May 30, 2016

Click on Kate's picture to friend her, message her, or read more of her blog posts!

You’ve likely heard that Harriet Tubman will be the face of the new $20 bill, but did you know that many impactful women of American history, as well as one man, will be featured on other bill denominations as well?  Gals, it’s about time.

Representing historic women on paper currency in the U.S. has been a long time coming.  In fact, it’s been over a century since a female face has been depicted on paper money.  As of 2016, Martha Washington and Pocahontas are the only women to have ever graced a greenback, while only three women have ever appeared on non-commemorative U.S. coins: Sacagawea, Helen Keller, and Susan B. Anthony.  (We’re not counting the fictional goddess, Liberty.) 

To appear on a U.S. bill, it's required that the person be well known in history and must be deceased.  The Secretary of the Treasury, together with the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, pick those worthy of the designs.

Five women influential to the women’s suffrage movement, Sojourner Truth, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and Alice Paul, will be added to the back of the $10 bill, while Alexander Hamilton (the first Treasury Secretary of the U.S.) will remain on the front.  Of course, this is significant due to the 1913 Women’s Suffrage Parade demanding Constitutional amendments for female voting rights on the steps of the Treasury Building. 

The $5 bill, on the other hand, will keep Honest Abe while adding portraits of Eleanor Roosevelt, Marian Anderson, and Martin Luther King, Jr. to its back, all of whom took part in important events at the Lincoln Memorial.  After being refused permission to sing in Constitution Hall in 1939 because of her race, gifted African American singer Marian Anderson, with the help of Eleanor Roosevelt, performed on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on Easter Sunday of that year.  Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech on the same steps in 1963.

If you were wondering, George Washington won’t be going anywhere.  As of 2001, it’s actually illegal to change the face of the $1 bill. 

The biggest change is the addition of Harriet Tubman, another staunch supporter of women’s voting rights.  Along with the aforementioned persons, Tubman will be the first African American in our nation’s history to appear on a U.S. banknote.  Born into slavery, Harriet Tubman helped over 300 slaves escape the South via the Underground Railroad in the mid-1800s, often wearing disguises and dressing in a soldier’s uniform.  She personally led 19 secret trips to free those still in slavery, at times armed with only a rifle and the knowledge of how to tell the weather, gather food, and follow stars. 

She will be replacing Andrew Jackson, our nation’s seventh President, on the front of the $20 bill.  Jackson will remain on the bill on the opposite side, a correlation the U.S Treasury Department’s website is unclear about.  In fact, nobody is really sure why he replaced Grover Cleveland on the $20 bill in 1928 to begin with.  Jackson himself hated paper money and personally tried to crush the idea of a national United States bank.  While treasury.gov couldn’t conclusively share the reasoning for this change, the website provides ample information regarding various symbolism on our bills including explanation about the Eye of Providence and the significance of the series of years and suffixes on paper money.

In a time where over half the United States’ population is female and eight years after the election of our first African American President, couldn’t we stand to be more representative?

Changes to bills are made every seven to ten years to deter counterfeiters, now even including tactual features to aid the blind.  These new bills, however, will not be in circulation until 2020 when the designs will be unveiled and not widely available until the 2030s. 

While it’s pleasing to see representation of a more diverse group of historical figures on our currency, the question still remains, why not bigger changes?  While no one would object to honoring the makers of American history, in a time where over half the United States’ population is female and eight years after the election of our first African American President, couldn’t we stand to be more representative?

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More Money Advice

Shark Tank’s Barbara Corcoran on the Smartest Investment You Can Make

4 Reasons You Should Be Investing Now

5 Investment Misconceptions for Making Money as a Millennial

September 01, 2015

Click on Ashley's picture to friend her, message her, or read more of her blog posts!

If you haven’t started investing, I don’t blame you!  It’s not something we’re taught growing up, it’s incredibly intimidating, and we’re scared to make a mistake and lose our hard-earned money.  There are entire TV channels, countless articles, and thousands of books dedicated to the topic of investing and to make matters worse, these resources often provide us with the opposite advice.  Yikes!  What’s a gal to do? 

