Who me??

Ok so I have had this blog for over a month now and really have not shared much about myself. So let me just tell you something I am not very proud of, it is March 31st and I still have not done my taxes. Yeah I know...

Anyway what I really would like to share with you is an experience I had with a financial advisor about a month ago which was disheartning to say the least. After asking around for quite some I finally got a good reference to someone from a colleague of mine who was referred by her husband's Business professor. The financial advisor is with a big, reputable company and my colleague seemed happy with her. My colleague even told me how much money they've invested with her which is less than what I would be starting out with.

The woman was very accessible and I went to her nice corner office in a nice part of town to meet with her. After commenting on how young I look and how smart I am to be concerned about saving for retirement she stunned me by whipping out a legal pad and asking for my address, income, and social security number!! Keep in mind she has told me nothing about herself, the funds she wanted me to invest in or anything else for that matter. I guess she figured my colleague already told me everything I need to know about her. WRONG! The rest of the meeting continued to go downhill with her telling me that "I clearly know a lot" implying she did not have to go over a lot of material. She never mentioned her fees, the fees of some of the products and failed to answer a lot of other questions I asked her. Now I am sure that this woman earned her nice office and I would have just figured that she was not bothering herself with answering my questions because I was young or was not investing as much as her other more wealthy clients. Thing is, my colleague invested way less than what I wanted to start with. So what could it be? I have more money to invest than my colleague, I am well read on investing, it seems like I would be a decent client. This made me think about it for a few days thereafter and the only thing I could think of is that my colleague who is a few years older than I am is a married woman and I am not. Do married people seem like more stable clients than single people? I don't know, but finding a good financial advisor sure is hard.

"How we spend money, save money and give away money say a lot about who we are"

A very good piece from The Wall Street Journal about the money habits our parents teach us and how that translates into our own decisions later on. While some of the parents in this article really get their children involved in finance by giving them money to invest at a very young age others can also show just how important financial wisdom is by showing the trials and discomfort bad financial management can bring into your life. While the adults in my life did not teach me to save and invest as a child, I could see that the ones who seemed to live life to the fullest usually ended up financially stressed while those who lived frugally were a bit more relaxed and not struggling to make ends meet. To each his own...

Richest Blacks

What's a blog about money and social issues that does not mention the Forbes' list of the world's wealthiest. Coming in at #97 overall and #1 richest Black person is Ethiopian born Mohammed Al Amoudi, with a net worth of $9 billion. Of course the usual suspects are on the list, Oprah, Bob Johnson (BET). It is good to see that Blacks in other countries are building wealth and investing in their communities and did not make their money in the entertainment industry. There are other ways to make money besides sports and music !! Not to sound mean but examples of wealth for Black Americans is always tied into entertainment not science, law, investing and that is scary. See who else is on the list.

"In Diversity We (Sorta) Trust"

A commentary by Yale law professor Peter Schuck, whose writing I always enjoy. Very interesting points he brings up especially in light of this Presidential election. In my opinion, diversity is a very touchy subject for people from around the world, and most people would rather ignore it. However Schuck's commentary shows the relevance of diversity to everything we do and sooner or later we all have to ponder the issues behind we work so hard to avoid the topid of diversity and it that's really working.

Read the commentary...

'High-powered law firms need women lawyers if they are to remain high-powered'

This article from The Wall Street Journal says a lot. A woman who never dreamed of being in Corporate America is a partner at a big firm.

"Lawyers need to have a broad focus to respond to complex challenges, so early specialization is not necessarily a good idea. The early years should have a wide-ranging focus, so that a lawyer can see a range of specialization choices. She may then discover a specialty that did not exist when she was in law school."

A child of the '60s turns corporate bankruptcy lawyer -- with a stop at Three Mile Island along the way.

Women and personal finance news

Everyone's favorite personal finance guru (well not everyone's), Suze Orman is being honored. Crittenton Women's Union, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping low-income women attain economic independence, will present its 24th Amelia Earhart Award to Suze Orman, nationally acclaimed personal finance expert, best-selling author, and Emmy Award-winning television personality.

UN unveils plan on Investing in Women and Girls
Election 2008-Pocketbook Issues Loom Large

In honor of National Women's History Month

Women have made tremendous strides in the business world and there is no greater time than now to highlight women in the world of work, finance and business.

