Women's Institute of Financial Education
“When I stopped seeing my mother with the eyes of a child, I saw the woman who helped me give birth to myself.” ~Nancy Friday
If you’re a woman who has reached mid-life a bit dazed and crazed by the passage of time, you are not alone. No one would disagree that women experience a dizzying array of life transitions. From getting a job to getting married to having children to being divorced or widowed, a woman needs strength and [...]
Give your abundant life a hearty boost this fall—find a giving opportunity! Shelve books for the library, work the community health fair, bake cupcakes for the nursing home’s monthly birthday party. Choose a way to give back that pleases you—and see how good doing good can make you feel. Amazing new research shows a direct [...]
Do you dream of having your own business? More and more women each year discover the excitement of being self-employed. If it sounds good to you, the prospects have never been better or the resources greater to help you get started. Enterprising women across America are building businesses that in 2005 employed 18.2 million people [...]
As we start our 25th year at the non-profit Women’s Institute for Financial Education (WIFE.org) we find that we’ve learned a lot. Here are some of the things that experience has taught us about investing. Saving a little can mean a lot. If you save $5 a day for your entire working life, you can [...]
Attention, ladies! Don’t let yesterday’s negative perceptions dim your financial hopes. In case you haven’t heard, financial stars are on the rise for today’s woman. Almost half of Americans with assets greater than $500,000 are women, and women control more than half of the private wealth in America. Women hold almost 50% of all corporate [...]
“Bad habits are easier to abandon today than tomorrow.” –Yiddish Proverb Habits start out like cobwebs but end up as strong as steel cables. In his classic book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey describes the good habits that keep us on track in our life endeavors. In working with many successful investors, we’ve [...]
If you are among the thousands of women who will be sticking their toes back in the job-hunting stream soon, take a deep breath! It’s okay to feel a bit nervous. Whether you’ve been at home raising a family, suffered recent divorce or widowhood, lost your employment, or re-located, the game remains the same. You [...]
Sometimes a job just isn’t enough. Your career should reflect your passions and your deepest values. The following worksheet can help you get started identifying the passions that can lead to a fulfilling career. Finding Your Passion Worksheet To figure out what you like to do and get someone to pay you for doing [...]
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You keep hitting the snooze button because don’t want to get out of bed in the morning. You wonder if why you didn’t join the Peace Corps when you had the chance. You wish you were someone else. You have bad dreams about work. You over-eat, over-drink, over-exercise, or over-analyze to escape. You have frequent [...]
Whether or not you have children, you need to strike a balance between pursuing your professional goals and feeling fulfilled on an emotional level. Let’s take a closer look at some of the ways that women are balancing their career pursuits with their personal lives. Flex-Time Because so many women are in the workplace, employers [...]
Network marketing is the fastest growing economic sector in North America. Some 600,000 new families are attracted to network marketing each year as a way to create a second income on a part-time basis. That’s because network marketing doesn’t require a large investment of money, nor does it require special degrees. And you don’t have [...]
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Just as no one can tell you how to feel about a beautiful sunset, no one can tell you how to live your life. You are the artist…and must shape your experiences with your own hand. — Susan Staszewski As you, the artist, shape your future, here are 10 attitudes that can help you create [...]
We create our lives each day by choosing what we focus on. But too often what we focus on doesn’t advance our lives or accomplish our goals. We are too caught up in our daily living to even figure out our goals, never mind taking steps to accomplish them. Let us illustrate this with a [...]
What can you do to make a difference? How can you use your time, talents and money most effectively? When we started WIFE twentythree years ago, we developed five guiding principles to make sure that we were using our resources in the most effective way. We continue to use these principles today. And so can [...]
What would you do if you won a million dollars in the lottery? Never mind that your chances of winning are just slightly better than the chances of being abducted by aliens. But still, winning the lottery is a favorite daydream for a lot of us. So what would you do? The answer depends on [...]
There are thousands of worthy causes that could benefit from a donation of your time or money. In fact, there are more than 800,000 charities in the United States alone. So how do you decide which organizations to support? Think about two or three areas or causes you want to assist, and make this your [...]
What matters most to you? Is it having the best, the shiniest, the most expensive new-fangled thing? Having it before everybody else? Or is it… To awaken each day relaxed and happy and not dreading the day to come, to have the time to enjoy your children, to watch your garden grow, to be free [...]
What do women like more than chocolate? Lots of ideas might be coming to mind, but the surprising answer is that women like cooperation even more than chocolate! A recent study at Emory University used an MRI brain scan during an experiment that involved alternating cooperation and conflict. The (male) scientists thought that conflict would [...]
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act, but a habit.” –Aristotle Make this New Year a great year by living your life well every day. By incorporating these good habits into your life moment by moment, you will have a wonderful year to celebrate. Slow down Take time in each moment [...]
The headlines are abuzz with predictions of lower holiday spending this year, which the pundits say will mean the recession is a long way from being over. So if we shop ‘til we drop this December, will that improve our national economy? That makes no sense, and here’s why. If you spend $100 on dinner [...]
Here’s the good news you’ve been waiting for. You have a Magic Wand, and when you wave it you can have anything you truly want. Do you dream about winning the lottery? You’ve got it. Now what? The luxury cars and magnificent life-styles are nice, but what lottery winners relish most is the financial security [...]
An excerpt from the seminar “Investing in the Future: What Every Woman Needs to Know” by Gail Buckner, Senior Vice President of Putnam Mutual Funds. Men think more about sex than money. Women think more about money than sex. Those were the surprising results found by Money Magazine in its 1996 survey. Why do men [...]
