Get Rich, Don''t Bitch
Today, more than ever before, wealth is something every woman has
the power to create. Yet Jean Chatzky constantly hears all the
excuses why women can’t and don’t master their money. Now, she
reveals the secrets and the strategies she created to take control
of her own money–strategies through which she gained her “money
confidence.” It’s time for you to find yours!
In Make Money, Not Excuses Jean shares these valuable
lessons:
? Where to start
? How to get over your “I’m not smart enough to deal with money”
feelings
? Why being a “good-enough investor” will make more money for you
in
the long-term while trying to be a “great investor” will drive
you crazy
? How and where to save your money
? Why women make better investors––and higher returns––than
men
? How to track where you’re overspending
? How to pay off your debt
Jean is unsurpassed in her ability to explain money and investing
in simple, straightforward ways. Here she breaks down the scariest
parts of dealing with money–from investing in stocks to saving for
your retirement–and makes them practical, easy, empowering, and,
yes, even enjoyable. This is your road map to real wealth.
“Chatzky writes like the smart, candid best friend you wish you
had.”
–Newsweek
關於作者：
Jean Chatzky is the editor at large for Money magazine and is
the financial editor for NBC’s Today show. She is a columnist for
Time magazine, the Daily News, and Travel + Leisure. She is also
the host of an upcoming PBS weekly series, Jean Chatzky’s Your
Money, and the author of four books, including the bestseller Pay
It Down!
From the Hardcover edition.
內容試閱：
“I Don’t Know Where to Begin”
Don’t Bitch
Getting Over the Unknown
I am one of the fortunate people who really like what they do for
a living. One of the main reasons I enjoy my work is that it takes
me out into the world. About once a month I travel to far-flung
places such as Phoenix Arizona, Pasadena California, Fort Worth
Texas, or Fort Wayne Indiana to talk to groups of people—often
groups of women—about money. My favorite part of these journeys
isn’t the half-hour or so prepared speech I get to give. It’s the
question-and-answer session that comes after. Some of the questions
are always regional “Is now a good time to buy a house in this
market?” or “What do you think of the future of the big national
corporate conglomerate that just happens to be based three miles
down the road?”. But others are so wide-ranging I can count on
them being raised whether I’m holding court in Detroit, Duluth, or
Des Moines. Someone generally wants to know: “What’s the best way
to choose a financial adviser?” Someone else typically asks:
“Should I be buying long-term-care insurance for me or my
parents?”
But the question I get asked more than any other—the one I get
asked every single time—is the following. It’s never first. In
fact, it’s often last . . . as if the person speaking waited until
the moderator said, “We have time for only three more.” It usually
comes out of the mouth of someone who feels a little silly asking
it—who prefaces her question with an apology to me and the rest of
the audience for being “so basic.” And it goes like this:
I don’t even know where to start. I mean, really. I feel like I
know so little about my money that I don’t even know where to
begin. Can you point me to a book or a magazine or a website or
something that can get me going?
Sometimes, the floodgates really open, and the questioner ends
with the complete truth, confession-style: “I’m tired of feeling
like a total idiot about my money.”
I have to admit, the person who asks this question immediately
becomes my favorite person in any crowd. Not just because she dug
deep and was honest about wanting help. But because now that she’s
revealed that she’s looking for help, I can do something for
her.
As I collected—via e-mail—letters and excuses from women around
the country about why they don’t take a more active role managing
their money, this feeling of total inadequacy popped up again and
again. From young women, older women, women with college and
graduate degrees, women in the workforce, stay-at-home moms . . .
in other words, from all types of women, in all parts of the
country.
This one, from Rebecca, a stay-at-home mom, is typical:
For anything else in my life, I would get on the Internet, read
some articles, talk to some people I know, and make a decision. But
I’m paralyzed when it comes to money. I don’t even know where to
start.
Jennifer, a publicist, put it even more succinctly:
I don’t know where to begin.
This Is Where You Begin
You’re in the right place: This is where you start. In this
chapter, I’m going to give you a set of tools you can rely on to
make any financial decision, to sound brilliant defending why
you’re making it, and to quickly get on the road to a richer
life.
But first, let’s explore why you can’t get started with your
money.
Rebecca put it really well when she said: “For anything else in
my life, I would get on the Internet, read some articles, talk to
some people I know, and make a decision.” That, in a nutshell, is
how women make nearly every large, important decision. We do our
homework using the resources at our fingertips—the Internet,
newspapers, and magazines. We tend to be consensus builders so we
gather the opinions of the people we trust most: our mothers,
sisters, and girlfriends. We take our time readying a case we could
defend in the toughest of courts, and then only then do we pull
the trigger.
