Money Talks

let's talk about our salaries. How much do you make? Becca, I don't want to talk about that, whyever or not? Because I don't know. We live in a society, man. Yeah, people, people including myself, and I'm guilty of this. We don't like talking about our salaries. It's like talking about politics and religion. It's like if you bring it up with somebody you don't know that, well, it's pretty likely that somebody is going to get offended. And I just want

to avoid the uncomfortable situation. But that's just me to see what some other people think. I decided to ask some of our coworkers if they would tell me their salaries. Would you tell me your salary? Yeah? Really? Yeah? Why not? What is it? It's WHOA, I can't believe you just told me that. Would you tell me your salary? No? Why not? It just seems taboo and like culturally unacceptable to tell people your salary. Would you tell me your salary? Yeah? Okay?

What is it I make? I think employees should share their salaries. I think it's a way for employees like banned together and extract more money for their labor. Would you tell me your salary? Yes? Okay? What is it? Would you tell me your salary? It's not something that I discussed often with strangers or even coworkers, but like my close network of like friends and family, that would

be something that I would discuss with them. Probably not, I'd be a little hesitant because I've been somewhere where employees have shared, and then I've seemed like there was like a tension almost. It makes people feel less valued if they know someone else doing similar work is making more. So I was surprised by how many people told me what they make, But there were still some people who were, like me, uncomfortable with sharing for what I thought were

some pretty legitimate reasons. And yet there have been arguments right that salary transparency, which is sort of a buzzworthy phrase these days, is great. If everybody knew what everybody else made, there would be a lot more fairness and parity between men and women, right and when you I think, especially with negotiating, which is something that's particularly hard for women to do already, not having any information just makes

it a hard conversation. Even if you are making the exact right amount of money, or more than your coworker, you you might not assume that. And then, of course, on the darkest end of this, if you're actually being discriminated against for a variety of reasons and not being paid just because you are a woman or minority, then you might not You won't know that unless there is transparency,

and transparency has has helped people. So there is this movement for more transparency which comes in a few different flavors. And there are companies now where everybody knows what everyone else makes. Right. There's one very high profile example in the company is called Buffer. What does Buffer do? They're a social media platform? Okay, and at first the most extreme example because they post everyone's salary online, so it's not just public within the organization, it's public to everybody

in the outside world. And they post the salaries and then they have this calculator where they show kind of how the salary where it comes from. So various factors go into salaries, such as the cost of living of a place, how many years experience someone has, what their job title is, and that all makes the salary, and that's all completely public. And they started this experiment some time ago. Yeah, it's been a few years, you know. They did it for fairness in general, and and it

should close the wage gap. But they did a study recently this year that they found that there was still a wage gap, right because there were specific factors going into each person's salary that was resulting in a gender based wage gap. Yeah, things that they couldn't really control. For example, they just happened to hire women for job

types that paid less. So an engineer will make more than a community manager UM and women and senior roles and community management, but that makes less than a man and a senior role in engineering, And knowing where the salaries come from doesn't change that, sure, but it would be useful to know if you were a woman and engineering and you were making less than So that wasn't happening,

But that kind of discrimination did go away. That's good, and it's it's also we're talking about private companies or public companies that don't have to post this information online. But there's some there's some industries where you actually do have full salary transparency. I mean most city and state employees have public salaries, and that means that it's the public's right to know how much you're elected officials are making, or your local you know, city government employees or whatever.

And then in those cases there is a very narrow range of what you would be making. You just hit benchmarks and you make a certain amount of money and there are caps, and it can't really be an other way because everybody knows what you're paid. Yeah, and I've talked to some people who work for public universities who have had salary transparency their whole career, and they do have a really different relationship and outlook on their salary being transparent, and I think it's it's a little bit

they knew what they signed up for. And also, if you're going into public service, you're probably not doing it for the money. It's not the same kind of cutthroat you judge each other based on what you make. Environment so it is a little different. Okay, so fixing the wage gap is obviously more nuanced and complex than just making everybody's salaries known to everybody else. And maybe that's the first step, but there's obviously a lot more going on.

