Traditionally, women haven’t been as involved with the financial side of their family as the man. That’s changed over time and many women are now embracing that role and flourishing in it but plenty of challenges still exist.

We understand that and try to put an emphasis on education and support for our female clients, and many of those efforts are led by one of our advisors, Heather Atkins, CFP®, CRPC®. To really explore women and finance, we invited her onto the podcast to share her insights.

Heather’s interest in money and finance began at a young age when she saw her mom trying to juggle multiple jobs to support the family, and that motivated her to study finance to eventually help her mom after college. That led to an internship that allowed her to sit with many successful professionals but she noticed the conversations weren’t always tailored towards women.

The whole goal for the educational workshops she’s been running is to create a safe place for women (and men) to come and learn some of the fundamentals of financial planning. Even with so much information at our fingertips, it’s still not always an easy task to find financial resources that apply to women.

She also works with couples and divorcees regularly and that introduces all types of scenarios. Each of those situations brings different challenges that we have to work through and she talks about her experiences in these meetings and how she approaches the planning process.

One of the main challenges we’ll always see is a spouse that doesn’t take an interest in the financial side of a relationship. Many times the man handles the money and the women doesn’t stay informed because they don’t need to. But there are many reasons to be involved like women outliving men and there are many issues that women need to be prepared for.

Another interesting part of our conversation explores the way men and women look at money. For women, they often look at it as a finite resource that you won’t be able to replace while men see it as something that can be replenished. That perspective leads to more fear in women and a much more conservative approach.

There are some great insights in this conversation with Heather and we’d love to get your feedback on everything we discuss. If you’d like to dive deeper into these topics, please call 860-385-4351 to get registered for an upcoming workshop.

Also let us know if you’d like to get a copy of Heather’s booklet, 10 Tips to Help Empower Women Investors.

0:41 – How she got started in the business

4:15 – Studying finance in school

5:11 – Different cultures around money

6:52 – Educational workshops

8:54 – Working with couples

14:17 – Encouraging a spouse to get more involved

16:02 – Reasons women should be more involved

17:41 – Debt

20:49 – Differences in men and women viewing money

22:27 – Unrealized gains and losses