While I completely understand why we put off investing, I urge you to give it a try!  Here are my four reasons why you should start investing now:

1)  We learn by doing.

How many times have you studied everything you could possibly learn about something only to find that you didn’t really understand it until you gave it a try?  Think about your time in college.  No matter what you learned about life after college or how many skills you gained to prepare you, nothing compared with the value you received from real world experience.  Investing is no different.  You can read and research until the cows come home, but until you open a brokerage account, purchase an investment, and experience what it’s like to own something in the market, you won’t fully ‘get’ it.

2)  You have enough money to start.

One of the most common reasons I hear that people haven’t started investing is that they don’t have enough money.  Maybe that’s why you haven’t started yet.  We assume that investing is just for millionaires or for Wall Street bankers, but you don’t need much money at all.  Did you know you could invest in all of the largest 500 companies in the U.S. for under $200?  Yes, that’s true.  You can own a piece of all 500 companies on the S&P 500 for under $200.  What are you waiting for?

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3)  You’ll reach your goals faster.

If you are part of the bSmart community, I assume you’re pretty awesome.  You’re most likely up to big things and have some pretty amazing and ambitious goals.  Guess what?  Investing helps you achieve your long-term goals faster.  If you want to achieve financial freedom so that you don’t have to work, can invest in property, travel the world or [insert your biggest goal here], investing your savings will help you get there faster.  Not only do you have the potential to earn more on your savings when you invest it, but you also get to invest your earnings year after year, which is called compounding.  Warren Buffet calls compound interest the 8th wonder of the world because it allows for the accumulation of wealth.  Your money grows and your money growth grows. 

4)  If you don’t invest, you are leaving hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars on the table.

Not only does investing help you reach your goals faster, it also helps you earn thousands, if not millions more over the course of your lifetime.  Talk about a raise!  Let’s say you save $5,000 this year and expect to be able to save an additional $1,000 each year going forward.  That means you will have saved $5,000 this year, $6,000 next year and $7,000 the year after. 

For the sake of simplicity, let’s also assume that you plan to use all of these savings for long-term goals.  Over 20 years, you will have saved $315,000.  If you put that money in a high interest savings account with a return of 1%, you’ll have almost $340,115.  Not bad. 

But, if you invested that savings in the S&P 500, which has had an average return of around 9.4% over the last 20 years according to Yahoo Finance, you’d have almost $708,000 saved.  That is more than double the amount you set aside.  Imagine what the difference would be if you saved even more than that!

Long story short, don’t cheat yourself by putting off investing.  Getting started is much more important than being perfect and I’m here to help!  I promise, it’s not as scary as you might think.

What’s holding you back from investing?  What’s one thing you can commit to doing this week that will move you forward in the process?  No matter where you are in life or how long you’ve been putting this off, it’s time to get your earn on!

Ashley Feinstein Gerstley founded Knowing Your Worth where she demystifies the world of personal finance and money for her clients whether they are creating a financial plan, negotiating compensation or paying down student loans.  Her Savvy Investor Course launches on September 8th and will have participants investing confidently and competently in just three months.

Register for Ashley's Savvy Investor Course here!

Information provided on and available from this website does not constitute any investment recommendation.  No representation or warranty, express or implied, is given as to the accuracy of the information provided on and available from this website.  Neither we, nor the author, has taken into account your objectives, financial situation or needs. Before making an investment decision, you need to consider whether this information is appropriate to your objectives, financial situation and needs.

April 13, 2016

 Click on Polly's picture to friend her, message her, or read more of her blog posts!

