Smart sisters are cash positive: two women launch a movement to encourage financial literacy. (Black Wealth Initiative).AS A FINANCIAL ADVISOR FOR A MAJOR WALL STREET investment firm during the '90s, Pamela Ayo Yetunde noticed that women in the San Francisco Bay area “Bay Area” redirects here. For other uses, see Bay Area (disambiguation). The San Francisco Bay Area, colloquially known as the Bay Area or The Bay showed a reluctant to discuss personal finance--even during a bull market. "What I found among the women I met was a lack of trust of financial professionals, a feeling of inadequacy around financial literacy Financial literacy is the ability of individuals to make appropriate decisions in managing their personal finances. Raising levels of financial literacy is now a focus of government programmes in countries including[1] Australia, Japan, the United States and the UK. , and feelings of inadequacy around the amount of money they had to work with," Yetunde recalls. She says she met so many women having problems dealing with money that it motivated her to write a book and team up with Tracey Scott, a 16-year marketing consulting veteran, to form a company to reach women who needed financial advice and investor education. The two founded Marabella Books in 1998 and it became the parent company for the SmartSisters Network, a movement to promote financial literacy among women. "We have taken an idea and created a business behind it," says Scott, "but this is not motivated by money alone. It is really helping to empower empower verb To encourage or provide a person with the means or information to become involved in solving his/her own problems black women in their dealings with money matters while raising financial literacy in our community." SmartSisters reaches its audience primarily through interactive seminars, listed on its Website, www.smartsisters.com, which was created and is maintained by Scott. She believes the seminars offer women the chance to open up about their financial status without feeling intimidated in·tim·i·date tr.v. in·tim·i·dat·ed, in·tim·i·dat·ing, in·tim·i·dates 1. To make timid; fill with fear. 2. To coerce or inhibit by or as if by threats. . "I think the most important thing we offer in the seminars is a forum for people to talk comfortably about money," she says. "In many cases, these women have never asked questions like `What is the Dow Jones Dow Jones the best known of several U.S. indexes of movements in price on Wall Street. [Am. Hist.: Payton, 202] See : Finance ?' They've never explored what a stock is." To help women understand finance better, the site also posts information on retirement planning Retirement financial planning refers to a collection of systems, methods, and processes which, in their aggregate, support a family unit's (client's) desire to achieve a state of financial independence, such that the need to be gainfully employed is optional. , long-term investing, asset building, estate planning Estate Planning The overall planning of a person's wealth, including the preparation of a will and the planning of taxes after the individual's death. Notes: Contrary to popular belief, estate planning involves much more than preparing a will, and it is not only for the , life insurance, and the important of reducing credit card debt Credit card debt is an example of unsecured consumer debt, accessed through ISO 7810 plastic credit cards. Debt results when a client of a credit card company purchases an item or service through the card system. . SmartSisters offers free, moderately priced, and customized financial seminars to generate revenue, selling Ayo Yetunde's two books, Beyond 40 Acres and Another Pair of Shoes and The Inheritance, for $14 each at all events and on the Website. Throughout a difficult 2001, Scott says SmartSisters averaged $30 to $40 per seminar attendee at·tend·ee n. One who is present at or attends a function. See Usage Note at -ee1. attendee Noun a person who is present at a specified event Noun 1. , held 14 custom seminars for the year, and offered two to three free seminars per week. The free seminars generally have 15 or more participants, while the custom seminars for corporations, churches, and other organizations have had as many as 500. SmartSisters has conducted seminars in cities across the country, including Washington, D.C., Houston, New York City New York City: see New York, city. New York City City (pop., 2000: 8,008,278), southeastern New York, at the mouth of the Hudson River. The largest city in the U.S. , and Atlanta. Indeed, the SamrtSisters approach of Scott and Ayo Yetunde exemplifies DOFE DOFE Department of Energy principle No. 9: to maximize my earning power Earning power Earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) divided by total assets. earning power 1. The earnings that an asset could produce under optimal conditions. For example, AT&T may currently be earning $2. through a commitment to career development, technological literacy Technological literacy is the ability to understand and evaluate technology. It complements technological competency, which is the ability to create, repair, or operate specific technologies, commonly computers. , and professional excellence. These SmartSisters say there are any number of ways women can demonstrate financial empowerment. * START WHERE YOU ARE Four years ago, Lula Flowers, a 58-year-old retired postal worker A postal worker is one who works for a post office, such as a mail carrier. In the U.S., postal workers are represented by the National Postal Mail Handlers Union - NPMHU and the American Postal Workers Union, part of the AFL-CIO. , met Ayo Yetunde at a seminar and spoke with her about her personal finances. It was one year before Flowers was to retire, and the only financial plan she had was the U.S. Postal Service's civil service retirement program. Following Ayo Yetunde's advice, Flowers joined SmartSister's BW2000 initiative, which encouraged 2,000 black women to invest $2,000 in a financial investment before the year 2000. Flowers decided to take her $2,000 bonus that year and open a mutual fund, which has grown to about $3,500 today. "I don't know Don't know (DK, DKed) "Don't know the trade." A Street expression used whenever one party lacks knowledge of a trade or receives conflicting instructions from the other party. why it took me so long to wake up, but that's when I decided I would do something for myself," Flowers says. * CREATE NEW REVENUE STREAMS Judi Henderson began reading Beyond 40 Acres shortly before going to work at an Internet company that subsequently went out of business. Just before her dotcom bubble burst, she was searching the Net and learned of a San Francisco San Francisco (săn frănsĭs`kō), city (1990 pop. 723,959), coextensive with San Francisco co., W Calif., on the tip of a peninsula