Ms. Financial Literacy

Financial Empowerment, Girlfriend to Girlfriend Money Chat, Women and Financial Literacy

10 Ways Getting Your Friends Onboard Talking about Personal Finance

10 ways getting friends onboard talking about money

In part I of Girlfriend to Girlfriend Money Chat, we read that many women feel uncomfortable discussing money topics with their friends. We also gained some insights into why women generally refrain from talking about personal finances with those they’re close with. Then, I shared some of the internal struggles I’ve been experiencing and my vision for my girlfriends (and other women around the globe) as related to their financial confidence and sense of empowerment. In that post I also shared with my readers a plan for actions so that my behaviors align better with what matters to me.

Today, we’re going to explore additional strategies to spread financial education and support women’s financial empowerment. I’m currently using several of them and seeing great results. As you read, think about what’s applicable to you and your circle of friends. There’s no natural order to follow. The strategies are meant to be causal and subtle so hopefully your friends won’t even notice what you’re trying to encourage. Also, some conversations can flow in ways allowing two or more strategies to be used together. If that’s the case, even better!

Take Advantage of Context:

I already discussed this strategy in Part I of Girlfriend to Girlfriend Money Chat and shared couple examples. Think about the life stages where you and your friends are at (e.g., fresh out of college and climbing up career ladder? planning for a wedding? raising young kids? saving for your kids’ college education? having to provide for your parents financially? getting ready to retire?) and take advantage of those common grounds when starting conversations on money topics. There’s no doubt that (almost) every aspect of our lives involve money. Find out what you and your friends can learn from each other.

Volunteer Information First:

During your get-together with friends, usually you get an opportunity to talk about yourself. Take advantage of moments like these and share with your friends what’s happening in your financial life. Are you having a hard time keeping up with your student loan payment? Are you about to receive some inheritance money and you would like to spend that money to pursue higher education? You’re a frugal person, but your boyfriend is not? You want to buy a new refrigerator this year, but your husband wants to wait until next year? Once you start sharing, you’ll be amazed how much your friends will open up about their money situations, too.

Share Knowledge:

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Behavioral Psychology, Personal Finance

Lessons Learned When I Front-Loaded My Wardrobe

lessons learned front-loading wardrobe

[In this post I’m following my own advice to open up and be vulnerable talking about money (more specifically, money mistakes). Besides Mr. FL, no one else knew about the following personal story I’m about to share.]

I’ve made some pretty big money mistakes during my early and mid 20s. In this post, I’m sharing with you one of the biggest money mistakes I’ve made. For years, I’ve struggled to understand my money behaviors. Despite having an academic background in psychology, somehow I failed to associate my relationship with money to my upbringing. I probably saw part of the equation, but definitely missed the full picture. That is until very recently. My parents’ frugal ways of living definitely positively affected my frugal nature. However, knowing what I know now, having lived in years of scarcity most likely affected my consumption behaviors. There was this constant fear of scarcity in the household I grew up. Even to this date, my mother still overstuffs the refrigerator, freezer and pantry. She still buys into the fear that this item or that is not going to be available for sale the next day, month, or year. To help herself cope with the fear, she buys more than she needs on a regular basis. So, like my mother, for years, I was in a constant battle with myself between the desire to be frugal and the desire to hoard material things.

This past weekend while rotating out my warm weather clothes to make room for cold weather items, seeing tall piles of clothes sitting all over the bedroom floor once again had me walking down the hall of guilt and mental/physical distress that I once brought upon myself. In the past eight years, the total amount of money I’ve spent on my wardrobe summed up to over $20,000, where between year 2009 and 2012, I was spending $3000 to $4000 per year. This over-consumption behavior was something I struggled to understand over the years. And after having read books like “The Millionaire Next Door” and “Money, A Love Story“, I’ve finally got to a point where I can say those behaviors are understood. And now, I need to work on forgiving myself.