Color code your calendar for quick identification of type of function or personnel on a project. It works well for clarity and creates a more attractive calendar. Keep only the number of calendars you really need. Be sure one calendar always contains everything and is the most current and reliable. Track multiple or large projects [...]
Managing Time Schedule large projects into a series of short segments. You can accomplish much of the project in this way, and you may be motivated to keep going past the allotted time. Set a time limit on involvement in a task. It will seem less boring or overwhelming if you know you will stop [...]
One of these days I’ve got to get organized! Is that your daily mantra? If so, here are some good ideas for organizing your business life to increase your effectiveness and enjoyment each day. Handling Paper and Files Use a vertical step rack for “hot files” or current project files, in view and quickly available. [...]
Are you stressed? Who isn’t? In today’s fast-paced society stress has reached major proportions. Relax, say the experts, but who has time to relax for any length of time? Believe it or not, you can relax a little bit at a time. Just do these brief exercises at intervals during a day. First, pay attention [...]
An excerpt from the seminar “Your Career and Your Life: Balancing the Balancing Act” For most people, the only time their lives seem in perfect balance is on vacation, when they relax and enjoy everything around them. But in our day-to-day activity, life feels unbalanced and provides a very bumpy ride. To balance your life, [...]
Have you noticed that more and more advertising is aimed at you lately? In Marti Barletta’s book, she says that’s because PrimeTime Women™ stand at the intersection of the two most powerful and prosperous consumer segments in the world today: 1. The so-called “Mature Market” whose numbers are growing exponentially and who enjoy above average income, wealth, and spending power. [...]
In case you haven’t heard, women’s financial stars are on the rise. Women now hold almost 50% of all corporate management positions and control more than half of the private wealth in America. Are you a working woman ready to step up your progress toward greater prosperity and accomplishment? Start with your own definition of [...]
Did I see you at the Lawn and Garden Center last Saturday? No? Gee, it seemed that everyone else was there buying lawn spreaders, lawn mowers, and lawn trimmers, and piling those flatbed carts with bags of lawn fertilizer and weed and slug killer. Last Saturday was a truly gorgeous day—warm with lots of sunshine, [...]
Glancing at Christmas photos, you can’t believe you look so fat in your holiday outfit. The skirt that won’t button and the uncomfortably tight jeans may push you to a New Year’s resolution: This is the year you will join the health club. For years I scorned paying money to work-out when work-ing kept me [...]
Education for your kids or yourself can take a big chunk out of your budget. A summer learning camp can cost more than you had planned to spend on school clothes, and tickets to a lecture or concert series can equal the cost of your car insurance for six months. But you don’t have to [...]
Does your heart beat faster when you walk into J. C. Penneys and see racks of winter dresses with big red Clearance signs? Do you leaf through the Sunday paper sale flyers with a sense of eagerness and anticipation? Do you think that a Buy one and another half price offer is really a bargain? [...]
Ah! Spring! Time to put away your wool clothes, get out in the garden, and even fall in love. It’s also a good time to put your house on the market. Having prepared five houses for sale in the past 35 years, I have experience in presenting a house for sale. And my husband Skip [...]
Can you live on one income? If you are like many couples, you can’t even get by on two! But that doesn’t mean you can’t stay home to raise your children. It may be less expensive to run the household with only one spouse working. That’s because two careers mean additional expenses for childcare, commuting, [...]
‘Tis the season to spend money, fa-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la. As we celebrate Christmas, Hannukah or Kwanza, extravagance seems to be required. Our mailboxes bulge with catalogs, mall retailers advertise with abandon, and grocery aisles are crammed with displays of holiday goodies. We succumb, buying everything from new curtains to Santa statuettes, along with sugar, heavy cream [...]
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New Year’s resolutions have a well-deserved reputation for failure. Instead of making resolutions, why not consider a New Year’s Affirmation this year? By repeating a positive affirmation over and over, you internalize your goal, and train your subconscious mind to transmute those thoughts into actualities. If you believe it, you can achieve it – it’s [...]
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It’s been more than 50 years since Dr. Seuss penned the beloved tale about that mean-spirited, cranky pessimist—the Grinch, a bitter creature with a heart two sizes too small. From his high mountaintop home near Whoville, he hears the happy Christmas festivities of the Whos. Envious, he steals their Christmas presents and decorations to prevent [...]
With almost a million people visiting our WIFE.org and MoneyClubs each year, it is not unusual to get emails from people like Sharon, who contacted us last year. She wrote, “I am interested in changing my mind about money, and attracting it to me effortlessly. I want to live a life filled with wealth and prosperity, a life of [...]
A reader recently asked how she could finance her business idea when she had used up her savings for education, and does not have family or friends to ask for money from. Well, the truth is, that having no savings or family and friends to turn to can make starting a business as a woman [...]
Creating a successful career takes careful research and planning, and the Internet is a great place to start. By following links from these sites, you will find information on job listings, resume preparation, and recruitment firms, but little about planning a career. Here are a few sites that address work issues with a broader perspective: [...]
To advance in your profession and increase your income it might be time to get a better job. Showcase your technology skills to prospective employers by using your computer and the Internet as tools in your job search. Your computer and its connection to the Internet can put information about current opportunities at your fingertips, [...]
Bahr Investment Group (Carlsbad, CA)
Understanding your deepest concerns and needs is critical as you approach this part of your life. Find out how Bahr Investment Group can help you achieve your goals.
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