From left to right: Sharon Kedar and Manisha Thakor.

Sharon Kedar and Manisha Thakor both have extensive experience in the financial services industry. At various points of their careers they have each worked as financial analysts, portfolio managers, and client servicing/marketing executives for leading investment management firms with billions of dollars in assets under management. Both Manisha and Sharon earned MBA degrees from Harvard Business School and are Chartered Financial Analyst (“CFA�) charterholders.

Manish and Sharon dedicate their newly released book, On My Own Two Feet: A Modern Girl's Guide to Personal Finance to all women.

Here's Manisha and Sharon...

You state in On My Own Two Feet that “Personal finance is not taught in most schools, and talking about money is still taboo in most circles.� From your academic backgrounds in finance and work in the field, can you give some examples of what personal finance means to different socio-economic groups across the country without overly generalizing? And why isn’t personal finance taught in American schools—do you think the concept of the American dream comes into play here—if you work hard, anything is possible and so why worry about your money now?
What’s so interesting about money in our culture today is the degree to which there is homogeneity across so many lines. Unlike other cultures where your familial lineage or your region of birth determines your social “status,� increasingly in America it’s your “stuff� that determines your social status. Combine that mindset with easy access to credit, and you’ve got a toxic situation.

Most Americans, to put it bluntly, are pretty clueless about personal finance. This is not because they want to make poor financial decisions, but rather because they were not taught the basics. For the life of us, we have no idea why personal finance is not formally taught in schools (note to new Presidential administration—this should be a priority!). It is our cultural emphasis on “more, newer, better� that creates a backdrop, across economic and ethnic groups, that encourages people to consistently live beyond their means. There could be a small element of eternal optimism that causes Americans to think everything will work out all right, financially speaking. However, we think the root cause is really a lack of understanding about what specific steps are required to create personal financial security.

Your book is geared towards women and the particular challenges many women face with personal finances. For those who haven’t read the book yet, can you talk about the book’s particular angle and how you feel it differs, if at all, from other personal finance books geared towards women such as Suze Orman’s latest book, Women & Money?
Why the focus on women? Personal finance is extremely important for both genders. But its EXTRA important for us ladies because we’re the one’s left holding the bag at the end of the day. Literally. 80% of men die married and 80% of women die single. Unfortunately, the bag that we ladies carry in our later years is not such a pretty one. Today over two-thirds of women ages 65 and older rely on meager Social Security payments as their primary source of income. We wrote On My Own Two Feet to help the next generation of women avoid this fate.

As for why another personal finance book is needed…when it comes to personal finance—the right advice is already out there. It’s just tough to hone in on because of the sheer volume of information floating around. On My Own Two Feet addresses this conundrum by being short, fun, and easy-to-read. Its main point of differentiation is the highly actionable rules of thumb (how much to save, how much house/car you can afford, what you should discuss with your significant other about money, etc.). Our goal with the book was to give the busy modern gal one stop shopping for the most essential personal finance advice.

How much do you think feminism has affected many women’s attitudes towards money, if at all?
Virginia Woolf said it best back in her 1929 classic, A Room Of One’s Own—that in order for a woman to create she must have space and money of her own. As more women have experienced the personal exhilaration of living their lives from a position of financial strength, they’ve seen the wisdom of these words. Never in history have so many women had so much freedom to “own their finances & own their lives.� This does not mean, however, that we can rest on our laurels. As the maelstrom of criticism raised by Leslie Bennett’s ground-breaking book, The Feminine Mistake, shows, money is still a loaded topic—particularly when it comes to the “value� of child-rearing. But, net-net, we feel feminism is propelling us in the right direction!

The statistic that more than 70 percent of Americans—across economic class—live paycheck to paycheck is very depressing. What are the factors that enable members of each economic class to live paycheck to paycheck? And as a result, do members of different economic classes need different methods of personal finance, or are there ground rules that everyone should follow?
The basic ground rule of personal finance is this: strive to balance your desire to live well today with the need to save and invest for tomorrow. For the bottom 30% of the economic spectrum (the “working poor�), living paycheck-to-paycheck is about the lack of a living wage and the lack of universal healthcare. That’s a whole separate interview in and of itself. For the remaining 70%, however, it’s much more about the “super-sizing� of consumptive appetites than anything else. People often lament, “I can’t afford a house…� without stopping to think that the average house today is almost twice the size of what our grandparents lived in. Do we really need all that square footage? Same thing goes for cars, clothes, culinary urges (can anyone say $15 Cosmopolitan???). For this remaining 70% (on whom our book is focused) the root issue is a lack of knowledge about what are acceptable spending limits. This is something we focus heavily on in the first third of On My Own Two Feet.

What inspired you both to get into the work of money and personal finance? And did either or both of you face particular obstacles or challenges?
Manisha: My father taught me about the power of compounding when I was a teenager, and I’ve been hooked on personal finance ever since. From a young age I’ve had a burning passion to be financially independent (one of my very first “grown up books� I read was Kate Chopin’s The Awakening) and to be able to live my life the way I wanted to. Since you often need money to do this, finance seemed a natural fit. As my career progressed, however, it became about something much more. I realized that I could use my education and career experience to really empower women. Helping women gain mastery over their pocketbooks is one of the most rewarding professional experiences I’ve ever had.

Sharon: I’ve always wanted to be independent and felt that financial security and success was a critical part of that. I’ve also always been interested in business (had many small ones growing up including selling bookmarks, tie-dye outfits, you name it!). Working in the realm of money and personal finance has been a natural evolution of that.

When do you think one should begin personally financing their money?
The minute you start making money. Seriously! It’s never too early. If you earn money in a summer job in high school or college you can start contributing to a Roth IRA. When it comes to personal finance, the most important thing is to take personal responsibility from the get-go. While it’s fine to seek out opinions from family, friends, advisors, and so forth—at the end of the day it’s YOUR money and you should be in the driver’s seat.

If someone has never ever considered managing their personal finances, what is one easy step they can take now?
Save up $2,000 in a starter emergency fund. According to the Consumer Federation of America, the average young woman has $2,000 a year in “unexpected expenses� yet less than $500 in savings. The one thing in life you can always expect is the unexpected—so don’t let your finances get thrown off the path from the get-go for lack of an emergency fund. This one step can go a long, long way towards reducing stress levels in your life.

What kind of feedback have you received from the book thus far?
It has been tremendous. When we talk about the concept of a “fun, simple, easy-to-read� financial primer, people perk up. But when they actually read the book—WOW, then the fun really begins. We can’t tell you how many people have said this is the first personal finance book they’ve ever been able to read cover to cover. Or how many women have told us about concrete steps they’ve taken in their financial lives as a result of reading the book. It warms our feminist hearts.

Is there anything you would like to add?
Our goal for On My Own Two Feet is to create a nationwide MOVEMENT to encourage women to learn to live their lives from a position of financial strength. If this is to work, we need some serious grassroots, woman-to-woman, word of mouth buzz. So please, tell a woman you care about that it’s time she learned how to own her finances so she can own her life!

1 Comments

Thanks for pointing out this book. I'll definitely be taking a look at it.

Posted by BrokenParadigm | June 10, 2007 9:18 AM

Leave a comment

Name

Email Address

URL

Remember personal info?

Comments (You may use HTML tags for style)