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A Woman's Relationship to Money
Why It's Different Than a Man's
By Mary Kay Dirickson
How do you feel about your money? Do you ever wake up at 3 a.m. and wonder where all your money goes and then get up in the morning and spend $5.44 on a bagel and latte, even though you just promised yourself you weren't going to spend money or eat carbohydrates ever again?
For many women, their relationship to money is as emotional and inexplicable as their relationship to food. Splurges and binges lead to strict rules, which get traded in for vending-machine brownies and designer T-shirts.
Spending money for fun and comfort may be fine when you're young. So what if you buy three great pairs of shoes right before the rent's due? You can live on Ramen noodles and martini olives until the next paycheck. But for most women, the arrival of a husband and a baby or two can put money in a whole different light.
"You don't think about what you want anymore," says Lynn Bennett, a mom from Seattle, Wash. "You think in terms of the future and what your kid needs."
"There is no typical woman with money," says Deborah Knuckey, author of Conscious Spending for Couples: Seven Skills for Financial Harmony (Wiley, 2002). "People who grow up understanding the value of money, whether rich or poor, male or female, will be responsible with it. And a lot of times, parents have difficulty teaching their kids about money because they don't know about money themselves."
But in general, Knuckey and other experts agree, young boys and girls get different messages about money. "Parents tend to emphasize to boys the importance of earning money and being financially independent," Knuckey says. "They tend not to teach that to the girls at all."
The lack of financial education can make women uncomfortable with finance issues, according to Ginita Wall, director of the Women's Institute for Financial Education. "Women see money as an enemy and not as a friend," Wall says. In a focus group she conducted recently, only three of 10 women had positive feelings about money. Two of the women learned about money from their fathers, and the other watched her mother manage the family's finances.