It's a rare afternoon in Manhattan when you get to share the same air with a woman as powerful and as articulate as millionaire Barbara Corcoran.  Best known for her firecracker personality and smart investments on ABC’s hit Shark Tank, I count myself lucky to have had the opportunity to get to know the woman behind the national best-selling book, If You Don’t Have Big Breasts, Put Ribbons On Your Pigtails (an unlikely-titled business book that every female entrepreneur should add to her library).  While endorsing an up-and-coming financial wellness platform, Zebit, Corcoran addressed a room full of eager women by relaying helpful hints, charming anecdotes and how-to’s for avoiding financial missteps and stress.  Corcoran, along with Zebit founder Michael Thiemann, have deemed the month of March as ‘Financial Stress Awareness Month’, citing that women and millennials are particularly susceptible to the pitfalls and hazards of financial stress such as credit card debt, looming student loans, and physical ailments.  Over the course of the afternoon, I found myself empowered by Corcoran’s success story and the idea that awareness and proactivity lead to a healthy and happy bank account.

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About Getting Started

You know her.  You love her.  But do you know exactly how she managed to become the millionaire and television personality she is today?  By utilizing grit, ingenuity and imagination — that’s how.  Corcoran grew up in a typical Catholic family as one of many: ‘Walk in my shoes for a minute.  I’m at school with nine brothers and sisters and I spend my whole day just dreaming.  I daydream about stuff I do well, which is rooted in imagination.  By the time I was in my twenties, I had twenty-three jobs.  I was a people person and I made networking work for me.  New York was exploding and I was in the heart of it.  I was a chump in school, but a champ outside… the lesson to be learned from my experience is that all kids are different.  You use your drive to pursue your dream… I say it to poke fun, but the three dyslexic kids in my family are all rich, and the conventional ones are not.  Every kid is different and that’s good.  Do work differently.’ 

About Investments

Today, Corcoran sits at the top of an investment empire, citing that ‘taking chances almost always makes for happy endings.’  When asked about the smartest investment a woman can make to set herself up for financial success, she smiled knowingly.  ‘The best investment you can ever make is in yourself… Be hungry to build yourself up and believe in your business because you are your own moneymaker.  No one else.  When people come to me and ask where they should put their money, I immediately ask where their business could use it.  The most useful use for your money is in your own big dreams.’

Corcoran went on to detail specifics about how she had utilized this methodology both when she was just getting started and when looking at investors on Shark Tank.  ‘I created my real estate business with a start-up of only $1,000 [a loan from her boyfriend], and I turned it into so much more by going for it… When I see someone come on the show, who really has that attitude of being all in — smart people, but all in — I listen.’

I found myself, being mowed over like a little piece of grass by the men in the room.

About Having It All

Corcoran is the ideal example of a bSmart woman who balances it all.  From her notoriety on television, to her various investment endeavors, to her happy home life, at 67 years young, she is an inspiration.  In this same light, one of the more prolific and interesting questions she answered that afternoon was how motherhood had changed her as a business owner and boss.  Her answer was both inspiring and honest.  ‘I felt insecure about having children, but when it happened it put my life in a wonderful sort of aggravated balance.  Every employee working for me said I was softer, kinder.  Not that I had been an a**hole before mind you!  But from the age of 23-46, work was my baby, and my time and energy reflected that.  I used to be the first person in the office at 7:00 or 7:30 AM, walking around and putting to-do post-its on people’s desks, cleaning up, and getting ahead.  When my baby came along, all that changed.  I enjoyed the walk to pre-school even if it got me into work significantly later.  And ultimately, I sold my business.  Now, people — women — ask me if I had chosen to have kids earlier, if I think I could still have managed to build what I’ve built.  And my answer, like it or not, is no.  No.  I couldn’t have.’ 

Corcoran followed up by saying everyone balances work and home differently, and what works for one woman is not the gospel for all women.  But even so, in an age that still puts pressure on a young woman’s choice of when is right for her to have children (if at all), it was empowering to see an example like Corcoran who truly has managed to have it all even while defying societal norms.          

About Shark Tank 

Corcoran couldn’t take the floor for more than 30 seconds without someone bringing up the monstrous fish in the room: Shark Tank.  Corcoran’s current bread and butter, Shark Tank is a television show that centers around a panel of ‘sharks’ or high-rolling, business savvy investors, presented with pitch after pitch of new products and services of which they can invest and make deals.  Products have included everything from clothing lines, to up-and-coming apps, to holistic remedies and food products, to the internet sensation ‘I Want To Draw A Cat for You’ (look it up).  Now in season 7, the show has garnered accolades and quite a following, but as Corcoran would tell you, it wasn’t always smooth sailing on the voyage to Shark Tank.    

