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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Researchers from McKinsey recently

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Speaker 1: determined that women spend less time on the job than

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Speaker 1: men in comparable roles in career paths eight point six

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Speaker 1: years for women versus ten years for men, and that

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Speaker 1: they were more likely to make decisions putting them in

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Speaker 1: roles in industries that were dying. Gosh, it's kind of

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Speaker 1: it's really grim. Yeah, large career gaps, especially during child

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Speaker 1: rearing years, and the desire for more flexible work took

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Speaker 1: a toll. Listen to this, Carol. Such time and career choices,

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Speaker 1: they said, docked women's lifetime pay by a cool half

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Speaker 1: million dollars.

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Speaker 2: That's a lot.

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Speaker 1: Women, they urged, need to choose careers in fast grown

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Speaker 1: fields and spend more time on the job.

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Speaker 3: Rap.

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Speaker 2: That's a strong message. I mean, that's a big difference.

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Speaker 2: And if you think about people living longer and like

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Speaker 2: maybe on their own, like how do you support yourself?

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Speaker 1: Simone Foxman writing about this for Blueberg News, check out

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Speaker 1: that story and more if you're interested.

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Speaker 2: All right, curious what Alison Kassik has to say about

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Speaker 2: all of this. She's the author and journalist who has

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Speaker 2: worked at CNN and is a freelance correspondent for ABC News.

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Speaker 2: Equal Page just one of the things she tackles in

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Speaker 2: her deeply personal new book. It's entitled What's Up with

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Speaker 2: Women and Money? How to do all the financial stuff

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Speaker 2: You've been avoiding. She joins us from Long Island. You know,

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Speaker 2: we've been talking about your book, and you know very

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Speaker 2: deeply personal your story. You go there right in the

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Speaker 2: beginning of the book. Tell us about and share with

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Speaker 2: our audience why you said about writing this.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, great to be on your show, Thanks for having me.

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Speaker 3: So I wrote this because yes, I was CNN's business correspondent,

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Speaker 3: often reporting from the New York Stock Exchange. But at

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Speaker 3: the beginning of my time there, I wasn't involved in

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Speaker 3: my own financial life. I let my husband handle all

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Speaker 3: things financial, and that was That was not a good

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Speaker 3: decision because when the marriage went't bad, when you know,

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Speaker 3: I wanted to get out of the marriage, I felt stuck.

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Speaker 3: I stayed in the marriage longer than I should have,

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Speaker 3: years longer than I should have, because he kind and

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Speaker 3: knew where all the money was and how to handle

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Speaker 3: all the money things. And I had two kids under

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Speaker 3: the age of ten. At the time. You know, what

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Speaker 3: if I made a mistake, what if I lost all

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Speaker 3: of our money? The difference is is that I just

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Speaker 3: didn't have the confidence to make those big financial decisions.

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Speaker 3: I didn't have the experience of making the decisions over

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Speaker 3: the course of my marriage, and that in essence cut

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Speaker 3: down on my confidence in my ability to make those decisions.

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Speaker 3: But as I got through that, I realized that there

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Speaker 3: are a lot of women, different kinds of jobs, high

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Speaker 3: income scale to low income scale, married, divorced, widowed, single,

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Speaker 3: who feel the way I felt that. You know, they

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Speaker 3: don't have any kind of involvement or as much involvement

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Speaker 3: as they should have in their own financial lives. And

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Speaker 3: it's not something that women talk about because, you know,

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Speaker 3: we don't want to be seen as unintelligent. There's also

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Speaker 3: a lot of embarrassment and shame around it as well.

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Speaker 1: Why do you think men are the ones who end

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Speaker 1: up doing this stuff in a lot of relationships? Like

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Speaker 1: you have a chapter in here on how to buy

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Speaker 1: a car with confidence, understanding insurance, negotiating in your words

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Speaker 1: like a man. Why do men? Why are men the

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Speaker 1: ones who usually do this in relationships?

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Speaker 3: You know, I think if I could answer that in

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Speaker 3: one reason only, there are I think there are many reasons,

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Speaker 3: but I think the biggest reason is that it is cultural.