But let's say everybody was getting paid perfectly fair salary, what the world? The next question is what do you do with that money? And are there actually ways that women are handicapping themselves by not investing that money in the same way that men do. That's exactly what we

are here to talk to our guest about. Sally Crawcheck is, apart from being the co founder of l Vest, which helps women invest their money, is a wealth management expert who worked her way up the financial services ladder at places like Bank of America and Merrill Lynch, and in recent years she's dedicated her career to helping women in business. Is that I'm like, you're a feminist for the capital f these days. Yes, that's correct. I love that intro.

Lately your talking points has been the investing gap. The we hear a lot about the wealth gap or the wage gap between men and women, but you are drawing attention to another aspect of difference between men and women and how they invest. So so we talk a lot about the gender pay gap, and let me say something to start off with, closing the gender pay gap is

a great thing for everybody. If we could close the gender pay gap, we could actually research shows closed the retirement savings gap by nearly a third, so it's a big deal. It puts money into the economy, it helps families be better off, it's all good. There's another gender gap that we don't talk about at all, which is

the gender investing gap. Men invest to a greater extent than women do, and the gender investing gap can cost some women more, in some cases quite a bit more over the course of their lives, and the gender pay gap does, but we haven't talked about it. Again, for your listeners who aren't women, who are saying I don't know, why do I care? You care because closing that gap will drive capital into the markets um and will also help close the retirement savings gap. And it's good for

all of us to have these gaps closed. So one question I have and other people might have, is our men and women not investing as much because women don't have as much money. That no, that is a reason, but it's not the reason. And in fact, what really really really bothers me is when the research will come out and they'll say, oh, women and retire with two thirds of money of men and some personal finance journalists,

none of whom work at this company. I'm sure. Well, then say well, yeah, women should invest more, But that's not the real issue. It's the gender pay gap. It's sort of like saying, oh, my gosh, I broke my arm and I broke my leg, but until I can fix my leg, I'm not going to fix my arm. Right, So, yes, is some of it that it's they don't have as much money, sure, but that's not the whole of the issue.

And stopping there and saying well, we'll wait till the gender pay gap is fixed, is I think very shortsighted. So what are and done? Yeah? Okay, so not to be dumb about it, but what are the differences in the characteristics of or the investing styles of men vers Well, it's a great question because there are so many articles out there about mistakes people make when they invest, and they typically are around overtrading, falling in love with your winners,

selling your losers too, quickly paying too high fees. But da da da da da, And it's sort of sort as activity based mistakes. Wait a minute, those are mistakes men make. Women make different mistakes. Those mistakes women make our first and foremost not investing enough. The other mistake women make, and this is gonna sound counterintuitive, is they wait until they believe that they are fully financially educated. So almost every women we know, I see your head nodding,

I'm going to invest. In fact, I was in Silicon Valley a handful of weeks ago and heard from a fellow venture capital partner his girlfriend was going to take a couple of weeks off this summer so she could learn to invest. Right, it doesn't take that long, but there's a view of I need to get smarter. And so all these women that we know have stacks of books next to the desk and they don't invest, and

it costs them a fortune. So an example, if you're making call it eight dollars a year, you are putting of your income in the bank, which is what experts recommend us a lot. But let's go with it for a second. You're putting in the bank instead of investing, and you wait ten years. Right, Oh, I've busy. I waited years. I hear it all the time, people waited ten twenty years. That costs you an average of a hundred dollars a day. That wait, right, a hundred dollars

a day. And so we underestimate the cost of waiting and the cost of not investing substantially. I loved reading about the thing about waiting until you're fully educated, or waiting until you feel like you are done learning everything you need to know before you start doing something, because that that seems to be something that can stim me