‘When I initially heard about the show I thought it sounded amazing.  I was recruited and signed the contract without even reading it.  Three days before I was supposed to fly out to LA to begin taping — I had just bought a new wardrobe from Bergdorf Goodman — the producers contacted me and said they had decided at the last minute to go with a different shark, and I would be the fallback if something else went wrong.  I was devastated.  For me, the word fallback was worse than rejection.  Way worse.  So in that moment, I decided to be bold.  I wrote the producers a rejection email literally saying that rejection is my good luck charm and from my greatest rejections have come most of my multi-million dollar successes — so thanks for the good luck charm!  I learned later that out of the 60 rejections they sent, all to men, I was the only person who had the guts to respond and write an email back standing up for myself.  Of course, it ended up working out and now I’m a shark, but it wasn’t without that email, that step of bravery.’

Having spent years in business prior to her experience on Shark Tank, Corcoran was asked what her biggest challenge has been as a female entrepreneur, financial advisor and businesswoman.  In spite of all the challenges she has faced in working for herself, her answer still went back to her most current success.

‘For the first two seasons of Shark Tank I was more afraid than I have ever been in my life.  People ask if that was fear of making a bad investment, and that was not the cause at all.  I was afraid of not being heard.  For those who don’t know, we tape the show in ten-hour increments.  They are long days.  I found myself, being mowed over like a little piece of grass by the men in the room.  My credentials didn’t matter, my intelligence didn’t matter — I couldn’t get a word in.  So those first two seasons, I look like a really polite secretary to the other guys.  It wasn’t until I started asking myself what a man would do in my shoes that I felt like I was able to be heard.  While that in and of itself isn’t okay — having to parallel everything you say and do to what men say and do — it got me shouting.  That’s what got me heard.’ 

I was afraid of not being heard.

About Zebit

Designed to specifically aid against financial stress, Zebit, as attested by founder and CEO Michael Thiemann, is a real solution.  Endorsed by Corcoran, who lent her expertise in explaining the values and impact of such a model, Zebit is a free financial benefit employers can utilize to help their employees make smarter financial choices and ultimately, minimize workplace stress to foster a more productive environment.  Available both online and as an app, Zebit boasts features such as interactive financial training, instant budgeting, personalized ‘Zebitscore’ analysis for financial growth, and a marketplace filled with quality products that can be paid for via Zebitline, a plan that has no interest, hidden fees, or credit check.  Sounds too good to be true, right?  Well this amazing option exists, and thanks to the endorsement of Corcoran, is quickly on the rise.        

To learn more about Zebit and all of its game-changing offerings, check out the website here.  To see Corcoran in action, tune into Shark Tank Fridays at 9:00 PM on ABC.  I, for one, can’t wait to see what this inspiring woman invests in next!  

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More Money Advice

4 Reasons You Should Be Investing Now

5 Investment Misconceptions for Making Money as a Millennial

Money Saving Tips to Live Large on Little

June 29, 2015

Click on Patti's picture to friend her, message her, or read more of her blog posts!

In late May, the Huffington Post ran an article citing a study that found women to be more successful investors than men.  The actual study was conducted by SigFig and analyzed 750,000 different investment portfolios, considering the collected data with regard to gender.  The findings were headlined by the statistic that in 2014, 'female investors had 12 percent better returns than male investors.'

Oddly enough, one of the main reasons used to support these statistics is that men are more confident in their financial decision-making.  Yet as the Huffington Post's article states, the more confident an investor is, the more likely he or she is to be overactive, and end up losing money.

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These are encouraging findings for women managing their own investment portfolios, and yet I can't help but feel that the ideal scenario is one in which female investors are just as confident as anyone else but remain disciplined enough to keep generating positive results!  Confidence can be hard to come by in modern markets, however.  That's especially true given that despite the rebound of the U.S. economy, the stock market is as difficult as ever to navigate.  So, to help foster increased confidence and enduring discipline, here is a quick look at five popular misconceptions about modern investment, and how understanding them can help strengthen your portfolio.