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Speaker 3: There's a cultural aspect that women have with money, and

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Speaker 3: I think it starts early when we are girls, and

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Speaker 3: whether we like it or not, girls and boys are

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Speaker 3: socialized differently. And it's not that girls are told not

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Speaker 3: to care about money. It's just that boys are often

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Speaker 3: introduced to the family finances earlier, They're encouraged to be

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Speaker 3: financially independent earlier, and so you've got these girls who

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Speaker 3: grow up being uninvolved, and they can grow up to

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Speaker 3: be women who avoid money issues, and that avoidance can

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Speaker 3: be compounding in the way that you avoid something long enough,

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Speaker 3: you become fearful of it. And so lack of interest

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Speaker 3: can lead to a lack of information, and that lack

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Speaker 3: of information can lead to a lack of confidence in

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Speaker 3: being able to manage all things financial, you know, whether

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Speaker 3: it's managing your spending, managing your debt, being able to invest,

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Speaker 3: and being able to negotiate your salary. All of that

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Speaker 3: hits confidence. And I think I think if I'm going

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Speaker 3: to answer it in one answer only, I'd say it's

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Speaker 3: the culture. It's got to be the culture.

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Speaker 1: So you know, it's it's it's interesting. Carol mentioned this

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Speaker 1: is a deeply personal book, and I mean it really is.

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Speaker 1: You're not just you don't. You don't just talk about

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Speaker 1: your relationship and your marriage that prompted you to write this,

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Speaker 1: but also your upbringing and your relationship with your father.

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Speaker 1: And I think a lot of people would say that

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Speaker 1: that was really challenging. I'm wondering, though, as a parent now,

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Speaker 1: how you make sure that your kids are equipped to

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Speaker 1: make these decisions independently.

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Speaker 3: Very good question. I'm not a perfect parent, and I've

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Speaker 3: got two kids once nineteen, my son is nineteen, my

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Speaker 3: daughter is twenty two. They are invested in the market. Yes,

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Speaker 3: I've taught them how to do it, and I've encouraged

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Speaker 3: them to consistently invest as much as they can. I've

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Speaker 3: explained to them the difference between savings and investments and

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Speaker 3: what the difference is, and why it's important to invest

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Speaker 3: your way to wealth because you can't save your way

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Speaker 3: to wealth. You know. The thing is these things are

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Speaker 3: not taught in school, so there's only so much parents

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Speaker 3: can do. And really, I think so much of this

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Speaker 3: is is really just taking the effort to learn it

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Speaker 3: on your own or through osmosis, or hopefully you've got

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Speaker 3: parents to guide you. I'm certainly trying to guide my

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Speaker 3: kids as much as possible.

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Speaker 2: You know, it's interesting, Allison. We talk about this a

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Speaker 2: lot here, and I feel like you've obviously you know,

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Speaker 2: you're a journalist, and I know this topic has come

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Speaker 2: up over the years, and I would say for those

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Speaker 2: of us who've been doing it for a while, just

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Speaker 2: like yourself, I feel like I could go back ten

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Speaker 2: years and have this conversation. Twenty years, I could have

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Speaker 2: this conversation. I think about CEOs, female CEOs who've come

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Speaker 2: in and talked about even that in their households to

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Speaker 2: some extent. So I'm wondering, you know, why haven't we

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Speaker 2: we've talked about financial literacy forever. Why isn't that happening?

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Speaker 2: What is it that we are missing? Because you can

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Speaker 2: teach stuff at home, right, But I wonder if we

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Speaker 2: made it part of our curriculum from kind of a

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Speaker 2: younger age, teaching kids about money, the importance of money

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Speaker 2: and all that good stuff, how different things might be.

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Speaker 3: Oh, I am one hundred percent with you, and to

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Speaker 3: be honest with you, I don't know why this stuff

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Speaker 3: isn't really being taught, and I think it's actually beginning

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Speaker 3: to be taught. It's being thrown into the curriculum. I

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Speaker 3: don't know how much really, And I'm wondering if maturity

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Speaker 3: has a lot to do with it, because can you

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Speaker 3: imagine getting into all the finer details of investing with

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Speaker 3: a fifteen sixteen year old there's all I think there's

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Speaker 3: also maybe a mindset here of younger of younger people.

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Speaker 3: I know when I was younger, and it may have

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Speaker 3: just been because we didn't have access to investment platforms

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Speaker 3: like we do today. Right in fractionally investing, you know,

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Speaker 3: I think that I think that you think that you

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Speaker 3: have got, you know, fifteen years old. Let's say they

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Speaker 3: bring it into the schools at fifteen the curriculum at

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Speaker 3: fifteen years old, you'll pay attention. But I guess how

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Speaker 3: seriously will the kid take it because they think they've

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Speaker 3: got forever to start investing. And I think unless the

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Speaker 3: curriculum really hits home about the importance of investing early

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Speaker 3: and consistently, but investing early, maybe then it'll catch on.

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Speaker 3: But I think you make a really good point, and

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Speaker 3: I did. I did write this book through a journalist's lens.