women in other areas. They say women as opposed to men will only apply to jobs if they have a hundred percent of the qualifications, or you know, just tend to sort of wait to do things until they feel completely confident in their own abilities. And it's almost like you're saying a little bit of fool hardiness here, like a little bit of jumping in without I wouldn't call it full hardiness. But but look, Francesca, did you love

getting a's at school? Of course you did right back, and you loved getting right absolutely, And so we we wait. And so here's the example. When I was running Smith Barney back in the day of our clients did not know what a managed account was, even though it was our largest product. Neither gender would ask. When you ask the guys, why won't you ask it, essentially was I'm a guy, I don't ask for directions. That's what we do. And when you ask the women, they'd say, I'm a gal,

I don't want to bother. That's what we do. The difference was the men would buy it and the women wouldn't. Now that full so neither knew either NW. So both were almost I don't want to say equally, but neither were as financially educated as they quote should have been. But the gentleman and biding the women wouldn't. And then you go, okay, who just made the mistake? Given that, and as women sometimes we were like, oh, it's the guys, right,

because they bought something they didn't know. But the truth is, even without having full financial knowledge, they were getting the returns over time as a result of it. So because they were starting earlier as well, that's right, because they were doing it. And so I think the biggest red herring out there for women is we we buy into the we need more financial education. But then we're so

busy we never get it and so we don't invest. Now, I've built elvest, which is a digital investment platform for women, and part of what we do is we try to take away the jargon that we women will try to understand and just have you make decisions about things that you can control. Yeah, So hearing you talk about the mistakes that men make and the way women act, I completely relate to it. And also hearing about the men really stresses me out because I don't want to be

in that position, probably because I'm a woman. You know. In addition to lves, what are some ways that women can get into investing in a way that makes them feel comfortable? Well, look, do it, um, I would say, whether you use elves or not, whatever, but buying diversified, low cost investments, you know, in a diversified managed et

F portfolio, that's the way to go. Go to whatever your broker is, whatever your financial advisor, who you're comfortable with us, and say, look, just put me an inexpensive, highly diversified investments. To my opinion, you have to start there. If you want to, then listen to Bloomberg all day and figure out you know, the euro is going to outperform the end, etcetera, etcetera. You can do that, but by not starting with something, you're giving up too much ground.

The other thing I would say is Wall Street is pretty mail, actually, and we should keep that in mind. It's pretty mail in that the majority of the employees in the financial advisor segment or male, about eighty five percent male financial advisors. The terms and the words we

use are very war and sports. That's one of my big pet peeves that I talk about the sports metaphor and and and you know, Bloomberg isn't as much as some but the sports it looks like sports programming sometimes right the rara, this section segment is winning, this is outperforming, this is beating, this is we're picking this winner. And so there's sort of a very male orientation war and sports. On top of that, the symbol of Wall Street is

as it's above. Didn't know, you're absolutely correct. In fact, the business I used to run, Marriledge, it's able. What's a ball. It's a phallic symbol. Yes, oh we went there, we went there. Okay, that's podcast later, But you know, you don't. I haven't talked to many women who have said you know that industry just speaks to me just

it's me. It's me, And so the advice I would give his, look, we're not going to change the whole industry overnight, but we should recognize there's a male orientation. It's talking to them more and sort of fight through that. It's true. It sort of reminds me of this sounds fairly beside the point, But I just went shopping for a car with my partner recently, and in classic car dealership style, basically all of the sales people, male or female,

addressed only him and not me. And I was furious about it, of course, But then I realized that the questions that he was asking and the things that he was talking about, we're not particularly educated. You know. He sort of like, I want a leather and taster, and I want and I want, you know, like a sun roof. And I would have felt embarrassed walking in and saying those things because I would have felt like I had to do months of research on chassis and whatever to

sound smart. And he didn't worry about sounding smart because he could just be a guy and go in there and say whatever he wants. That sort of made me realize that like, it isn't about them having a shared language. It's it's also about just being free to talk without

