Invest Like a Girl

Invest Like a Girl

Introduction

I’ll admit, it took me a little while to understand that women aren’t treated like men when it comes to money. I attribute this to the fact that I grew up surrounded by powerhouse women. For the better part of my adult life, and certainly by the time my brain’s critical thinking center was fully formed, the primary breadwinners in my family were all women. But it didn’t start out that way.

I was seven years old when I first began to learn the immeasurable value of financial independence and the powers of choice, opportunity, and flexibility that come with it. At the time, I thought the most exciting part of my day would be my childhood friend’s birthday party at Santini’s, the pizza place down the road. And it was, until my nextdoor neighbor instead of my mom arrived to pick me up. Everyone was hush-hush, as if this were perfectly normal, but I knew it wasn’t. Kids aren’t stupid. Where were my parents?

The gnawing feeling that something was gravely wrong sat in the pit of my stomach as if it lived there—heavy as the weight of all the basketballs I had just spent the last several hours shooting and missing (mind you, I’ve never been a star athlete). I made small talk on the car ride home, for reasons I didn’t understand. Confusion turned into tension, and the tension grew for what seemed like days. No one was telling me anything. Just when I felt that I might explode, I finally learned the news: My dad had suffered a massive heart attack at work. The doctors think he died before he even reached the hospital. They did everything they could. He didn’t make it.

My world was flipped upside down, second only to my mother’s. In an instant, she had been thrust into the role of single mother and all that came with it. At the time, she didn’t have a “job” per se, though her stay-at-home-parent duties could have earned her a six-figure salary if she had been paid for them. She had no college degree. She had no income. What she did have was me and my little brother, sheer willpower, and a measure of determination that I’ve spent my entire life learning to replicate.

Newly widowed with two kids in tow, my mom had many jobs to do, but most pressing was to find one that paid her. She started as a real estate appraiser. As it turned out, that first required 2,500 hours of unpaid (or barely paid) apprenticeship. Ultimately, the apprenticeship paycheck didn’t quite cut it, so my mom turned to real estate sales as a financial cushion while she continued working on her appraiser license.

As for me, I learned by osmosis, and I learned all kinds of things. Aside from learning to cook fish sticks in the toaster oven and convince my brother they were chicken nuggets on her workdays, I went on listing appointments, tagged along to open houses, and watched (and watched, and watched) my mom draft contracts. By thirteen, I could spot a house with bad energy from a mile away. By sixteen, I knew what foreclosures were and how they happened. By the skin of our teeth, we survived the housing bubble of 2007 and the housing crash of 2008 that followed, and I watched it all from the passenger seat.

But I also learned about the perceptions people have about women and money, and the very real sexism and gender bias that take place surrounding it. Real estate appraisal was a male-dominated field back then and still is now. I remember how many of the more experienced men talked down to my mom, though I didn’t (and couldn’t) fully understand why at the time. I was too young to interpret such chauvinistic behavior, which I would see over and over again. My mom used to half-joke that if she were just a few inches taller, perhaps they would take her more seriously. She felt more powerful on the phone than she did in person, when the guy on the other end would need to “man up” and face the music: that she was, in fact, a woman, and that he would need to deal with it. I picked up on these patriarchal signals even as a child (and I still remember them more than twenty years later), but I didn’t recognize them as blatant discrimination until I was much, much older.

After everything I’ve told you, you might describe my mother as courageous. Resilient. Powerful. And yet, my mom describes herself during this time in her life, the period after my dad’s passing, as “feeling like an egg.” She felt so fragile. At any moment, she worried that something might happen to her, and her kids would be left with nothing. For both of us (and for a long time), the prevailing thought process of our shared experience became fear: It was a day like any other, until it wasn’t. At any given moment, I could be minutes away from having no source of reliable income. Minutes away from having no way to pay the bills, or to buy groceries. A blessing and a curse, my dad’s death forced us to see the world through the lens of three guiding principles: that I cannot rely on another person for income, that I will not rely on another person for income, and that one source of income is only one step away from no source of income.

You might be thinking my three tenets sound more like evidence of textbook scarcity mindset, and you’d be right. It took time and many more life and money lessons to shake the feeling, and I’m not certain I’ll ever shake it completely. But, for all of its shortcomings, this simple framework (and more challenging shift in mindset) did lead me on a lifelong quest to achieve complete financial independence—and, eventually, though I didn’t know it at the time, to compile the most important bits I’ve learned and share them here with you.

From where I sat then and from where I sit now, it would be impossible for me to ever describe my mother as an egg. Through every financial pitfall, I learned courage. Through every struggle, I learned resilience. What might have at first pass instilled scarcity in time evolved into empowerment—for both of us. In retrospect and in due time, I built my own custom-crafted library of financial know-how. I soon realized that I knew enough about money to never need to rely on another person for income (if I don’t want to). If I ever lost my source(s) of income, I knew I could always find another one. And, most important, my financial knowledge afforded me the enormous privilege of choice—and no one could ever take that away from me.

But, alas, for everything my life experiences taught me about money, it wasn’t enough to build real wealth. I knew that if I wanted to do something substantial with my money knowledge, to really change my future, I needed to put it to good use. I needed to learn how to invest.

You see, I knew that knowing more about the life-changing tool called investing could open endless financial doors, but it hasn’t been easy for women to gain access to the key. Until a short while ago, women couldn’t even open the most basic of bank accounts. Credit cards for unmarried women didn’t come into the picture until much later, in 1974 (as if marital status should dictate your ability to repay debt). And even with the new laws, Black women still struggle to be approved for the standard financial products, like loans and mortgages, that the legislation had promised them.

To make matters worse, financial education can be hard to come by. In 2022, less than 25 percent of high schools offered formal personal finance education to their students. Without a clear structure in place to transfer financial knowledge, many women often wind up internalizing the bad messaging they receive about money from society at large. The media we consume, the world we live in, and the stereotypes we take as given become our textbook.

Instead of being encouraged to take calculated risks, women are told to play it safe. (Why invest when you could save?) Instead of being shown the tools we need to grow our money, we’re advised to make our meals at home and clip coupons. (You’ll never buy a house if you don’t buy things on sale.) Instead of being taught how to spend our money according to our values, we’re asked if we really need that mascara or why we’re going to Starbucks again. (You spent how much on a purse?) Instead of being trusted to make the best financial decisions for ourselves, the unsolicited questions, comments, and concerns about our choices somehow manage to squeeze through. Feeling bad about spending money is like a rite of passage into womanhood.

But it doesn’t stop there. We’re supposed to feel bad about making money, too. A woman who pursues career over family is materialistic (but a man is driven). A woman who seeks a partner with strong financial footing is a gold digger (but a man is wise). Women who strive to make more money are greedy (but men are ambitious), and women who negotiate their salary are aggressive and pushy (but men are assertive and confident). I saw it firsthand: the road to becoming a powerhouse woman earns you a lot of dirty looks before it ever earns you praise.