Here, I’m walking down memory lane sharing when I started spending large sums of money on clothes, how I let myself got deeper and deeper into the rabbit hole, what happened when I hit my lowest point, where I am at today and the lessons I’ve learned from this experience. If you’re just interested in reading about the lessons learned, you can scroll down near the end of the post to read that section.

How It All Started

When I moved to Austin to begin my graduate studies, I probably owned 15 pieces of clothing that were presentable. And most of the pieces were purchased by family members while visiting China. At the age of 22, I didn’t know how to shop for age appropriate clothes. While my middle and high school friends were hanging out in the mall, I was working at my part-time job. I didn’t want to spend money anyway. And my mom liked purchasing her clothes at stores in San Francisco’s Chinatown. She had much better luck finding sizes that fit her as most of the clothing items were imported from China, marketed to the Chinese.

Shortly after I started my graduate program I felt the need to buy new clothes. I needed professional clothes to attend conferences. And I also started having this desire to dress better as I was meeting new people. For months, I didn’t know where or how to shop. I asked my new friends for help, and they took me inside stores where they shopped. Time after time, my frustration grew and grew as I couldn’t find clothes that fit me well off the rack (I’m standing barely 5’4″ tall). My non-Asian friends didn’t share the same problem.

After months of shopping with very little success, I was about to accept my destiny—that I would have to wear poor fitting clothes. I wasn’t aware of petite sizes at the time. And it never occurred to me to bring my new clothes to a tailor. Then, one day in early 2009, my world turned around. While browsing the Internet searching for clothes for small women, I learned about the “petite” word! As I continued to browse, I came across small-sized women documenting on their blogs their adventures finding professional clothes that fit. And that did not include shopping at the children’s or teens department. For months I was doing exactly that! Imagine my joy when I learned about retailers like J. Crew, Banana Republic, Ann Taylor and Ann Taylor Loft that offered petite sizes! Yes, petite sizes are for women 5’4″ and under. I was obsessed reading through those blogs. I also spent hours browsing through the websites of those aforementioned retailers. I felt like I conquered something great. I was jumping up and down with joy and a sense of victory. At the same time, little did I know, I was also on my way to spending several thousand dollars at those retailers within the next few months.

Getting Deeper into the Rabbit Hole

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Financial Independence Thinking, Financial Journey, Financial Planning, Girlfriend to Girlfriend Money Chat, Lifestyle, Marriage and Money, Money Habits, Money Psychology, Retirement Planning

Connection Between Savings Rates and Years to Reaching Financial Independence

savings rate

In this post I discuss the connection between savings rates and years to achieving financial independence. I use my family’s financial situation as an example to illustrate this powerful connection. By the end of having read this post (and the previous one), I hope you’ll be inspired by our story and begin to adopt a similar mindset (a.k.a. financial independence thinking). This post is a follow up on a previous conversation, Create and Live by Your Own Financial Rules. If you haven’t read the post, I recommend reading it first to get a better idea of what I’m about to share here.

Update:

I shared few more financial numbers since I published this article. The first one is on applying the 4% withdrawal rule and the second one is on our estimated (updated) annual expenses.

Saving Aggressively Toward a Financial Goal without Having a Financial Plan

It wasn’t until the middle of 2016 that my husband and I became aware of the financial independence movement. Knowing what we know now, we both have been living our lives by that camp of thought; we just didn’t know.

Very early on in our marriage (we got married in 2010) we casually discussed about early retirement, but we didn’t have a concrete financial plan. We didn’t have a budget or track our expenses. However, we were tracking our net worth.

In some ways we were big spenders. We dined at $$ restaurants every weekend and took five to six weeks of vacations each year (including trips to Western Europe). We also spent a lot of money on groceries. We tried to eat organic food whenever possible (this has been a high priority in our household since year 2011).

In other ways, we were extremely frugal. We made our lunches during the week. We did price comparisons when we shopped. In 2009, I was driving a 1985 Honda Civic. My husband was driving the same model that was made in 1995. We didn’t care for having the latest gadgets. My husband didn’t have a phone data plan until year 2013! I got mine in December 2012.