Most of the time, as we’ve learned through experience, that sort
of decision making works fine. Say you’re an East Coaster trying to
plan a vacation for your family of five. You know you want to go to
the beach in December. So you hop on the Internet and go to a site
like weather.com. You learn that at that time of year Florida’s
weather is inconsistent but the Caribbean can be counted on for
sun. Your spouse wants a direct flight, so that eliminates a few of
the smaller islands. You both want a short flight, so you focus in
on Puerto Rico. Next you surf to tripadvisor.com to see what people
are recommending as kid-friendly places to stay. You narrow your
search to a Westin and a Hyatt. Finally, you talk to your friends
who have been to Puerto Rico, settle on a hotel, book flights, and
emerge confident you’ll have a great vacation.
And that’s, as I said, a fairly large, important, expensive
decision. You make smaller decisions with confidence every single
day. Paper or plastic? Grey’s Anatomy or Law and Order? Coke,
Pepsi, or—what the heck—Fresca? You blow through them as though
they’re absolutely nothing. If, occasionally, you hit a stumbling
block—heels or flats? pants or a skirt?—a little trial and error
or a call to a close friend does the trick.
Why are you able to make these decisions—large and small—with
such aplomb? Because you’ve learned, over the course of your life,
that for you there are right and wrong answers. Fresca gets drunk
in your house; Pepsi sits in the pantry. Grey’s Dr. McDreamy does
more for you then Law’s not-so-dreamy detectives. Unless you’re
fighting a spouse over the remote, there’s no argument. One is
better. One is right.
Yet in the world of money—particularly in the world of
investing—there are few right answers. Which stock is the best one
to buy? Which mutual fund will rise the fastest? People may claim
to know just turn on CNBC and you’ll see a dozen of them within an
hour, but no one really does. That makes it tough to get to the
starting line, particularly for women.
We like to know the outcome before we make any decision. That’s
why we not only cook from recipes but prefer that those recipes
come from Julia or Martha or Rachael because we’ve learned that we
can trust them. We may loooove Tom Hanks as much as we love our
spouses, but we’re willing to spend $10.50 for a ticket to his
latest picture only after we’ve read a handful of uncontested
reviews. Everything from the books we select for our book clubs to
the doctors we see for our children gets sliced and diced and
picked apart and commented on before we step up to the plate.
And women not only need more information but need it to be broken
down into small, digestible pieces. Along the way, if we’re not
convinced of a particular piece, we stop and ask for help—we’d
prefer it from trusted sources. Figuring out how to get good help
is such a conundrum for women that I deal with that matter
specifically in Chapter 9. Not surprisingly, it takes women longer
than men to make most decisions. Not just about money, about
everything. Men don’t need to know the answer before they tackle
the question. They tend to say, “Gimme the facts, gimme the
figures, gimme the logic and the rationale, and let me build a
machine.” It’s very much a left-brain approach. They work from
start to finish, from left to right, from point A to point B. If
they like Denzel Washington, knowing that Denzel Washington is in a
new movie is enough to make them buy a ticket. If the end result
isn’t totally to their liking, they either fiddle with the decision
to make it more acceptable or—more likely—figure out a way to
defend it, convincing everyone around them and themselves in the
process that the outcome was precisely the result they had in mind
all along.
And there are other complicating factors:
?The world of money has its own vocabulary. Don’t worry, I define
terms—in English—beginning on page 251.
?The world of money is shrouded in secrecy. Some progress has
been made, but talking about financial things—how much credit card
debt you’re carrying, the size of your student loans—just isn’t
polite. If the number is too high, friends will think you’re
bragging. If it’s too low, they’ll think you’re asking for a
handout. Nobody wins.
?The world of money involves higher stakes than picking a movie
to see on date night. When you’re deciding whether to contribute to
a 401k and how to invest the money you’re contributing, whether
to refinance the mortgage, whether to accept a new job, whether to
buy life insurance, or whom to name as guardian for your kids in
your will, money decisions tend to be important, potentially
life-changing decisions.
And there are no right answers. Of course you’re stuck.
The Power of “Good Enough”
The logical next question is: How do you get unstuck? Step one is
getting yourself to acknowledge—no, more than that—to really
believe, that in this particular area of your life, you do not have
to be right. Yes, you heard me correctly. You don’t have to be
right. Not only that:
You don’t have to be perfect.
You don’t have to be the best.
You don’t have to be at the top of some class.
You don’t hav...
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