between the Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay, which are connected by the strait known as the Golden company that was selling its stock of mannequins. "I felt the Bay area was enough of a creative community that there ought to be at least one place to rent a mannequin," Henderson recalls. She meant to buy only one but recognized a business opportunity. "I decided to buy the whole collection and become my own mannequin rental company." Starting her company, Mannequin Madness, with an initial investment of $2,500, Henderson says she now averages $5,000 to $6,000 a month, comparable to the $74,000 salary she made at the dotcom. Her brush with unemployment led her to curtail cur·tail tr.v. cur·tailed, cur·tail·ing, cur·tails To cut short or reduce. See Synonyms at shorten. [Middle English curtailen, to restrict her spending, and she now saves 15% to 20% of her monthly income. "I'm now putting about $200 minimum into my money market account [each month] instead of about $20," she says. * TALK ABOUT INVESTING Ayo Yetunde says that many women have problems with investing because they never discussed money management when they were growing up. "It was just never talked about in their household, so there's no history, no experience of their parents dealing with money in this way," she says. "Culturally, [discussing investing] is something white people do, not black people. If black people do it, [they're considered] black people who want to be white." Through the SmartSisters seminars, women are encouraged to face their fears about investing, which often come down to a simple lack of knowledge. "We try to be real with people and demystify de·mys·ti·fy tr.v. de·mys·ti·fied, de·mys·ti·fy·ing, de·mys·ti·fies To make less mysterious; clarify: an autobiography that demystified the career of an eminent physician. financial planning Financial planning Evaluating the investing and financing options available to a firm. Planning includes attempting to make optimal decisions, projecting the consequences of these decisions for the firm in the form of a financial plan, and then comparing future performance against ," Ayo Yetunde explains. "We say, `You've heard this on TV, you've read this in the newspaper, you've heard this on the radio, but let's be honest--you have no idea what it means.'" Once participants realize it's OK that they don't know it all, Ayo Yetunde says they talk about "why you should know what [each investment term] means," because it's relevant to each of them. Ultimately, through conversation comes education. And with education comes empowerment. * CHANGE YOUR VALUES Scott and Ayo Yetunde believe that women have to come to grips with their values before they can begin saving and investing. They've found that many women have purposely pur·pose·ly adv. With specific purpose. purposely Adverb on purpose USAGE: See at purposeful. Adv. 1. ignored investing because they are much more interested in acquiring "things" right now. "So we talk about things like materialism materialism, in philosophy, a widely held system of thought that explains the nature of the world as entirely dependent on matter, the fundamental and final reality beyond which nothing need be sought. , your religious background, the attitudes, values, and opinions that you have about money," says Scott. "If you think about all the money you've made over the years, when you look at the balance in your accounts, have your attitudes served you well?" If their current attitudes toward money haven't worked for them, SmartSisters suggests they find attitudes that may be appropriate for where they are in life at the present time. The idea is to convince women to make an attitude adjustment that will empower them to reach future financial goals. "We identify the types of accounts they should have for the goals they have stated for themselves," Scott explains. "We also show them what they need to do to save and to invest, long-term, short-term--and insurance is a big part of what we talk about as well." A big part of the discussion also includes what a mother may consider necessary to have for her children and what the family could actually live without. "It really becomes an educational session about how they can benefit from change," says Ayo Yetunde, "but [also] how their children may have to go without unnecessary things in order for them to do what they want to do in the future." For example, she says many mothers will buy their children name-brand clothes that cost $100 a garment rather than save for their children's college education. "That gives me an opportunity to tell them what saving for their child's education can do for their children in the future, and how it benefits them now with their tax savings," says Ayo Yetunde. * CUT THE CARDS SmartSisters goes out of its way to educate women about the allure of credit cards and the damage that they can do. Scott and Ayo Yetunde refer to credit card addiction as being hooked on "plastic crack." "It's not that [credit cards] don't have a use as a financial instrument," says Scott. "But, unfortunately, most of us aren't using them wisely, preventing ourselves from meeting goals and setting aside money." * REACH THE YOUTH Scott and Ayo Yetunde are always looking for Looking for In the context of general equities, this describing a buy interest in which a dealer is asked to offer stock, often involving a capital commitment. Antithesis of in touch with. ways to forward the financial literacy movement. When teachers who attended their seminars inquired about using The Inheritance, a fun-to-read novel, in their high schools to teach financial literacy, Scott immediately created a teacher's guide for the book to speed the process along. The guide has been approved for use in classrooms by the Jumpstart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that promotes teaching personal finance to young adults. For more information, visit www.jumpstart.org. Now that's a SmartSister! Declaration Of Financial Empowerment From this day forward, I declare my vigilant and lifelong commitment to financial empowerment. I pledge the following: 1 To save and invest 10% to 15% of my after-tax income 2 To be a proactive and informed investor 3 To be a disciplined and knowledgeable consumer 4 To measure my personal wealth by net worth, not income 5 To engage in sound budget, credit and tax management practices 6 To teach business and financial principles to my children 7 To use a portion of my personal wealth to strengthen my community 8 To support the creation and growth of profitable, competitive black-owned enterprises 9 To maximize my earning power through a commitment to career development, technological literacy and professional excellence 10 To ensure that my wealth is passed on to future generations |
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