What I Learned from “ Financial Feminist “
The first time I saw this book in Periplus Bookstore, what make me stop and take a look at it. The cover was pink, soft pink, and so cute. I hesitated to choose between two books at that time, they were Financial Feminist and Intelligent Investor. I’m into personal finance nowadays, so I have an interest in a finance books. I did polling on my Instagram to help me choose which one I should buy, and the majority of the votes go to Financial Feminist.
The first chapter talks about the emotions of money, it has several narratives such as :
you should know how to money, personal finance for women is as important as men, both have to understand how to money. Society expects us to know everything about money: how to earn more, spend wisely, and invest it. In reality, no one teaches us how to manage our money, nor our parents or education system, but later as we grew older, everybody expects us to be magically good with money.
talking about money is impolite, asking people about money is considered something uncomfortable in our society. Not talking about money makes us clueless about how the world works, we have no idea whether we are overworked or underpaid. The book encourages us to talk about money and to be transparent with money.
you’ll be rich if you just work hard, we worked ourselves to death but never actually achieved any financial goal that we set. In this book, the writer explains many factors that play a role to determine someone’s wealth.
unless you’re a man wanting money is “selfish”, no one should feel shame for wanting more money. There is nothing wrong with a woman wanting money for any reason that doesn’t harm other people.
money can’t buy you happiness aka wanting money is evil, - is bulsh*t
My favorite chapter is Investing. In fact, investing is more familiar to men than women. This book mentions several facts about why women aren’t investing as much as men such as the wage gap between both genders. Hence, the starting point is already different. When we make more, the more we can invest.
In this chapter, the writer talks about investing misconceptions such as :
- I don’t need to Invest- Saving my money is enough! , honey~~ let us take a look at the interest rate of a saving account and the annual rate of return when investing in the stock market, and you will get shocked.
2. Investing is gambling- What if I lose all my money, here’s what the book says :
if you were to invest in the market and then sell your shares the very next day, you’re just as likely to make money as you are to lose money, but if you hold your shares for a one-year period, your odds of making money increase to 68 percent
Interesting, right? For someone who never receives any financial education before, this is truly mind-blowing.
There are many interesting points that this book talked about, like spending, debt, and earning. It really changes my mind about how I see money, how I evaluate my position right now at a job, track down all of my spending, and focus to generate more earnings. I also have created my investing account and on the process of choosing my first stock. This whole experience scares me but at the same time excites me. I’m into a new world and perspective. I realized my value, and I validate myself.
