I became aware of our negative wealth. In fact this may be the second book on personal finance I ever read; the first being Rich Dad, Poor Dad. I was at an airport somewhere, ironically trying not to spend any money, when I spotted Nice Girls don’t Get Rich; bought it and almost finished reading it by the time I arrived back home.
This already tells us something about how highly readable this book is. But what drew me in was that the author really sets out and discusses 75 common mistakes women make with money. These don’t come from personal experience only, as is often the case with personal finance books, but have been identified through extensive research involving women from different walks of life: rich women, poor women, professional women and women in manual occupations. They all had at one or other point in their life made all or some of these mistakes; and it took realising that to start building wealth.
Even more importantly, the book begins with a self-assessment test and depending on the results directs you to different parts and different mistakes. It also encourages you to work through the way in which you think and feel about money, so that you can identify an appropriate course of action. The test works by dividing your financial reality into seven areas. These are: (a) getting in the money game; (b) taking charge of your financial life; (c) spending your money wisely; (d) learning money basics; (e) saving and investing for future wealth; (f) maximising your financial potential at work; and (g) playing it smart with your money. Scores across these seven areas are assigned by answering 42 questions.
I completed this test 15 months ago. Do you want to know my result? Well, I scored exactly 18 points. What this meant is the following:
“You’d better get moving if you ever want to lead a financially independent life. At this rate you are going to be poor or be dependent on others for the rest of your life.”
My highest scoring area was ‘spending your money wisely’ and I was halfway there on ‘taking charge of your financial life’ and ‘learning money basics’. I scored a miserable one point on ‘saving and investing for future wealth’ and ‘maximising your financial potential at work’.
I did get going though. Guess who, 15 months later, has a ‘millionaire’ account and who knows all benefits of her pension scheme, got a computer from work and is now getting an iPad 2 from the same source? Yes, me! And I still think that I am a good girl. Or am I?
