There was a time, in the not so distant past, when finances and females were what oil was to water. They just did not mix and anyone who thought otherwise was rebuked. Men traditionally made the money for the family and therefore they were responsible for the savings and expenditures of the family.
When World War II began, many wives had to take over the finances of the household, as millions
Saying good-bye.
of young husbands went to war. Most family’s income, which appear deceptively meager by today’s standards (a college educated mechanical/electrical engineer earned just $35 a week or $1,820 per year) required planning and budgeting. There were few public safety nets available at the time. Either you lived within your means or you went hungery.
Also, for the first time in American history, millions of women entered the workforce themselves, in order to replace the young men who’d gone to war and left their jobs behind. Those newly employed, Great Depression era, women took on these new responsibilities with great care, especially when acting in their new role as family financier. These were frugal-minded women with few bills and a lot of home town support.
Decades later, with the arrival of second-wave radical feminism, the daughter’s of these women were pressured to focus on college and careers, rather than marriage. In doing so, many newly employed, single, young women took the plunge into the world of finance unsupervised, untrained, unprepared and without recourse because many were living away from home, family and advice.
This transition was fraught with difficulties. Despite what you’ve been told, women are not as financially savvy as men. They may be good with numbers but the world of finance including mortgages, student loans, investments, credit card debt, insurance (including homeowners, car and health), taxes (including sales, local, state and federal), 401k’s, and other retirement plans are beyond most women’s interest and expertise.
Many liberated women will loudly protest this assessment but reality proves my point. Women may be seduced by the feminists into believing that they are capable of handling their own
finances but they find that the restraint, and a cool head, required for budgeting and long-term planning is nearly impossible for them to sustain, especially when left to their own devises. The reason? Most women don’t care about the outcome, as long as they get their stuff.
My experience has been that single, divorced or widowed women, without access to husband’s, or father’s, financial advice routinely swamp themselves with debt. They irrationally drive themselves into avoidable financial disasters while accessing more credit than they can handle, drowning themselves in debt from which many never fully recover. They spend money they don’t have, on things they don’t need, on people who don’t matter, and why? usually to impress their women friends with the success of their financial independence. Look at me! I’m independently wealthy! I made it on my own! I make enough money to buy whatever I want, whenever I want!
BALONEY! Behind the scenes, they are usually up-to-their-eyeballs in debt!
When push-comes-to-shove and they have their backs up against the credit wall, rather than come to grips with their irrational addiction to spending, they just – file for bankruptcy – leaving all of their debtors holding the bag. As far as I’m concerned, declaring bankruptcy is just a form of legalized theft which should be banned!
Having no shame, many women file for bankruptcy over and over again! Bankruptcy has become the liberated woman’s new mascot. Many believe it will effortlessly wash away all of their financial troubles, without considering the astronomical damage done to the companies whose bills will never be paid. Nor do they consider the companies customers who must pay inflated prices for their merchandise in order to offset the blameless, and burglarized, company’s need to financially survive the loss. In 2011, 1.46 million individuals filed for bankruptcy including the mother of gymnastics gold medalist Gabrielle Douglas;
Toni Braxton, singer and actress; Sonja Morgan of J.P. Morgan lineage, and Eva Longoria of Desperate Housewives. Women have no shame! They declare bankruptcy and show up on the red carpet a week later as though nothing happened.
Declaring bankruptcy is no different than highway robbery. Every time any one of these women knowingly walked into a store and bought something they knew they could not afford, they were shoplifting! They were no better than a two-bit thief with a gun.
I am familiar with a classic example of this shoplifting syndrome. The future daughter-in-law was a single, 20-something, living and working in NYC. Soon after her engagement, she was found to be $35,000.00 in debt, and it wasn’t school loans either. She had a low-end job, in a high-profile company. She spent money on clothes for work and partying, as though there were no tomorrow.
In fact, she had purchased so many clothes that she could not store them in her studio apartment so, she had them stuffed into storage units all over the city. These units were costing her another $200 a month, which she could also not afford. When the lockers were opened by her future husband, he found that they included doubles and triples of the same articles of clothing, many of which still had their tags attached. And, this “woman” had been so careless when loading the storage bins that most of the clothing was unusable and ended up in the trash. The future husband was shocked at the level of debt his fiance had incurred but initially, and nobly, offered to take-on her debt, once they were married, in order to pay it off and save her reputation.
But, he was advised against this plan, as his stellar credit rating would be compromised in the effort to salvage hers, as he would share the blame for her debt. So, before they were married the 20-something declared bankruptcy, then married, changed her name and walked away from her self-inflicted financial disaster, unscathed, while at the same time, calmly and unashamedly screwing all of the retailers who’d banked on her paying for her purchases.
Blindsided by the discovery of his fiance’s inordinate amount of debt, the new husband took complete control of his new wife’s finances. In order to protect himself from this shopaholic, the thief was not allowed to apply for, or use, credit cards, and any purchase she made was to be made with cash only. So far, the plan is working.
Financiers
Unlike women, men take financial matters very seriously and associate them with their honor as a man. At one time, bankruptcy was only used by desperate men who were victims of having lost their jobs or their businesses. And in most cases, they did not just walk away from their debts. Many men spent decades paying off those debts rather than resorting to bankruptcy, or worse yet, losing their reputation and honor.
One acquaintance of my family lost his business to bankruptcy during the Great Depression. He could not repay the bank the $3,000.00 loan which, at the time, represented a lot of money – nearly three times the average annual income in the USA. Nearly 20 years later, after the man had reestablished himself in another business, he proudly walked into his former bank and handed his former banker, a check for the $3,000,00. The banker stated that it wasn’t necessary to repay the loan, as the debt had been written-off-the-books as a loss, years ago. The man replied, “I don’t care. I owe you this money. Take it.” This was an honorable man who cared nothing about what the law told him he could do. He only cared about what his Christian conscience told him to do. This is why men have always been in charge of the money and why the sole responsibility should be returned to them once again. It’s the Women, Not the Men to be continued…
It's the Women, Not the Men! 
Great post Kathy! I agree completely. While there are always exceptions(like men who spend money like it is water and get into debt, and women being frugal), your post is correct that normally this is not the case. Men are usually better with managing family fiances then women.
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Thank you. In all of my life, I’ve yet to meet a woman who is better suited to handle the complex finances in her family than was her husband, her brother, her father or her nephew. Women are just not “wired” for finance.
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