On average, we saved 60 to 70 percent of our net income. Our financial goal has always been to retire early and travel around the world. However, we didn’t know how much money we would need. We also didn’t bother with doing the math. Somehow, we knew we would just get there, way before we turn 65. We knew about passive income but we weren’t maximizing our investment potentials. We felt like we had a lot of time allowing our net worth to grow organically (with some, but not much efforts).

From year 2008 to 2011, our combined income was under $110,000. While my graduate fellowship covered my tuition and other educational expenses and provided health insurance coverage, the stipend was just enough to pay for basic living expenses. It was only in 2012 that I started contributing to our retirement savings. That was also around the time when we moved to San Francisco. While our combined incomes jumped, our expenses also went up.

One day in year 2013, my husband and I resumed our early retirement talk. We projected we would be able to reach our financial independence number and retire from our day jobs in our early 50s. But, there was still no concrete plan. In year 2014, we changed our retirement target age to mid-40s. We realized that if we would to work until our early 50s we might not be dipping into our retirement savings at all. We would have worked for too long! With that realization, we said to each other, “Why not stop working earlier?” At the time we thought we would need about $3 to $4 million in net worth in order to retire early (living in San Francisco inflated our $ target). But really, that was just a random number we came up with. Forwarded to year 2015, we still didn’t have a concrete financial plan to reach our financial goal. We just continued to save aggressively and kept seeing our net worth go up.

We Found Our Roadmap to Early Retirement

Then, around middle of 2016 we learned about the financial independence online community and we became enlightened. For the first time we felt like we’ve found the roadmap to early retirement! Ever since then, we’ve spent hours calculating our numbers, reallocating and rebalancing our investment portfolio, optimizing our lifestyle and started talking in details about life during early retirement. I will talk more about this roadmap in a future post.

Our financial independence (FI) goal is to save 33X our annual expenses. Our current monthly expenses are about $5,000. About 35% of that goes to childcare. It’s a big splurge for us, but totally worth the money. We value being able to go the gym together every Sunday morning and going out for jogs few evenings throughout the week. We value not having to wake up in the early morning and having to get our daughter out the door to go to daycare. She’s usually still asleep when we leave for work. Nowadays, with the higher cost of living and raising a child, we’re saving about 50% of our net income.

Once we leave our 9-5 jobs, we will no longer be paying for child care. This would drastically drop our annual expenses down to $50,000 or less. Through the financial independence community, we learned that if we choose to live the lifestyle similar to many of the early retirees we will reach financial independence while in our early 30s (this is our average age; my husband is 5 years older than I am). If we want to continue living our current lifestyle into early retirement, then we’re looking at doing that while in our mid 30s (before year 2020). After some number crunches on the calculator, we should be able to reach our financial independence number by year 2018.

I encourage you to read Mr. MM’s article on the math behind early retirement. At our savings rate of 50 to 70% over the last 8 years, the math says that it would take us about 12 years (I took the average) to become financial independent. However, the number of years is less for us. My husband started saving and investing years before we met.

Some Final Thoughts

For years, my husband and I knew that early retirement is possible for us, but we didn’t know how to get there or when we would reach that point. And if we would to arrive, what it would take so that we can stay there? All these questions and more became clear to us once we started reading about some of the stories of early retirees.

It’s important to keep in mind that the financial independence community only provided my husband and I with the last piece of the roadmap helping us plan for early retirement. If we had not been saving aggressively in the past 8 years, we would be nowhere close to achieving FI.

Yes, adopting this community’s mindset toward living one’s life does give you an advantage as a starting point. At the same time, you need to do the homework and put in the effort, too. My husband and I have been doing this for the last eight years. I’m sure if you ask any early retirees who are self-made millionaires, they’d tell you that they did not reach FI by being average or using shortcuts.

