When my husband gets in the car, he slides the driver’s seat ALL the way back so his 6’ body can stretch out enough to comfortably drive.
After he’s driven and I’m making a quick run to the store… well, I don’t automatically change the driver’s seat to fit my petite 5’3” frame. It is still slid back all the way – and my feet just don’t. quite. touch the pedals.
“…I can basically touch the pedals,” I justify to myself.
30 seconds into the trip there is a stop sign. Not the right distance between my foot and the brake… I overcompensate and slam the brake.
C R A S H!
goes my cup of coffee that I precariously balanced on the console.
The nice thing about a car is that virtually ANY person of ANY size can drive one. We simply take a moment before we drive to adjust the “presets”: the seat back, the distance between the seat and the pedals, and the steering wheel position for the perfect hand placement.
Money is like that, too – we can pick our level of comfort in the way we save it and spend it. You decide what matters to you – and adjust the money to fit your needs.
Within our Anabaptist upbringing, historically women weren’t taught how to step into the driver’s seat with money. We might have transitioned from our parents’ home right into marriage, where our husbands took care of the money things.
Don’t get me wrong… we are experts as “Family Bookkeeper”: minding pay in and bills out month over month. But what about the direction our house was headed, big-picture? We didn’t get the 401(k) spiel that our spouse did on the job, we were at home taking care of our littles. We didn’t learn about life insurance on the golf course, we were busy preserving our garden’s produce.
It was simply a division of labor in the household: he deals with that money stuff. I don’t.
But life changes fast. It is unpredictable.
The average age of a woman when she is widowed is 59.
5 9 !
That is so young.
All of the sudden, we are now the sole driver of our family finances.
Talk about overwhelming!
So you’re saying a woman is supposed to go through the grieving process AND learn to shift gears, maintain, and drive her own finances? Her spouse got to learn over 20+ years. And she is left to do so in a blink of an eye? So unfair.
But just like me stepping into the driver’s seat after my husband has driven our van, I have to adjust the seat and mirror. So, too, in widowhood or divorce, our finances also must be adjusted. New “presets” made.
When it comes to women and money… you know, intuitively, the best way to use it.
It might not be apparent now. You might need several conversations, options, information sourcing, and above all time to process a life change before you can speak your money preferences out loud.
But at the end of the day, money only represents one thing: options. The ability to be used for one value or another. For financial security for today or tomorrow.
Your mind is the perfect fit to your finances… and all the decisions therein.
You just might need a good, unbiased sidekick to help you hash it out. That’s where someone like me comes in. And I’d love to start a conversation with you.
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