1) The News Fosters Real-Time Investments

A lot of people who manage their own investments, either as a full-time job or on the side, believe that paying close attention to news sources like CNBC means being able to invest in real-time.  Yet, as is pointed out in a similar post about investment misconceptions at Karagosian Financial Services, automated computers and professional traders will always be quicker than a private investor.  Additionally, real-time news isn't always accurate or easily deciphered, which makes immediate trading based on news somewhat risky.  Every investor should pay close attention to the news, but don't succumb to the illusion that being the first to hear an update means being the most poised to invest accordingly.

2) The Market Is Rigged

This is an increasingly popular opinion among private investors, though frankly it's not helping anybody.  The degree to which this is a misconception is up for debate; it's certain that the market is deeply manipulated, and that certain professionals, hedge fund companies, automated systems, etc. can have advantages.  However, to call it 'rigged' is somewhat dramatic and carries a pessimistic sentiment that isn't going to do any investor any good.  My advice to investors: ignore the idea of rigging, accept that you may not have every advantage in trading, and do the best you can.

Female investors had 12 percent better returns than male investors.

3) Some Investments Are 'Safe'

'Safe' is one of the most dangerous adjectives in the world of investing, and it's one that unfortunately gets tossed around all too often.  In particular, many associate the term with resources like gold and other precious metals, which are usually viewed as necessary elements for the diversification and long-term stability of a portfolio.  In describing the very concept of gold investment, FXCM writes 'gold is the most popular investment of all precious metals, with many investors buying it to diversify risk.'  The description goes on to discuss how the gold standard is no longer used in any world economies, resulting in a standardized universal price that many use as justification for investing as a 'hedge' against currencies.  The thinking is that while currency values fluctuate, gold remains safe or stable.  Gold is not the only resource with this type of misconception attached to it, but the popular precious metal's plummeting prices in recent years demonstrates just how risky it is to buy in to talk of any investment being 'safe.'

4) Mutual Funds Are Hassle-Free

Particularly for beginner investors or young people unfamiliar with managing their own portfolios, mutual funds are commonly recommended as simple or hassle-free options.  Indeed, the idea is appealing, and in many cases appropriate; investing in a mutual fund basically means trusting a professional investment firm with a pre-arranged bundle of stocks designed to use diversity in a way that makes the overall package likely to make money over time.  In short, put your money into a strategic investment package without managing the strategy on your own.  I'd never advise an investor to avoid mutual funds without knowing the specific circumstances, as they can be perfectly viable options.  However, don't go into it believing that such an investment style is hassle-free.  Fees for transactions can be expensive, and selecting the right fund to begin with can be very stressful.  This investment still requires time and money.

5) All Investments Are Expensive

Sometimes investors are scared off by certain transactions because fees can add up over time.  Also, investing on its own is expensive.  While it's true that these fees can add up, it's important for strategic investors to recognize that different transactions can be more affordable than others.  For example, mutual funds often involve heftier fees than the individual purchase of a few stocks here and there.  Alternative resources like the precious metals discussed earlier are available for purchase on private websites with relatively manageable fees.  And recently, we've even seen the rise of new technologies and services like the increasingly popular Robinhood app, which is designed to allow investments completely free of transaction fees.  The best strategy in the end is to be wary of investment costs, but don't assume every transaction is expensive.

Patti Conner is a private entrepreneur and freelance writer based in Seattle, Wash.  She writes frequently on the topics of business education, entrepreneurship, and personal finance strategies. Follow Patti on twitter @Patti_Conner14.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the position of bSmartguide.com.  If you require financial advice, you should contact an independent registered financial adviser.  Information provided on and available from this website does not constitute any investment recommendation.  No representation or warranty, express or implied, is given as to the accuracy of the information provided on and available from this website.  Neither we nor the author has taken into account your objectives, financial situation or needs. Before making an investment decision, you need to consider whether this information is appropriate to your objectives, financial situation and needs.

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