The median annual earnings of women ages 16 and older who work full time, year-round is $32,168, in 2005. Women earned 77 cents for every $1 earned by men.
- In the District of Columbia, women who worked year-round, full-time earned 91 cents for every $1 their male counterparts earned in 2005. Among all states or state equivalents, the district was where women were closest to earnings parity with men. Maryland and Connecticut were the only states where median earnings for women were above $40,000, as was the District of Columbia.
- The median earnings of women working in computer and mathematical jobs, $58,906, the highest for women among the 22 major occupational groups. Among these groups, community and social services was the only group where women's earnings as a percentage of men's earnings were higher than 90 percent.
- The estimated work-life earnings of women with a professional degree (i.e., medical, law, dental or veterinarian) who work full time, year-round is $2.9 million. For women, like men, more education means higher career earnings. It is estimated that women without a high school diploma would earn $700,000 during their work lives, increasing to $1 million if they had a high school diploma and $1.6 million if they had a bachelor's degree.
- The amount women, who worked full time, year-round, earned 77 cents for every $1 their male counterparts earned in 2004. This amount is up from 76 cents for every dollar in 2003.
- The revenue for women-owned businesses reaped more than $939 billion in 2002, up 15 percent from 1997. There were 116,985 women-owned firms with receipts of $1 million or more.
- The number of women-owned businesses climbed to nearly 6.5 million in 2002, up 20 percent from 1997. (The increase was twice the national average for all businesses.) Women owned 28 percent of all non-farm businesses.
- More than 7.1 million people were employed by women-owned businesses. There were 7,231 women-owned firms with 100 or more employees, generating $274 billion in gross receipts.
NOTE: Nearly one in three women-owned firms operated in health care and social assistance, and other services such as personal services, and repair and maintenance. Women owned 72 percent of social assistance businesses and just over half of nursing and residential care facilities. Wholesale and retail trade accounted for 38.2 percent of women-owned business revenue.
- The average rate of growth in women-owned firms in Nevada reached 43% between 1997 and 2002, which led the nation. Georgia (35 percent), Florida (29 percent) and New York (28 percent) followed.
- Women 16 or older who participated in the labor force in 2005 equalled 59%. This amounts to 69.3 million women, 35 million of which were full-time, year-round jobs. Men in this range amounted to a 73% rate of participation.
- In a management, professional or related occupations, women chipped in 37 percent of the work force, as compared to 31% of men.
- More women work in educational services, health care and social assistance industries than in any other, the total amounting to 21.1 million. Breaking it down further, 10.7 million work in the health care industry and 8 million in educational services.

“I have always thought of money as freedom”

An article titled "Frugality can be acquired, but it can't be bought" makes me wonder why it can't be bought. Currently U.S. residents have maxed out their credit and young people see graduating college with tons of educational and other debt as normal. So why can't we buy frugality, ie. teach the basics of good personal finance in high-school and college. Why are so many young people not familiar with the basics about credit scores and interest rates until they finally want to make a purchase such as a car or rent an apartment? Maybe if we start early by paying for this kind of education, we can "buy" frugality after all. Read entire article

Adwa- A Universal Victory

Though February is when Black History Month is celebrated in U.S., one of the greatest achievements in history for all people of color occured in March. On March 1, 1896, Ethiopia also then known as Abyssinia defeated Italy at the Battle of Adwa. Adwa, a city in northern Ethiopia became the site of the face-off between thousands of Ethiopian and Italian troops. The Ethiopian victory became a victory for all people of color. This victory was not only the first defeat for a European power but also the reason why Ethiopia maintainted its place as the only of the African continent's 54 nations to never be colonized. In 1904 when Japan went to war with Russia, the Japanese looked to Ethiopia for guidance as the first non-Caucasian power to defeat Europeans. While many historians have criticized Ethiopia's leadership for ceding parts of Northern Ethiopia (to be named Eritrea by the Italians), to Italy after the Battle of Adwa, others see the deal as the only way Ethiopia could have avoided further warfare. Learn more about at Adwa...

We're more alike than we want to believe...

Two leading scientific journals "Science" and "Nature" have both published studies last week on studies on human migration based on DNA. Both research groups relied on DNA from blood samples collected by anthropologists around the world as part of the Human Genome Diversity Project, a controversial effort from the mid-1990s to gather genetic specimens from thousands of populations, including many indigenous tribes. "Instead of saying a particular person's genome is from Africa, this kind of data allows us to say which part of Africa they were from," said Andrew Singleton, chief of the molecular genetics section at the National Institute on Aging in Bethesda, Md., and senior author of the Nature report. The pattern of genetic mutations offers evidence that an ancient band of explorers left what is now Ethiopia and went on to colonize most of the world. Read more...