As I stated in the previous post, if you are thinking about pursuing financial independence, you need to adopt radical ways of thinking, and live your life accordingly. Don’t just blindly follow the shortcuts just because they are easy. Always do your research, do your math and get into the habit asking yourself, “How can I do better?”. Come up with your own set of financial rules that work for your situation and make sure those rules align with your short- and long-term financial goals and values. Be open to revising the rules once you find them too comfortable. Be radical with your way of thinking (not just in money terms, but your values, too), your creativity and money strategies (e.g., How are you managing your money? How can you do a little better?). You don’t have to follow the conventional path if being average is not what you want.

Readers, prior to having read this post (and my previous one), were you aware of the connection between savings rates and years to reaching financial independence?

How do you approach your savings rate? Do you have to work hard at meeting that goal?

What do you think about Mr. MM’s math concepts behind early retirement? I would love to hear from you at the comment section below.

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Financial Independence Thinking, Financial Planning

Create and Live by Your Own Financial Rules

financial rules

Readers, do you manage your finances following some conventional financial rules (of thumb)? If you want to pursue financial independence, in this post I encourage you to do your homework and think outside the box. Don’t always rely on shortcuts when managing your finances.

Each time I get a little sad when I hear on the radio or podcast, or read in a magazine or newspaper publication, or get asked by a friend, “How much should I save each month?”. My immediate reaction is this, “Why do you need someone else to tell you how much you should save? Why should you allow someone else to tell you how to manage your finances? Just so you don’t feel guilty about spending 30% of your after-tax paycheck on disposable things (based on the 50-30-20 rule of thumb)? Why subject yourself to financial rules of thumb that limit your savings rate? Shouldn’t you try to save as much as you can?”

My Views on Financial Rules of Thumb

This is not to say I’m a complete opponent to financial rules of thumb. I understand that not everyone is as financially savvy or financially confident as I am. Hence, for those people, I acknowledge that financial rules of thumb can serve a purpose in their financial planning. Those people need to start somewhere, and financial rules of thumb can give them a good anchoring point. Yes, anchoring point (as you’re starting your financial independence journey), that’s what these rules should only be.

Think of the rules as training wheels on a bicycle. As a child masters more riding skills, it’s important to adjust the training wheels higher off the ground, and keep doing this until the child feels confident riding the bicycle without the training wheels. Similarly, as we progress on our financial learning journey acquiring more financial knowledge, skills and wisdom, we need to leave the conventional rules of thumb behind at some point, and gradually transition into making our own financial rules.

Another caveat I have on financial rules of thumb is this: if you use those rules, remember to treat them only as rough guidelines. Don’t use the rules as shortcuts when managing your finances. The rules should not replace the need to do research, do math, or evaluate if a short-term financial decision is in alignment with long-term financial goals (e.g., “Yes, I can afford to spend 20% on housing, but I can also save extra $500 toward my retirement saving if I only spend 15%”.). As with any rules, always question the rule’s limitations.

Unfortunately, many people take financial rules of thumb at face value. As long they are following the rules, they think they’re doing well financially. And if they would to be saving a little more than the recommended (say, 25%), they think they’re doing great. And why wouldn’t they when they see one financial media article after another from people and/or institutions of authority recommending similar numbers? You can see examples here, here and here.

It’s easy to have other people (or institutions) do the homework for us, and follow the crow when we don’t know what’s financially possible (see here to find out for yourself). Even someone like Joshua Sheats (the voice behind Radical Personal Finance podcast) didn’t take the time to question the 10 to 20 percent savings rate rule of thumb. Despite his in-depth exposure to the personal finance literature and having built a career as a certified financial advisor, it took Joshua years to have realized the connection between his savings rate and the amount of money he had. In this podcast, Joshua shared with his listeners about his own frustrations and what he started doing in recent years as a result of having Jacob Lund Fisker’s Early Retirement Extreme and the Mr. MM article referenced above.