worrying too much about sounding down. But we hear that in the financial services industry again and again that even when when we used to ask our financial advisors, they'd meet with couples and we'd say how much time did you spend talking to each of them, they'd think, no, one quite fifty fifty because the guy and I we

talked about the football game. But it's and we would tape them and then we'd play it back and it would be like and so of no wonder then that what we saw was that men would leave their financial advisor at a very low rate. I mean, if the client didn't die, I'd leave less than two percent of

the time, I mean very low rate. But in the year after his death, the husband's death, the woman would leave at a rate of grader than seventy zero because she needed to find somebody that spoke to her exactly because the research tells you she says that he didn't talk to you know, he the financial advisor didn't talk to me for twenty years, forty years, played golf with my husband, didn't play golf with me, talked about sports, didn't talk to me about what I'm interested in, you know,

whatever that is. Um just you know, just I feel I felt dissed. We're doing options trading strategies. I never understood it. No one ever took me to lunch and explained it, and the financial advisors would typically be sort of surprised by this um and then forget it once it went from her to the next generation. We used to keep the assets less than two percent of the time. So starting early, finding people that you can relate to, regardless of whether or not they relate to your husband

if you're a woman. Those are all great tips for women. But I have to ask, since starting early is so important, many people entering the job force or the workforce are starting out with a negative net worth because they have student debt and not much else. What is the correct amount of money to have before you start investing? And it's a great question. And what do you do if if you're so broke that paying off your debt is the only thing you can think about, Well, you should

pay off your debt, is the answer. Another question I think young people debt have is that they wonder if they should put any money in there for a one k or just like you said, pay off your debt. Yeah, I think I think it looks for oh one k is tax deferred savings. So it's fantastic and oh my goodness, whoa if you happen to work for an employer who does a match, that is called free money. If they're

given away free money, take free money. And so you're gonna wanna look at that and say, Okay, the four oh one K if I'm young, should be mostly in equities if there's a match. That's you know, the stock markets have returned on average over the past many decades

and and a half percent a year. I'm not projecting any means that it will do that again, but jeez, if you could put that into equities and have a match, you know, one for one match, holl of ason you're talking about, you know, if it does as well as it did historically, you know, close return any that's not bad, right, So that would overcome a student loan that can be a lower single digit rate type of cost for you.

I also wondering if somebody so you paid off your student loans and now you're someone like me, a young professional who's making money, doesn't I don't have any debt? What should I be doing? Very lucky? I really relate to so many of the things you said, Like I do have money sitting in a savings account? Is that dumb? Right? You know, what's some advice that you can get that kind of So do you have three months of your salary set aside in a savings account in case of

an emergency? That's the second thing you do. Because stuff happens. Stuff happens. I really did not think I was going to get fired from my jobs. I mean, I don't know my business that I was running was I had a plan and it was the only one that was growing at the company, and you know, you just sort of feel like you're okay, and then they re orged me out. Likewise, I don't know. I was married to the man I loved, and I really thought he loved me too, But he loved my friend more than he

loved me. So that was awkward. Those things happened to me, And actually I would say, I know, I I I've been trying to make the argument for so freaking long that if, oh if my husband would cheat on me, your husband might cheat on you or your girlfriend or your partner whoever, and most people like whatever, But you know, jay Z cheated on Beyonce, and if jay Z is going to cheat on Beyonce, just all better have an emergency fund, is all I'm saying. Right, all I'm saying

has a pretty big emergency fund. Well, I feel like that's why we don't feel sorry for because that woman was like, hey, JC, I'm going to make it like this whole thing about gonna make a lot of money off of you. I tried that did work anyway, So okay, back to the to the topic. Obviously she's got a lot of money. But look, we we all know folks who have ended up in relationships they don't want to be in because they didn't have the financial with wherewithal

to leave or jobs. So get that emergency fund because

stuff happens. Okay, so this is all fantastic advice. Just a final but well, let's say, as a final question for you, if you had a magic wand and could change one thing, if there was one thing you could get all young women to do differently with their money, what you know would be to invest, right, so it would be to go into their boss's office, ask for the raise, negotiate for the ays because we're we are we're making less than the guys are on average, and

so on average, we all deserve a raise. And by the way, if the boss says no, to have the six other things that you will take instead of a raise that matter and overseas assignment, working with the hot shots, star in management, time and marketing, flexible, whatever those things are. To go in there and be confident of your value, assuming, by the way, you don't suck at your job. If you suck at your job, don't listen anything I just said.

