Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Researchers from McKinsey recently determined that women spend less time on the job than men in comparable roles in career paths eight point six years for women versus ten years for men, and that they were more likely to make decisions putting them in roles in industries that were dying. Gosh, it's kind of it's really grim. Yeah, large career gaps, especially during child rearing years, and the desire for more flexible work took
a toll. Listen to this, Carol. Such time and career choices, they said, docked women's lifetime pay by a cool half million dollars.
That's a lot.
Women, they urged, need to choose careers in fast grown fields and spend more time on the job.
Rap.
That's a strong message. I mean, that's a big difference. And if you think about people living longer and like maybe on their own, like how do you support yourself?
Simone Foxman writing about this for Blueberg News, check out that story and more if you're interested.
All right, curious what Alison Kassik has to say about all of this. She's the author and journalist who has worked at CNN and is a freelance correspondent for ABC News. Equal Page just one of the things she tackles in her deeply personal new book. It's entitled What's Up with Women and Money? How to do all the financial stuff You've been avoiding. She joins us from Long Island. You know, we've been talking about your book, and you know very deeply personal your story. You go there right in the
beginning of the book. Tell us about and share with our audience why you said about writing this.
Yeah, great to be on your show, Thanks for having me. So I wrote this because yes, I was CNN's business correspondent, often reporting from the New York Stock Exchange. But at the beginning of my time there, I wasn't involved in my own financial life. I let my husband handle all things financial, and that was That was not a good decision because when the marriage went't bad, when you know, I wanted to get out of the marriage, I felt stuck.
I stayed in the marriage longer than I should have, years longer than I should have, because he kind and knew where all the money was and how to handle all the money things. And I had two kids under the age of ten. At the time. You know, what if I made a mistake, what if I lost all of our money? The difference is is that I just didn't have the confidence to make those big financial decisions.
I didn't have the experience of making the decisions over the course of my marriage, and that in essence cut down on my confidence in my ability to make those decisions. But as I got through that, I realized that there are a lot of women, different kinds of jobs, high income scale to low income scale, married, divorced, widowed, single, who feel the way I felt that. You know, they don't have any kind of involvement or as much involvement
as they should have in their own financial lives. And it's not something that women talk about because, you know, we don't want to be seen as unintelligent. There's also a lot of embarrassment and shame around it as well.
Why do you think men are the ones who end up doing this stuff in a lot of relationships? Like you have a chapter in here on how to buy a car with confidence, understanding insurance, negotiating in your words like a man. Why do men? Why are men the ones who usually do this in relationships?
You know, I think if I could answer that in one reason only, there are I think there are many reasons, but I think the biggest reason is that it is cultural. There's a cultural aspect that women have with money, and I think it starts early when we are girls, and whether we like it or not, girls and boys are socialized differently. And it's not that girls are told not
to care about money. It's just that boys are often introduced to the family finances earlier, They're encouraged to be financially independent earlier, and so you've got these girls who grow up being uninvolved, and they can grow up to be women who avoid money issues, and that avoidance can be compounding in the way that you avoid something long enough,
you become fearful of it. And so lack of interest can lead to a lack of information, and that lack of information can lead to a lack of confidence in being able to manage all things financial, you know, whether it's managing your spending, managing your debt, being able to invest, and being able to negotiate your salary. All of that hits confidence. And I think I think if I'm going to answer it in one answer only, I'd say it's the culture. It's got to be the culture.
So you know, it's it's it's interesting. Carol mentioned this is a deeply personal book, and I mean it really is. You're not just you don't. You don't just talk about your relationship and your marriage that prompted you to write this, but also your upbringing and your relationship with your father. And I think a lot of people would say that that was really challenging. I'm wondering, though, as a parent now, how you make sure that your kids are equipped to make these decisions independently.
Very good question. I'm not a perfect parent, and I've got two kids once nineteen, my son is nineteen, my daughter is twenty two. They are invested in the market. Yes, I've taught them how to do it, and I've encouraged them to consistently invest as much as they can. I've explained to them the difference between savings and investments and what the difference is, and why it's important to invest your way to wealth because you can't save your way
to wealth. You know. The thing is these things are not taught in school, so there's only so much parents can do. And really, I think so much of this is is really just taking the effort to learn it on your own or through osmosis, or hopefully you've got parents to guide you. I'm certainly trying to guide my kids as much as possible.