When I learned that even Joshua (whom I admire in the realm of personal finance) at one point used the rule of thumb to guide his savings rate and didn’t even question its limitations, I can only imagine how many other “users” aren’t aware of each rule’s caveats. Yes, Joshua was still saving a good percentage of his income, but according to his podcast, he could have done better. As such, when one applies financial rules of thumb managing his/her finances, the act itself is serving as a double-edged sword. One the one hand, the user does get some forms of boundaries (e.g., what percentage to save). On the other hand, a typical user might not intuitively think about flexing beyond the boundaries and consider other possibilities (e.g., How would my financial situation improve if I save 50% of my income?).

Our Story

Then, there’re people like my husband, who wasn’t aware of financial rules of thumb when he started working full time. This can be a financial disaster for some in the long term if they save only 5% of their take-home income or not save at all (or even have a negative savings rate). It was a different story for my husband. Mr. FL has always been a smart, frugal person. He doesn’t fall into greed and he has very little desires (that require spending money). Even though he didn’t know much about the stock market in his early 20s, he was very good at accounting and he had solid financial goals. So, Mr. FL just saved as much he could toward reaching his financial goals. From what I know of him, even if he had known about the financial rules of thumb, he would’ve never subjected himself to them.

As for myself, I wasn’t aware of financial rules of thumb until I was in my mid-20s (thanks to all the news media exposures on Yahoo Finance). Even after that, I didn’t revise my approach to managing money, especially when it came to savings rate. For one, the rule of thumb on savings rate was too easy for our situation. The recommended savings rate ranging anywhere from 10 to 20 percent of one’s after-tax income, while our savings rate was at least 50% (and as high as 70%) all the years throughout our married life thus far. And we didn’t want to spend more money. Second, we thought it was silly letting some financial rules of thumb dictate how we manage our money. At the time, we were both already financially savvy and we mostly knew what we were doing. We liked the financial progress we were making, and we weren’t going to let some rules of thumb allow us to think twice about how we’ve been managing our finances. This is especially important when (third reason) most of the rules on savings rate were too conservative for helping us achieve our financial goals (e.g., early retirement in our early 50s). Such financial goals were radical in mainstream America, and when pursuing radical goals, it was important that we apply the same attitude (being radical, that is) toward our lifestyles (e.g., maximizing our savings rate).

What I Learned from My Parents

While growing up my parents weren’t the kind that would purposely sit me down and give me a talk about money. And I thought money was just not to be talked about. However, that didn’t stop me from paying attention to how they were living their lives. Aside from having learned about frugal habits from my parents, I also observed (and overheard conversations between my parents) that my parents were very great savers. At the end of each month my parents would sit down and sum up their incomes. Then, they would allocate a pile of bills to pay rent, a pile to pay for utilities, and a pile to spend on groceries and necessary household items. I noticed that they didn’t set aside money to spend on clothing, eating out, or vacation. Those were not necessities in the household. As an adult, my parents’ money behaviors left profound imprints on my relationship with money.

Nowadays, both Mr. FL and I are very happy about our financial situation. And I’d like to attribute a big part of our financial success to having had the smarts and intuitions early on in our adult years to have created our own set of financial rules of thumb. To us, having been oblivious to the conventional set of financial rules of thumb, has truly been a blessing in our household.

Readers, if you’re thinking about or already on the path pursuing financial independence and early retirement (FIRE), you need radical ways of thinking, and live your life accordingly. Conventional financial rules of thumb can hinder creativity or thinking outside the box. If your goal is FIRE, don’t take the easy way and let others do the homework for you. Financial independence thinking is about thinking outside the box and being creative and radical with our money.

In my next post I will share our financial independence journey, and how having a savings rate of 50% or more over the past 8 years (the time Mr. FL and I’ve been together) has been helping us getting close to FIRE. Over the years, we’ve been seeing a strong connection between our savings rates and years to reaching financial independence.

I would love to hear what you’ve to say or add.

Are you aware of some of the conventional financial rules of thumb? If so, when/how were you exposed them?

Do you have your own set of financial rules/mantras/philosophies you live by each day? How have those rules been serving you?

