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Monday, October 18, 2010

Moms, Teach Your Daughters About Money Too

Financial knowledge is just as crucial as reading, writing and math

Laura Wellington was left in the financial dark when her husband, Dean, died in 2002.

At age 35, Wellington was a widow with four children; a boy, 9, and three girls aged 3 through 7. She also became the head of her husband's two small information technology businesses. Like many couples, before her husband's death, she took care of the day-to-day household expenses, and he handled bigger money issues like insurance and investing.

"I knew a certain amount of what was going on," she recalled. But the majority of the decision making was left to Dean.

When he was gone, the Ridgewood, N.J., mom had to make sense of everything on her own.

Stereotypes say situations like Wellington's usually involve women who lose their husbands late in life, then face financial uncertainty as they puzzle through bank accounts and investments for the first time. But it's not just older women who leave the big money questions to their husbands. Despite strides in the workforce, traditional roles are still common at home. Women as young as their 20s frequently defer financial decision making to their spouses or even their fathers.

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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is partly women's fault. It's easier to hand off responsibility to someone else so they can hit the malls and not be accountable. Mother's do their daughter's a disservice by not teaching them early on about finances either through allocating an allowance "for work performed" and making them budget for things through that allowance. Kids have it way too easy now. All they do is wine that they want something and parent's are quick to buy it because its easier than having to rule with an iron fist. That is why we are in the shape we are in right now. School's are just as guilty. I don't care how much money your family has, its important for your kids to figure out how to carve their own way or else you create self serving spoiled brats who have no idea how to be self reliant.

Anonymous said...

women are generally more emotional than men. this makes them more prone to irrational decisions and of course purchases. so i say leave the decision making to the man.

Anonymous said...

926 oh yeah.....who are the ones who think with the lower head of the two.....irrational lol