You know, it's interesting, Allison. We talk about this a lot here, and I feel like you've obviously you know, you're a journalist, and I know this topic has come up over the years, and I would say for those of us who've been doing it for a while, just like yourself, I feel like I could go back ten years and have this conversation. Twenty years, I could have this conversation. I think about CEOs, female CEOs who've come in and talked about even that in their households to
some extent. So I'm wondering, you know, why haven't we we've talked about financial literacy forever. Why isn't that happening? What is it that we are missing? Because you can teach stuff at home, right, But I wonder if we made it part of our curriculum from kind of a younger age, teaching kids about money, the importance of money and all that good stuff, how different things might be.
Oh, I am one hundred percent with you, and to be honest with you, I don't know why this stuff isn't really being taught, and I think it's actually beginning to be taught. It's being thrown into the curriculum. I don't know how much really, And I'm wondering if maturity has a lot to do with it, because can you imagine getting into all the finer details of investing with a fifteen sixteen year old there's all I think there's also maybe a mindset here of younger of younger people.
I know when I was younger, and it may have just been because we didn't have access to investment platforms like we do today. Right in fractionally investing, you know, I think that I think that you think that you have got, you know, fifteen years old. Let's say they bring it into the schools at fifteen the curriculum at fifteen years old, you'll pay attention. But I guess how seriously will the kid take it because they think they've
got forever to start investing. And I think unless the curriculum really hits home about the importance of investing early and consistently, but investing early, maybe then it'll catch on. But I think you make a really good point, and I did. I did write this book through a journalist's lens.
So not only did I get the tips and tools of financial literacy, I wanted to tell stories, so not just inspirational ones through the celebrities that I interviewed, but also names you wouldn't recognize a lot of these people. A lot of these women are anonymous because they are ashamed that they're in this situation. So I, for example, I interviewed a venture capitalist who who described money as
something that she was fearful of. And she at fifty three years old, she hadn't invested in one retirement account, didn't know the basics of personal financing, and and really was felt overwhelmed. And this is a woman in venture capital, in the venture capital space who was highly highly successful, but she had not invested in herself because she didn't
have the confidence. I mean, it is really amazing that we can we can be badasses at our jobs, but then in our own life there's this disconnect that's really inexplicable.
Yeah, and I guess what I would say in terms of I agree with you, like a teenager, they're going to be like yo, you know investing, you know, Warren Buffett, like all that stuff might go past, but just the idea of debt versus not debt savings versus, you know, just kind of those kinds of things are like you know, you even talk I love this idea. I think I even remember my parents like having an envelope in the drawer of cash that was like the cash for the
month or something. And we don't really do that anymore, right, everything's digital, but having that concept of like a digital envelope of this money is my spending money, this is my savings money. Like, those concepts are really clean and pure and I think make a lot of sense. And I do think about even today of giving a kid and saying, here's some spending money. That's it. You've got it for the month, figure it out, Like that's teaching them to budget.
Right right and getting them involved. And as parents, you know your kids are watching you. They're watching if you're piling on dead onto your credit cards, they're watching you know how you shop around for things if you broke, if the refrigerator's broken, do you just buy whatever? Or are you taking them with you to go shop around and get the or at least online to shop around and get the cheapest price. You know, I think involving
children in money details is really a first step. It seems so simplistic, but it really is a way to get them involved.
Okay, we have been talking about your book in the newsroom and you coming on, and I have a bunch of questions, actually from one of my producers. We only have time for one. We only have about a minute left here. But if you've got two four oh one K plans from different employers, how do you determine whether to merge it or just leave it alone.
I've been told, I've been told to merge them, but you're asking the wrong person. I'm not a certified financial planner. I can't even I can't even give you financial advice. Okay, that is not my realm. I So, like I said, I approached this book as a journalist. I did research and interviews to get these to get these topics on paper. And yeah, they'll have to go talk to their at CFP.
All right, that's fair.
Actually good advice.
Actually that's great advice. And she's a journalist too, and I know she'll end up doing research. Thirty seconds left here. There's a lot in the book. It's very usable, it's really fun. What's one piece of advice you want to leave our audience with just quickly.
Ladies, be involved in all things finel in your house. Have great visibility onto what's happening. Know what your assets are, know your debt, know who your beneficiaries are on your accounts, know the passwords to your accounts, and especially know how much debt you are caring and get involved in the tax process as well. It's so as we're nearing tax time here, be involved in filing your taxes.
All right, really fine, good luck with everything. Alison Kassick joining us her new book, What's Up with Women and Money? How to do all the financial stuff you've been avoiding, Joining us from Long Island,