But assuming you don't suck at your job, walking in getting that raise and taking that raise and not spending it but investing it, those two things I gotta tell you, Francesca aren't just important, their life changing love, their life changing. You cheated a little because you said two things instead of one of that. We'll give you a pass. Come on. It was a compound thing, compounds very very well. But

here's what I would say. We're already doing of the hard work, right, we go to war Ark, we turn in our projects on time, we bring in the new client. But if we're not getting paid, what the gentlemen are, and we're not investing like the gentlemen are. Literally, we're at the end of our careers, left with about a third the money that we would otherwise have. It's freaking nuts. It's nuts. So it's a compound dancer. Well, thank you for your answer, and thanks for coming in, Sally. It

was fantastic to talk to user anytime goes. Thanks. Before we go, I'd like to introduce a new segment that we are premiering called half big Takes Half fake Takes. What is a half big take? A half big take is something that you feel A half by take is a really good point that you have that is not substantive enough to justify a signing or writing an article about it, or even a rant, or even a blood post, or maybe even a tweet. Less than a tweet. It might be a tweet, okay, but it's something that I

want a platform for. Do you want to go first this week? Yes. My half bag take is that my favorite temperature, both inside and outside at all times, is when you cannot feel the air. Say more so, there's this theory, that theory, there's this thing where sixty eight degrees is room temperature. And that you have to have like a cool breeze blowing on you at all times, and that is uncomfortable for me, like a nice cool breeze outside. The idea of like cold air rubbing up

against my body is so uncomfortable. I want to like the temperature to be like seventy seven and not humid, like you can't feel the air. So you're framing this is a temperature thing, but really what you're saying is you just don't like being touched by the breeze. Well, yeah, because that makes me cold. Well, I don't understand the cool breeze. I think the appeal of a cool breeze is that it comes after you've been warmer than is comfortable.

So then that's like in the office the air conditioning is blasting. You shouldn't need a cool breeze in the office because you should have a steady type. But it's basic idea that we're like coming in from the hot outside and need the cool breeze. And it does feel good for one second maybe, but I will say all day I'm very uncomfortable with the feeling of fans on my skin. They tickle me. Okay, what's yours? My half big take is about shutting down your computer properly. Here's

the headline, folks, people, stop doing it. Stop shutting down your computer properly. First of all, you're supposed to shut it down, right, You're not. You're not supposed to just like leave it on all the time, which everybody does. But your computer will accuse you of not shutting it down properly kind of no matter what. And when you do, take the time to respect company property and close all

of the applications you've been using. Something will interrupt shut down you know it, well, some program that's running, and then you're wasting your own precious time. You could be spending leaving work trying to do your company a solid by shutting down properly, when there's no evidence that that even matters. Show the computer repair person who says, I know why this computer has got smoke coming out of the back because it wasn't shut down properly. Furthermore, well, here,

it's not my computer, by a lot of computers. This is what I do at the end of every day. I press the power button and I hold it down, and that computer shuts the heck down. I'm gonna try it, Yeah, it feels really good, like you're really sticking into the man when you do it. If we all get together and just press the off button instead of properly shutting down, we can change the world. And this has been half big takes, half baked takes. And that's it for another

episode of game Plan. For more, you can find me on Twitter at francesco Today and I'm at rs Greenfield and our guest this week, Sally Crawcheck, is at Sally Crawchuck. See you next week, Hi, And now it's time for half baked takes, Y