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Financial Empowerment, Personal Finance

Mastering the Financial Language While Learning about Personal Finance and Financial Planning

financial language financial planning personal finance

In this post I share with you my go-to resources for mastering the financial language as I educate myself on personal finance and financial planning. Here, I also share my sources of inspirations, too. It’s a work in progress. I’ll share additional valuable resources as I learn.

I haven’t peruse through every article or chapter on every resource. This can change once I have less obligations. Afterall, I enjoy consuming new knowledge that’s applicable to my life and that of my family’s. Personal finance happens to be one of those areas that touch every aspect of my family’s life. The good thing is I actually love learning about personal finance. To avoid information overload, I suggest you pick one or two topics that are relevant in your life at this moment and learn as much you can about those topics. Then, implement the newly acquired knowledge in your life to increase your financial well-being. After that, repeat the process.

Let me share an example. If your goal is to lower income taxes, I would do a Google search using the following keywords: “lower income tax “. Most likely, the search engine would show “reduce your taxes” or “lower your taxable income” or “ways to save on taxes”. From there, take note of the topics that keep coming up, and then visit my go-to resources to read about those topics more in depth. I usually like to consult at least two to three resources and compare information. It is our responsibility to cross check information between sources. Information listed on these websites don’t always guarantee accuracy. Do your homework diligently. This is your hard earned money we’re talking about here. As you read, pay attention to the terms and keywords/phrases, and understand the concepts well. Overtime, before you know it, you’ve joined the financial geeks community!

Silliness aside, I do encourage you to master the financial language. There’re many benefits. In addition to gaining sense of empowerment and boost of self-confidence, the biggest motivating factor for me has been the communication factor. When shopping for financial services and/or products, just like many areas in life, we need to know what it is we want, how to ask relevant questions and how to interpret the responses. This is where knowing the financial language gives you an advantage. You get to direct the conversation. You appear knowledgeable. You cannot be intimidated.

I chuckled the first time I learned about the term, “financial language”. I thought the people who came up with the term were too hardcore. I’ve had only associated language learning with a foreign language. However, overtime it has been becoming more and more clear to me that successful financial planning requires me to be good at reading and understanding the financial language. I don’t want to miss out on opportunities that can strengthen my family’s financial position. The convenient and well-practiced generic saying, “You didn’t ask.” (because you haven’t brought it up as a concern/interest during our previous conversations)”, is typically among CPA, financial adviser, accountant, estate lawyers and others who we pay to manage our money. Don’t be a victim to such situation anymore. Do your research so you can advocate for yourself. Those we hired to manage our money may know a lot, but they don’t necessarily always volunteer extra information that might benefit our situation. Be your own advocate! I encourage you to learn along with me and find out what’s financially possible for your unique situation. We really don’t know what we don’t know until we put in efforts and start learning.

Books

The Millionaire Next Door: My favorite chapter in this book is “Frugal Frugal Frugal”. I enjoyed reading about other people’s stories on being frugal, building wealth, raising children and being smart about leaving a legacy. The book mentioned that wealth is blind (blind to one’s level of education, blind to one’s family background). Such concepts are encouraging for me as I came from an immigrant family with very little.

Your Money or Your Life: This book discusses money/wealth as an integrate whole, not only at the personal level, but also at the societal and global levels, too. Some concepts I enjoyed reading: (1) the “Fulfillment (Enough) Curve”–optimizing one’s lifestyle reaching the peak of the curve where one experiences maximum fulfillment (anything beyond the peak won’t bring much more enjoyment), (2) the values of one’s life energy–optimizing how one allocates his/her time, energy and resources on things that really matter to the individual, and (3) on financial independence thinking.

The Behavior Gap: This book does a good job explaining herd/mob mentality (e.g., people in large groups tend to behave the same way at the same time as their peers). Here, the author specially talked about following market trends. The book is also about the importance of having a financial plan, yet, being ready to make modifications along the financial journey.

The Making of an American Capitalist: My husband gave me this book very early on in our relationship. He’s a great fan of Warren Buffett. This book encouraged him to reassess what he values and taught him how to analyze individual stocks and determine the stocks’ relative values. Similarly, the book certainly taught me how to become a better investor and make my money work harder.

