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Ms Pink Musing on Finances and Small Business

G’day Gorgeous…

 

This week I experienced a bit of a low point in my financials in my business account.  It got me thinking about the fact that as women in business, when you work in a service based industry and you are reliant on people turning up to pay for their hour of time with you, or connecting with you in whatever way that they agreed to, what do we do if they don’t actually meet that obligation?  

These days, I do have a cancellation policy, but often what happens is that if people don’t turn up and then you send them a bill for your unutilised time, you often never see them again.  I wonder how we should get around this issue as women in business, or as women who run businesses. This is an important thing to consider, I understand that you’re not all in business but maybe it will help you to understand what it’s like for those of us who are.

Just something to consider…  If I take holidays these days, I don’t get paid.  I might be going to speak at an international conference, like I am going to one at the end of June that’s in France, but that is more about the prestige of having your name on the bill – right?  It’s not actually because you are getting paid for your time. I would have gone to that conference anyway, but it just got me thinking.

I was in training for three days last week and we were talking about all of the different things in media that it is possible to do and I started thinking about my time.  I was thinking about how much time I put into developing a lot of things that people don’t end up having to pay for, and please don’t misunderstand me I’m not complaining about that – I love what I do!  

It’s just that I find it quite amazing when things all seem to happen at once.  This week was really ‘odd’ because it usually takes people so long to get in to my books, that they very rarely just don’t turn up!  Right?! It’s quite an unusual situation, yet today, of all days. I have had three in one day… My brain is like ‘What’s going on? It’s not even a full moon!’

I just want to encourage any of you who work for yourself, and find it a little bit challenging and frustrating when you can’t get people to understand that you need to be paid or remunerated for your time.  You know you don’t have that security of somebody just paying you, whether you’re at work or not! That is the luxury of big business or government, it’s really not the luxury of small businesses like me.

 

I hope this is useful to some of you and doesn’t just come across like a big raving rant!  It’s not meant to be a rant, it just made me think about how much self-reliance we have to actually have as women in business.

See you soon…

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Ms Pink Musing on Finances In New Relationships

G’day Gorgeous…

 I thought today I might talk to you about that evil thing called money. In my book ‘Define Your Inner Diva’ I have a whole chapter dedicated to finances, and one of the big things I like to talk about is what happens financially when you go into a new relationship.   A lot of what happens with women, is that if we have a hard-fought battle in the family court or something similar, you feel like you have lost a lot of security in your finances. This can lead to us ladies going into a new relationship with a fear that it’s going to happen again, because we have just been through that hard fought battle and we’re scared of it happening again.

This fear can lead to women feeling awkward about talking about financial agreements to protect ourselves going into a new relationship. This can also stem from feelings of guilt about new relationships and the expectation that “it shouldn’t be a problem because we love each other and it should get itself sorted”.

Despite this fear and guilt, there are a few good reasons why we should agree with our new partner on a financial agreement when you’re going into a new relationship, especially if you have children. If you have children from a previous relationship, it is an important step to ensure that if the relationship breaks down, you will still be able to provide for your family as you need.

If you are going into the relationship with grown-up children or no children at all, it is still a good idea to discuss a financial agreement with your new partner. Usually this is relevant to people in the 40-55 age category, so a concern for you may not be providing for your children, but a bigger concern would be in what happens with your finances should something happen to you.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if the relationship is new, long term or you are married, but it is important to cover off the things that will cause your partner grief should (god forbid) something happen to you.

This is why I always say that when you’re going into a new relationship, what you need to make sure you do is cover off what might happen with your finances, in this unlikely event something happens to you, to prevent an entitlement going solely to your partner instead of your children.

For example, in your superannuation, there will be certain components that automatically go to your partner in the event something happens to you, and you can’t allocate then somewhere else. Often in this scenario, its better to just let that happen and have it go to your partner because they are more likely to get more value from that than your children.

Then what you want to do is make sure you can cover off (usually through an insurance policy) what goes to your children. I usually advise that a good way to measure what this should be, is that you work out about what your super is and you match that and then say this insurance policy will go only to my children, and superannuation can go to my partner.

For these reasons, I have taken separate insurance cover to allow me to give this money to my children. A very common thing to happen in a second marriage for example, is that the will says the partner has the right to stay in the family home and the children have to wait until the other party of the couple passes away before they are able to access the house. This is a large contributor to angst amongst some families when it comes to estates and wills following the death of a parent or close family member. Commonly, everyone has their own feelings and opinions about who should get what.