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Speaker 3: So not only did I get the tips and tools

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Speaker 3: of financial literacy, I wanted to tell stories, so not

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Speaker 3: just inspirational ones through the celebrities that I interviewed, but

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Speaker 3: also names you wouldn't recognize a lot of these people.

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Speaker 3: A lot of these women are anonymous because they are

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Speaker 3: ashamed that they're in this situation. So I, for example,

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Speaker 3: I interviewed a venture capitalist who who described money as

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Speaker 3: something that she was fearful of. And she at fifty

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Speaker 3: three years old, she hadn't invested in one retirement account,

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Speaker 3: didn't know the basics of personal financing, and and really

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Speaker 3: was felt overwhelmed. And this is a woman in venture capital,

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Speaker 3: in the venture capital space who was highly highly successful,

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Speaker 3: but she had not invested in herself because she didn't

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Speaker 3: have the confidence. I mean, it is really amazing that

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Speaker 3: we can we can be badasses at our jobs, but

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Speaker 3: then in our own life there's this disconnect that's really inexplicable.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and I guess what I would say in terms

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Speaker 2: of I agree with you, like a teenager, they're going

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Speaker 2: to be like yo, you know investing, you know, Warren Buffett,

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Speaker 2: like all that stuff might go past, but just the

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Speaker 2: idea of debt versus not debt savings versus, you know,

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Speaker 2: just kind of those kinds of things are like you know,

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Speaker 2: you even talk I love this idea. I think I

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Speaker 2: even remember my parents like having an envelope in the

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Speaker 2: drawer of cash that was like the cash for the

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Speaker 2: month or something. And we don't really do that anymore, right,

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Speaker 2: everything's digital, but having that concept of like a digital

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Speaker 2: envelope of this money is my spending money, this is

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Speaker 2: my savings money. Like, those concepts are really clean and

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Speaker 2: pure and I think make a lot of sense. And

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Speaker 2: I do think about even today of giving a kid

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Speaker 2: and saying, here's some spending money. That's it. You've got

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Speaker 2: it for the month, figure it out, Like that's teaching

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Speaker 2: them to budget.

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Speaker 3: Right right and getting them involved. And as parents, you

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Speaker 3: know your kids are watching you. They're watching if you're

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Speaker 3: piling on dead onto your credit cards, they're watching you

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Speaker 3: know how you shop around for things if you broke,

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Speaker 3: if the refrigerator's broken, do you just buy whatever? Or

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Speaker 3: are you taking them with you to go shop around

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Speaker 3: and get the or at least online to shop around

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Speaker 3: and get the cheapest price. You know, I think involving

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Speaker 3: children in money details is really a first step. It

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Speaker 3: seems so simplistic, but it really is a way to

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Speaker 3: get them involved.

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Speaker 2: Okay, we have been talking about your book in the

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Speaker 2: newsroom and you coming on, and I have a bunch

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Speaker 2: of questions, actually from one of my producers. We only

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Speaker 2: have time for one. We only have about a minute

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Speaker 2: left here. But if you've got two four oh one

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Speaker 2: K plans from different employers, how do you determine whether

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Speaker 2: to merge it or just leave it alone.

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Speaker 3: I've been told, I've been told to merge them, but

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Speaker 3: you're asking the wrong person. I'm not a certified financial planner.

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Speaker 3: I can't even I can't even give you financial advice. Okay,

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Speaker 3: that is not my realm. I So, like I said,

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Speaker 3: I approached this book as a journalist. I did research

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Speaker 3: and interviews to get these to get these topics on paper.

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Speaker 3: And yeah, they'll have to go talk to their at CFP.

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Speaker 2: All right, that's fair.

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Speaker 1: Actually good advice.

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Speaker 2: Actually that's great advice. And she's a journalist too, and

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Speaker 2: I know she'll end up doing research. Thirty seconds left here.

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Speaker 2: There's a lot in the book. It's very usable, it's

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Speaker 2: really fun. What's one piece of advice you want to

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Speaker 2: leave our audience with just quickly.

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Speaker 3: Ladies, be involved in all things finel in your house.

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Speaker 3: Have great visibility onto what's happening. Know what your assets are,

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Speaker 3: know your debt, know who your beneficiaries are on your accounts,

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Speaker 3: know the passwords to your accounts, and especially know how

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Speaker 3: much debt you are caring and get involved in the

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Speaker 3: tax process as well. It's so as we're nearing tax

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Speaker 3: time here, be involved in filing your taxes.

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Speaker 2: All right, really fine, good luck with everything. Alison Kassick

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Speaker 2: joining us her new book, What's Up with Women and Money?

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Speaker 2: How to do all the financial stuff you've been avoiding,

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Speaker 2: Joining us from Long Island,