All tagged motherhood
Staying at home to care for children (and older parents in the future) has normally been part of the woman’s Caretaker role. In our current economy, caretaking is low-income work or unpaid. This means that when a woman takes on the Caretaker role full-time, she misses out on potential earnings, skill development, and networking opportunities. A lack of earnings means lower Social Security benefit accumulation and a decrease in savings and investments. A double whammy!
“When moms first come back to work they need someone to tell them, ‘You are going to feel crazy. It’s ok to feel crazy. You won’t always feel crazy.’”
With Mother’s Day coming up this week, I wanted to write a post specifically about how motherhood affects the financials of women. This article comes from my perspective as a new mom, but I know there are other people out there (dads, aunties, grandparents, etc.) playing the role of mom so this article goes out to you as well.
The Motherhood Penalty is defined by AAUW as the “phenomenon by which women’s pay decreases once they become mothers”. This is a contributing factor to the current gender pay gap.
There continues to be economic and social benefits to having children, but women should stop being penalized for having children.
“A woman who dies without adequate life insurance should have to come back and see the mess she created.”
Momma (and dads out there), I want to talk about life insurance for a sec. I know it’s not easy to talk about life insurance because we associate it with death and death is never an easy subject, but this is real life and part of a good financial plan is to protect your loved ones should something happen to you. I’m not an insurance salesperson but here’s my perspective on it.
I opened a 529 account 3 months after my husband and I tied the knot in 2013. Call it intentional planning. Call it planned savings. Call it whatever you want, but it was just something I felt I needed to do given where we were financially. Having children also felt like our next big step after marriage.
This post is part of the #MommyMoney Series. A series that explores money, motherhood and financial independence. The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Parents Are (Still) Going Broke is written by Elizabeth Warren with her daughter, Amelia Warren Tyagi. This month’s book is not your typical personal finance book. It doesn’t espouse the same list of recommendations on how to save, what accounts to open, etc. Instead, it is a well researched book about the American family, its American dream and challenges of being middle class in the current financial and government system.
The business schools reward difficult complex behavior more than simple behavior, but simple behavior is more effective.
There is absolutely no shortage of investing materials on the internet, but the problem is that there’s too much, it can be overwhelming where to even start. So to help you with that, we’ve compiled a list of resources, from YouTube videos, blog posts and books to help you navigate the world of investing. These are not your mother’s resources.
“When you invest, you are buying a day that you don’t have to work.”
There's many reasons why I wanted to start this site. You can find that here. After reading many personal finance books for women, written by women (and men), I don't think these five reasons are addressed enough. While I am all for equal gender pay, there are still some areas where men and women differ and these reasons are why we need to be addressing women's personal finances differently.
