Why we need to start weighing our pockets down with Gold!
What a great turnout this morning for Merryn Somerset-Webb's talk entitled Love is not Enough. Merryn, the Editor in chief of MoneyWeek and Sunday Times Money section journalist is the ideal person to tell women how to manage their personal finances. She put us all to shame by asking how many of us actually subscribed to her magazine and one solitary hand went up. This pretty much sums up the theme of her book which is that too many women don't have enough of a handle on their personal finances and maybe, there's still a temptation among women to delegate (relegate?) this along with putting out the dustbins to our male partners! She imparted a few pearls of wisdom; for example she is still not a big fan of buy to let as an investment strategy and advises that if you're buying a property do so with the intent to live it in and if you're lucky it might pay off as an investment strategy (location being paramount). But the piece of advice I liked the best was that we should all have some of our savings in GOLD! Merryn is great at handling questions and she got plenty of them from a very sparky audience. So my take outs for all are 1) Subscribe to MoneyWeek and 2)Buy some lovely gold jewelry and wear it all the time in case of another cyberattack that shuts down the ATMs this time! Aligning with one of our CWN Theme’s, Inspiring confidence and realising ambition, Merryn’s talk was the perfect nudge for those that might typically shy away from dealing in those intimidating financial discussions- both as an individual and in a partnership. As Merryn said “It’s still so unusual to find a double alpha relationship”- it’s time to start equalising the financial responsibility and involvement, and start realising our ambitions. When women have more wealth in our own names than ever before, why do we take less interest in money than men? And why do we still feel that demonstrating an interest in finance is somehow… unfeminine? Having combined years of financial expertise with a healthy dose of scepticism and an easy sense of humour, Merryn Somerset Webb put us right on a few of the basics, having given us the latest from her world as the Editor of MoneyWeek. Read more on Merryn, her blog and articles here.
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