It is a horrible thing to have to think about ourselves in terms of dollars and cents, but in reality it is just easier to manage the emotional upheaval a little better by making sure we have sorted our financial issues out ourselves, before we pass on.

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Ms Pink Musing on Financial Independence

 

G’day Gorgeous! 

I often talk about financial management as a single woman.  Interestingly, I find that as an independent, self-employed business owner, I find that banks don’t think I have any real value.

I find that extremely frustrating.

In a recent dealing with the NAB, five months after being promising that all of these things would get sorted, even to the point where I was being given “yes everything is ready to go ahead as agreed” and then, I get an email.  No real preliminaries just saying, “We’ve changed our mind about the way we want to do this”.  Now they’re still going to proceed but as a women I will need a guarantor!  I have not had a guarantor since I was 17 years old for my very first car.

There was not really an explanation they just seem to make a determination that said they thought I should do my consolidation in a different way than what we had agreed.

Now, please remember I have been dealing with these people trying to resolve this for five months so my immediate solution, find a new bank!  I was tempted to walk away from the big four because quite frankly, I have never found them to be supportive of women.

I have said on multiple occasions that two of our four major banks ANZ and the Commonwealth Bank that both have a focus on women.  However, the ANZ’s approach is more at the lower end, they make the assumption that all we do as women is nurture children, and that our financial needs, in general, are less complex.  So, they focus on superannuation products and life insurance and number of other things, but they don’t really look to empower women.

Now the Commonwealth Bank, on the other hand, have a program called Women in Focus which is specifically about supporting business women.  So I wanted to see if the Commonwealth Bank would put their money where their mouth is and actually look to provide financial support to a woman in business.  I’ve been to a number of their lunches, talked to some senior management, and they are really nice people.  I used to work for the Commonwealth Bank many years ago, but were they really going to come through? 

I had a conversation with a number of people by telephone and was put in touch with what they call a ‘Business Personal Lender’, so this is somebody who specialises in assisting me with my personal lending needs, but they have a good knowledge of business and they take the time to understand my business.  So, when I was contacted by Leah (my local Business Personal Lender) and I was able to have a conversation about what had happened with the NAB for the previous five months, she was able to assess my business and my personal situation and she came back to me and said “Actually Kerry, there is no reason that we can’t do all of this and more.”

 

Maybe, just maybe, there IS a bank who is really supportive of women in business, that will actually put their money where their mouth is.

I wish to absolutely maintain my financial independence, I haven’t got this far being reliant on a man and there is no reason that I should ever have to be reliant.  It would be different if I choose to go commit myself with a man to do something that I wish to do and we wish to do that together, but that is a very different proposition to somebody telling me that I need a man to give me value in this world.

Yet – that is exactly what the NAB did, which is why they are history, written off, never again to be considered! 

In fact, I really must give kudos to the young man from the NAB who was doing all of this work with me over five months, when I told him exactly what I thought of his approach in an email, he rang me to apologise.  So, I then told him again, over the phone, exactly what my concerns were, what I thought the problem really was, and advised him to learn from the mistake (Thanks Matthew).  That might be one lesson he needed to learn on his life path.  Hopefully, he’ll remember next time how he should speak to a strong empowered woman who manages her own business, and has built an asset base without his help in the past and without the help of any man.

I hope that this highlights the benefits of maintaining your independence as a women and encourages you to take charge of your own finances.  Inspiring you is what I am aiming to do here and I am really glad that you are still reading and I hope this inspires you into action.

I hope that was helpful, until next time Gorgeous….

 

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Ms Pink Musing on Financial Independence

Financial Independence

G’day Gorgeous…

This week I wanted to share my recent experience with banks and talk about why financial independence is so important for us as women.

I recently decided to change banks, I have my financial stuff spread around too many different institutions and I just want simplicity in my financial life!

It’s a big part of my approach to life, live independently…  Take care of your money and Abundance will flow…

I encourage you to become more aware of your approach to money, but also being clear about how your ability to be independent and value yourself in that is amazingly empowering!

So I encourage you to explore your approach to money and undertake a reflective review of your financial position and consider your options and shop around.