Money a Love Story: This book presents similar ideas, concepts, and practical strategies that I’ll be sharing on this blog. For instance, the book touched on some of the concerns I shared on A Women’s Financial Responsibilities in Her Household (my husband pointed out this to me as we were reading together one afternoon). Interestingly, I wrote those two posts prior to having read this book. I definitely recommend this book to any women who is pursuing or wants to pursue financial security and financial independence.

Rich Dad Poor Dad: A very well written book! The messages presented are both philosophical and radical at the same time. It’s a must-read for anyone who needs a wake up call on financial literacy. The author encourages people to reevaluate their views on money. He claimed that fear and greed (a.k.a desire) tend to control the financial behaviors of those who are financially illiterate; as one’s financially literacy improves, he/she would be more likely to use the brain to make rational financial decisions.

A Room of One’s Own: This is a fiction book, the first book I read when I started on my financial journey (early year 2016). The book’s general message is that women must have a fixed income and a room of their own in order to have the freedom to create. The book was first published in 1929, during a time when sexism held back women’s intellect freedom. The author argued that in order for a women to express her creative intellect she would need to have financial freedom. Here’s an example of a powerful message from the book that resonated with me, “At the thought of all those women working year after year and finding it hard to get two thousand pounds together, and as much as they could do to get thirty thousand pounds, we burst out in scorn at the reprehensible poverty of our sex. What had our mothers been doing then that they had no wealth to leave us? …Now if she had gone into business; had become a manufacturer of artificial silk or magnate on the Stock Exchange;…If only Mrs. Seton and her mother and her mother before her had learnt the great art of making money and had left their money, like their fathers and their grandfathers before them…it was useless to ask what might have happened if Mrs. Seton and her mother and her her mother before her had amassed great wealth…in the first place, to earn money was impossible for them,…the law denied them the right to possess what money they earned,…it would have been her husband’s property…”.

Think and Grow Rich: This is a classic must-read for anyone who wants to be more and live a richer life (more than just the monetary aspect). I absolutely enjoyed reading this book. The concepts in every chapter tapped into the psychologist geek in me. Please do yourself a favor and read this book. You will be enlightened.

Smart Women Finish Rich: I read in the book that San Francisco was the author’s hometown. It would be a great honor to meet him. I’ve the feeling that he and I would have much to talk about. Even though the book was written from a male’s voice and perspective, I feel Mr. Bach really did an awesome job convincing women to take control of our financial future. His seven-step program is easy to follow, and completing the exercises can be empowering for many. My husband flattered me when he said that David Bach and I could’ve easily coauthored the book *blush blush*. We share such similar ideals when it comes to encouraging and promotion financial literacy among women. If Mr. Bach is still offering the seven-step program live, I would certainly want to listen and participate. He would have a lot to teach me as I continue on this journey inspiring and empowering other women.

Secrets of Six-Figure Women: I enjoy reading about stories of accomplished women. Stories like the ones shared in this book are inspiring. Those stories helped me realize what’s possible for me if I practice certain strategies and improve on certain traits. This book is for women who want to increase their earning potentials, and at the same time build wealth. The author helped me see that doing both are possible.

The Feminine Mistake: This book is like the modern version of Virgina Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own”-see review above. As someone who is a mother, with great career aspirations, I enjoyed reading about the individual stories shared in this book. Moreover, the author’s messages in the book are strong and heartfelt. I recommend this book to every woman who wants a fulfilling life, both at the personal and professional levels.

The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing: Early on in my journey learning the financial language, I spent hours devouring books on investing. This book and the one next to it, “The Intelligent Asset Allocator“, were two of my favorites. One doesn’t need a finance background in order to understand the concepts and messages presented in these two books. By the time I finished reading them, I felt investing was no longer intimidating. I recall telling my husband, “I can totally do this [participating in the stock market]!”. When you finished reading the books I hope you will share my sentiments about investing, too.

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