[Anonymous]

Wow, that’s very interesting.

It’s good that it worked and that your father was able to admit it.

[Anonymous]

From my experience, American men and women in general lack general impulse control. I guess it’s a different outlook of life, but I know my work colleagues and university friends would burn through cash like guzzling a tap in the desert, it would slip through their hands as it landed that Friday. People go mouth agape when they learn I paid for an apartment in cash with my salary and prior savings. Usury made easy means it’s easy to just burn $XXXX a year in interest.

I believe whoever is most responsible with their personal finances should be generally responsible for the household accounts. I couldn’t live with a spend-thrift, we would just not be compatible. My mother would assign my father an “allowance,” and we were a wholly traditional household in any and all other respects; responsible for our family religion, planning of trips, providing for the family, discipline, etc. I know that to Americans that might sound emasculating, but he knew his personal weaknesses with money and he let his wife manage that specific aspect because otherwise we would have nothing!

[Anonymous]

Oh, that’s a very interesting topic.

I never thought much about it, I personally suck at mathematics, and know nothing about accounting, but thinking about my parents’ and grandparents’ generations—it was the women who were doing the shopping while men were at work, so they had to learn how to be frugal, how to manage home finances properly, especially with multiple children.

I think maybe there was a bigger sense of responsibility in my grandparents’ generation because women usually didn’t work (or worked only part-time, or temporary) after they started having children, so it’s not like today when women start earning money very early and waste it on designer handbags and ridiculously expensive cosmetics.

[Sudoku]

I was reading through an old victorian household management book the other day (one of those Mrs Beeton types) and noticed there was a whole section on household accounting. I had a quick Google and found the same thing in other older textbooks. I’ve always viewed ‘finances’ as a stereotypically male job along with things like DIY and car repairs. Most of the women I know would say the same thing. Yet it seems as though this wasn’t always the case and women were expected to be able to do basic accounts, pay the bills, manage the family savings, etc.

Finance is a personal interest of mine as I’ve been investing since my late teens and worked in finance for a while. But I rarely meet other women who have any interest in it for the above reason (I’m guessing). Certainly in my own family, the men are the ones that deal with any money related tasks (other than shopping). The women generally wouldn’t know what S&P500, dividend or drawdown rates meant. Which seems like a waste, as women could make the money their husband earns go a lot further if they knew how to put it to work.

So with that in mind, I wanted to start a discussion here for any ladies that either have an interest in finance and want to share tips or those who want to better understand things like saving, investing, pensions, or how to make additional semi/passive income from home to help their family. Especially with the economic climate the way it is.

I know there is a general finance group on here already, but I wanted to target this specifically to women, especially SAHMs, and things that they can learn/do themselves.

• This topic was modified 4 years, 3 months ago by Sudoku.

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