Weekend Herald

Women & money

Jane Phare

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Today we start a four-part series exploring women’s attitudes to money, and offering advice from experts on wealth creation and how to be financiall­y independen­t.

Spender or saver? Separate or joint accounts? Not interested in finance? Today we start a four-part series exploring women’s attitudes to money, and offering advice from experts on wealth creation and how to be financiall­y independen­t. admits to making all the mistakes this series will advise you not to do.

Money. Moola, dosh, loot, bread, cash, folding, coin, lolly . . . whatever we call it we can’t live without it. And if we mismanage it or make bad decisions, it can ruin our lives — as the Runaway Millionair­es, Rotorua couple Leo Gao and Kara Hurring, discovered when $10 million mistakenly showed up in their bank account and they went on the run. It all went horribly wrong.

Throughout my working life I’ve never been particular­ly interested in money; I couldn’t really be bothered with it. I don’t have a daughter but to my smart nieces now leading grownup lives I say this: do as I say, not as I do.

And what I say is “Don’t abdicate responsibi­lity to someone else like your aunty did. Keep on top of your finances.”

Growing up I learned it was unladylike to talk about money and bad manners to ask anyone what they’d paid for something.

Jane Phare

If I told them how our family finances are run I’m not sure they’d believe me. In fact, I can’t tell them how they are run because I don’t really know.

My generation of women has a disproport­ionate number like me — woefully ignorant about, or disinteres­ted in, personal finance, which is probably why my female editor asked me to write about it.

But abdicating responsibi­lity to someone else is not the only issue facing women when it comes to money, savings and wealth. The odds are stacked against us: the gender pay gap and taking time off to care for children leads to KiwiSaver inequity for a start. Women live longer but have less saved for retirement.

Those who have let their husband or partner run the joint finances can be left flounderin­g in the event of divorce or the death of the spouse, with no clue how to access accounts or run the household bills.

In some cases they are left with debt they didn’t know existed or what one of our case studies calls “financial infidelity”.

I’m heartened to hear from educators and other women I spoke to for this series that personal finance is woven into core curriculum subjects young women learn at secondary school, and that primary and intermedia­te kids also learn about money.

But they also say there is still a long way to go, that not enough women are coming out of business schools, that they will still earn and save less, they are less able to raise capital to start a business and will struggle to make it anywhere near the bottom rung of the Rich List.

That women should stay in charge of their money is a message echoed throughout this series, a message driven home by financial experts and, more importantl­y, by women who have learned the hard way either through personal experience or watching friends or clients struggle.

It is the message that Heather McRae, Diocesan School for Girls principal, delivered at the school’s Year 13 leavers’ dinner earlier this month. Look after your money, she told the room full of teenage girls about to start the next phase of their lives. Take responsibi­lity for it.

McRae talks about why women can find themselves on the back foot financiall­y and why they should, if possible, keep their own separate account.

Dubbed by some as a “f *** off fund”, it allows a woman the freedom to leave an unhappy relationsh­ip, a dead-end job, creepy flatmates or even the country.

It is a message that somehow passed me by at Epsom Girls’ Grammar School, which, back then, taught me the basic subjects, three languages and how to cook — but nothing about managing money.

Growing up I learned it was unladylike to talk about money and bad manners to ask anyone what they’d paid for something. I was a good saver, squirrelli­ng away enough from my wages as a lowly Herald cadet to pay for a trip to Europe and a Morris Minor 1000 by the time I was 20.

It was when I got married some years later that I got lazy. I abdicated responsibi­lity for anything that looked like numbers to my husband. He was good at all that — tax, bill payments, bank statements, investment­s, financial decisions, internet banking, you name it, I ignored it.

I vaguely signed documents to do with a family business and never asked questions because I didn’t know what to ask, and had no idea about the size of our mortgage.

But I knew how to be careful with money. We learn those life lessons from observing our parents.

MY MOTHER was extraordin­arily tight with money in an almost illogical way. Dad was a high-income earner while my mother was a stay-at-home mum with a cheque book she rarely used.

She never had to ask for housekeepi­ng but I was aware other mothers did.

It wasn’t until after my mother’s

iIn tomorrow’s Herald on Sunday: women experts share advice on the pitfalls and pleasures of money, what to watch for, and how to safeguard against what you don’t know is coming. In Monday and Tuesday’s Business Herald: wealth creation and why middle-aged, white males dominate the Rich List, why women are good at investing and running businesses, and why it’s important not to ignore your KiwiSaver. death that I learned she was deeply affected by the effects of the Depression and post-war England, growing up in a house without running water or a loo inside.

Years later, as a well-to-do wife and mother in New Zealand, she could never throw off that fear of not having enough money, even though we clearly had plenty. Consequent­ly, bikes and doll’s prams were rarely shiny and new, but more likely second-hand and fixed up by dad.

I was expected to have afterschoo­l and holiday jobs from the age of 14. From then on I bought, or made, my own clothes.

And do I resent all that? Not a jot. It has helped me enjoy money when I had it to spend, and do without it when I didn’t. But it didn’t teach me to plan, or to take charge of my money.

Australian actor and director Rachel Griffiths tells a similar story; only her family really were poor. She remembers second-hand clothes, scouring op shops, and a granny who “still washed the gladwrap and hung it over the tap”.

Griffiths calls it “intergener­ational financial trauma”, and in a way she’s a classic example.

Her beautifull­y restored home in Melbourne’s St Kilda is expensivel­y tasteful enough to be featured in Australian Vogue, yet when her youngest daughter wanted to start a lemonade business she took her to six op shops to find a glass dispenser for $10 rather than pay $150 for a new one.

Griffiths is undoubtedl­y well off but, by her own admission, if she’d learned to handle her own finances early on she’d be a lot wealthier now.

She’s happily married but I’ve witnessed many women friends who found themselves on the wrong end of financial ignorance when their relationsh­ip ended. One left an unhappy marriage only to find the locks on the family home had been changed and the joint bank account drained. She was left with a suitcase of clothes and $17 in her purse.

I’ve witnessed the imbalance of power, where the husband will buy a new car without consultati­on but the wife has to ask for money to get the vacuum cleaner fixed. And women who have simply given up fighting for a fair divorce settlement for themselves and their kids, emotionall­y and financiall­y drained, unable to continue to pay a lawyer.

But I’m heartened by the young generation­s. They’re taught about money at school and young women can take business studies as an option at secondary school.

I’m still married to the household Financial Controller and I’m still hopeless with the ins and outs of money, but I plan to change that. As several experts told me during interviews, “It’s never too late to start.”

I’ve talked to lots of women, both on and off the record. Their underlying message was invariably the same: think about money, talk about money, learn about money. Don’t bury your head in the sand.

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