Marrying for Money?

Just a quick post today about an article I found here about women and their money mistakes. It talks about a book by Liz Perle, "Money, a Memoir: Women, Emotions, and Cash”. She's pretty straight forward about what these problems stem from...

Perle's financial awakening inspired her to interview hundreds of other women, online and off, about their own convoluted relationships with money. Much of what she found, many of us already know:

• A lot of women suffer from the secret fantasy that Someone Else will solve their financial problems.
  
  
• Many women are given mixed messages about how important money is supposed to be in their lives.
  
  
• Growing up, most girls aren't given a straightforward financial education -- and many get negative feedback about how competent they are with money.

What I found most eye-opening was this: Because of a host of cultural and historical factors, women tend to harness even basic financial decisions to all kinds of emotional baggage. (Until the 20th century, most women couldn't own property -- and in some cases, they were property, Perle points out.)

This isn't just about shopping, she asserts. Just about every financial choice in a woman's life can be and often is freighted with values, judgments, desires and fantasies that, at bottom, have nothing to do with money.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. But a pair of shoes is often about a storm of other issues brewing beneath the surface:

• Self-esteem ("If I look good, I'll feel good")
  
• Envy ("So-and-so has such nice shoes")
  
• Deprivation ("I never get to have what I want")
  
• Being good ("I've worked hard/had a crummy week/hate my boss and I deserve this treat")
  

Definitely hit home for me!