My friends at the Woodinville Moms Club are mostly stay-at-home or parttime working moms, and we chat about many things. Our conversations most often involve our kids, like who's allergic to what, or who mastered the dog paddle last week in swimming class. We also talk about our husbands, our extended families, our hobbies, our dreams for the future... You know. We're women. We know how to chat. As if it isn't enough that we get together and shoot the breeze for hours at playdates, we have "ice breaker" games at our business meetings to find out even more details about each other.
We share a lot, yet with the exception of the topic of 529s, I cannot recall a conversation among us about our financial lives. So, I asked my Moms club via an email "survey" what they cared about in their personal financial lives and what they are doing with their money.
Not surprisingly, every Mom who responded to my "Money Survey" is putting aside monthly money for their children to participate in enriching activities, like music, arts or sports. And they all dream of being able to financially help their kids with some form of post-secondary education.
They(we) also dream of having enough money in retirement, so most have IRAs and/or 401ks.
As a club, we are certainly venerable fundraisers too. In fact, our chapter recently won the national club award having done the most community charity work and raising the most money.
But surprisingly, all the Moms who responded about their personal finances told me that they, like me, left most of the saving and investing up to their husbands. Our husbands' employers have 401Ks, and we have those or IRAs from before we became stay-at-home moms, but since it's mostly his employer now, we leave leave the investing "up to him".
Moms are the heart and soul of our communities. And our financial situation, if I may have some poetic licence here, is the blood that keeps that heart pumping. We benefit from a firm grasp on the many tools available to us to grow and use our money wisely. Can we get as excited over new financial products as a great new pair of shoes (for ourselves or our kids)? It's a tough call at first glance. I mean, you know how difficult it can be to find a really great pair of shoes. But, when I think on a deeper level about the importance of a healthy financial life, I become extremely curious to find out what makes credit unions better for our community, for example, or why one checking account has advantages over another. I guess these are stepping stones in my learning journey to to the day I can have an intelligent conversation about Amortizing and Annual Percentage Yields.
What do you think of these hot topics?
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To finally answer your survey, in my house I take care of the money. Hubby's paycheck has an auto-deduct for the 401k, but everything else is something I do. I did all the research on our last refinance and have changed our savings accounts around a few
ReplyDeletetimes to find a better interest rate. When we decided to invest in mutual funds, I did the research on that and chose the financial planner to use. So I guess in my family "Momma holds the purse".
Luke and I took a class through our church called Financial Peace University, put on by Dave Ramsey. It was a wonderful class to take, especially as he encouraged both partners in the relationship to have a monthly budgeting meeting to understand exactly where the money is going. It has been a good tool for us to have healthier discussions about money without getting bent out of shape every time... something that definitely used to happen with us!
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