“But my sister says the stock market is risky” 🤨

I was talking to a friend recently as I was contemplating my retirement account and whether a pre-tax account was the best option for me. I had just gotten off the phone with a representative from the financial corporation that manages my retirement account through my job and was newly considering the idea that a post-tax (Roth) account might be more financially savvy.

“My sister told me to do a pre-tax account, so I can’t change mine,” she told me.

“Are you invested in the stock market outside of your retirement account?” I further prompted.

“I would, but my sister says the stock market is too risky,” she responded.

me: I get that

also me: *biggggg sigh*

There’s certainly something positive about having an older sister who looks out for you and who wants to give you financial advice. That shit can be confusing! And I’m honestly glad my friend has a retirement account, period. But as I spoke with her, I couldn’t help but feel that a) her sister’s advice was limiting and b) her sister hadn’t done a ton of due diligence to understand all of this herself.

And I really don’t blame her. Women are socialized to believe that talking about money is bad, masculine, dirty, weird, uncool and inappropriate. I’ve certainly adopted some of these mindsets over time and am working on undoing them now (though sometimes it’s hard! sometimes I cringe when I hit publish on these posts or feel like an imposter!)

Money conversations are often challenging, and many of our beliefs about money and how it works are long-held, deeply rooted, often intertwined with family stuff that may be helping or hurting us. And being a woman doesn’t make it easier. According to a USA Today study, 61% of women would rather talk about their own death than money. THEIR OWN DEATH. What the heck is going on?

I’ve said it before, but I really want to keep saying it. Ladies should be talking about money! According to Ellevest, a woman earning $50,000 a year who never invests her money will lose hundreds of thousands of dollars over the course of her life. And it’s closer to a million dollars in lost money for a woman who earns $100,000 a year. I don’t know about you, but I’m certainly not interested in losing out on half a million to a million dollars over my lifetime just because money stuff is uncomfortable or because I’ve heard rumors that the stock market is risky. If my pre-tax retirement account isn’t serving me as well as a post-tax account could be, I want to know about it. If not investing is losing me enough money to send multiple kids to college one day, I want to freaking know about it.

I want to ask the right questions and figure out what makes most financial sense for me. I don’t want to rely on scarce minded ideas I accidentally learned as I was socialized to be a girl and woman. And I really want to help other women do the same.