Have a fantastic week Gorgeous…

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Ms Pink Musing on Finances

G’day Gorgeous…

How do you value yourself in terms of your finances?  How do you manage your own finances as a woman?  I often find that as women, we often put our own financial needs absolutely to the end of the queue.

If you have children, you’ll always put your children ahead of yourself.  If you have other members of the family who seem to be struggling, as women we tend to always put their needs first rather than prioritising ourselves.  When you make a decision to put your own financial needs first, you feel really selfish.  It’s important to understand that, as women, we often feel the need to nurture others and to give to other people.  I see the issue in terms of us giving is not really a big problem in and of itself.  However, when you put other people’s needs ahead of your own ‘often’ – then you find if something happens like your relationship comes to an end, you’ll find that you have issues with regards to home ownership or superannuation – your care plan for yourself for the long term.  All of a sudden, you realise that because you put everybody else’s needs ahead of your own, your future financial situation doesn’t look so good.

The other issue that we can have is that as we make life changes, such as a Divorce, you might end up with your children the majority of the time and you need to keep a roof over your heads.  This can be tough because banks are not necessarily as supportive of you as a single person to service a mortgage – for some reason our financial institutions think that gender impactsyour ability to pay your bills.

Yet we know that’s just bullshit – right?  In fact, most women that I know, when they’ve ended up in that situation end up working two jobs if they have to, or they’ll rent out a room in their house to ensure that they have enough money coming in to make their commitments and to keep that security over their head.

My biggest issue in looking at all of this stuff is that I can’t find a bank out there that’s actually really supportive of women in Australia – the recent media about the finance industry indicates that many banks aren’t doing the right thing by many members of our community – but women are marginalised even further in that.

I don’t understand it – when more than fifty percent of the population are women…  How can our needs be ignored? Maybe somebody should be focusing on providing financial services specifically for women.

In my book, Define Your Inner Diva, in Discerning Diva I highlight that the Commonwealth Bank in Australia actually has a ‘Women In Focus’ program that supports female entrepreneurs and business people.  They provide support in access to business networking events but there doesn’t seem to be anything specific about their lending criteria for women or understanding that women’s financial needs throughout their life course might change over time and that their customers in that.

The ANZ actually has a focus on women but they seem to be focusing on women who have less than fifty thousand dollars in Superannuation and they are trying to sell them some basic level of insurance.  I just find the whole notion quite disappointing.

Seriously?  In this day and age, where women work for the majority of their lives?  It’s not like we have many ‘stay at home Mum’s’anymore!  It’s not like the old days when you got married that you had to give up your full-time job because all of a sudden you are a wife and you had to stay home and support your husband – like they did in the 50s and the 60s.  We all work and contribute asequally to the society as men do, yet our financial institutions are not supportive of women and their differing working situations or different financial positions.

I work for myself, so these days the bank doesn’t even like to talk to me about any lending, even though I have huge amounts of equity in my home.  They just see me as this ‘enormous risk’!  Yet, I’m a health professional and I have earned substantial income in the past working for government agencies and other corporates, yet somehow, working for myself I’m perceived to be greater ‘risk’.  

Yet I have staff who can take a letter that says that they earn money from my business on a consistent basis and they can borrowmoney – even though their borrowing capacity is 100% dependent upon MY ability to keep my business running!  It’s stupid!  Why is it that I am seen as much more of a risk because I actually work for myself?  

Let’s face it, that means that I’m more inclined to work myself to the bone to actually make sure I can get the income coming in and pay my bills – right?  Why then do our financial institutions still view me through the lens of traditional ‘male-dominated’ policies in consideration of me in my business?  They don’t want to meet all my financial needs, but they’ll lend money to my staff based on the fact that my staff is earning money from my business.  It’s non-sensical!  

They treat my employees differently to the way they treat me.  Somehow, the fact that my staff is reliant on me for their income is less of a risk than me being reliant on myself!  It’s stupid! It makes absolutely zero sense to my brain – it’s irrational.

The Commonwealth Bank is the only bank that has been supportive of my independence as a woman in business.  However, I think they don’t go far enough…

I’m on a quest to find the best financial institution for women and I’m going to tell you all about it when I find it.  Or somebody is prepared to have an interview with me and explain how they do focus on banking for women.

Have a great week I’ll see you soon…