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The headline read: “Eddie Murphy’s ex-wife is broke!”
A 2010 news story reported that Nicole Murphy received a $15-million divorce settlement from Eddie Murphy in 2006. She opted for that one-time payment instead of monthly installments. In less than four years, she spent the entire $15 million and still has a few outstanding bills to pay. She now owes $846,000 to the IRS (Internal Revenue Service), $600,000 to a law firm, and $60,000 to a landscaping company. She was forced to put her home (on which she owes $5 million) up for sale. She not only spent the $15 million, but accumulated at least another $6.5 million in bad debt.
So what’s her financial plan now? The story stated: “Nicole Murphy is engaged to former NFL football great, TV commentator, and celebrity Michael Strahan.”
It seems Nicole clearly does have a plan, but her plan has nothing to do with taking financial matters into her own hands. Rather, she will depend upon her next Prince Charming.
Nicole is young, gorgeous, and well connected in celebrity-ville. I’m sure she will be just fine. The toll it may take on her personal self-esteem and the example she is setting for young women throughout the world is another issue. I’ll leave it at that.
Granted, I am an outsider looking in. Yet, as an outsider, this story illustrates to me some common choices many women make, such as:
• A man is my financial plan.
• I choose to be financially ignorant. Maybe if I ignore it, the problem will go away.
• I’ll take what appears to be the easy road today, although it can very likely become the hard road in the future.
Nicole’s story also reveals another truth: If you don’t know where to put your money, it will be gone. Nicole had a lot of money but, because she did not know where to put it to create a secure financial life for herself, she lost it. She not only lost it, but she ended up in even more bad debt.
Money Does Not Equal Money Smarts
Whether you have a lot of money or a little money, one fact remains: If you don’t know what to do with the money you have, it will be gone.
Ed McMahon, Johnny Carson’s famous sidekick on The Tonight Show for many years, was a perfect example. Mr. McMahon made millions of dollars throughout his lifetime. He was an icon of American television—a bright, charismatic, respected, and well-liked gentleman. But just because a person has a lot of money doesn’t mean they know much about money.
If you don’t know where to put your money, it will be gone.
Towards the end of his life, Mr. McMahon faced foreclosure of his multimillion-dollar Beverly Hills home and owed American Express $747,000. Those were only two of his many financial troubles.
How could that happen? Mr. McMahon put it quite succinctly when he said, “I made a lot of money, but you can also spend a lot of money.” His was a simple case of overspending. Well, maybe not so simple… when you’re talking about millions!
The stories of Nicole Murphy and Ed McMahon illustrate that having a lot of money does not ensure that you are financially independent—or even financially secure, for that matter.
Women and Money Today
Today women rank “financial issues” as the number-one most pressing concern in their lives—more pressing than family, health, or time.
We women know we need to do something, so why don’t we?
What holds women back from getting actively involved in building their financially secure future? A 2010 study found these top three reasons:
1. Women have little knowledge about money and investing.
2. Women find the subject of finances too complicated, confusing, and overwhelming.
3. Women say they have no time to devote to their financial life because of children, job or career, and daily obligations. (Yes, we women are pros at putting everyone else first and ourselves last.)
It’s not difficult to see why women place money at the top of their worry list. The facts regarding women and money, especially as we get older, are downright scary.
1. Women are poorer in retirement than men.
• Women are twice as likely to live their retirement years in poverty.
• In the United States, an alarming 87% of the elderly living in poverty are women.
• Even more surprising is that the majority of these women now in poverty were not poor when their husbands were alive.
• Here’s an interesting twist: A woman might go through the couple’s nest egg paying for the healthcare costs of her ailing partner and deplete the financial resources she needs for the rest of her life.
• Not only do women live longer than men today, but women often marry older men. That means many women will be widows who will have to support themselves for 15-20 years.
2. Women are poorer in divorce than men.
• Divorced women with children are four times more likely than married women to have an income that is under the poverty line.
• In the United States, in 2000, the average income for a middle-aged, divorced woman is only $11,000 per year.
Here is a shocking study that made my jaw drop. This article is from the Saturday Star newspaper in Johannesburg, South Africa, dated January 19, 2008.
They may promise to have and to hold for richer and for poorer; but wives seem most interested in the richer part. In a study of married men and women in Britain, 59% of wives said they would divorce immediately if their future economic security was assured.
Almost 60% of the women surveyed said they would leave their marriage if they could afford it!
A similar study was done in Sweden where 37% of women stated they would divorce if they had the money to take care of themselves. Not as high as in Britain, but still a big number. It’s pretty clear that women, money, and marriage are closely related.
3. Women, on average, are financially unprepared.
• 58% of female baby boomers have less than $10,000 in retirement plans.
• 33% of women investors admitted they avoid making financial decisions out of fear of making a mistake.
• Women tend to own investments and securities with a very low rate of return.
• Women are three times more likely than men to NOT know what types of investments offer the best returns.
According to the research of authors Christopher Hayes and Kate Kelly, “Women’s decision-making tends to be based on security and concern for others. Their decision-making tends to be directed toward gaining enough money to get by rather than to get rich. This desire for security also means that most of their decisions favor ‘safe’ investments rather than those that might return more.”
What It Really Takes
I won’t go on and on about the horrific state of affairs so many women fall into when it comes to their financial lives, especially as they get older. I’m assuming that you have already made your decision to move forward in improving your financial life and achieving your financial dreams. You should not need to be convinced on why this is important. You know it’s important to you. (Do, however, please share these statistics with women who might be unaware.)
So what does it really take to have your financial dreams come true? Do you remember from the study what things hold women back?
• Lack of knowledge
• Too much overwhelming information
• No time
The reality is that any woman can acquire the knowledge. Any woman can sift through the information to find what she needs. It starts with learning the vocabulary of money and investing. Just learning the definitions of financial words will greatly increase your knowledge on the subject.
And the issue of no time? What if your house were on fire? Would you say, “Sorry. I don’t have time to put out the flames.”? No, you would immediately stop whatever you were doing and take action. Your burning house becomes your number-one priority. Unfortunately, too many women do not make their financial lives a priority until their financial house is on fire, which, in most cases, is too late.
I have no doubt that these women gave truthful answers in this survey, yet, are these the things that are really holding women back? Are these really the causes?
I believe there are two major missing pieces in the puzzle that explain what’s really holding women back from aspiring, acquiring the knowledge, and then applying that knowledge.
The first missing piece of the puzzle is financial education. The reason there is so much confusion around the term “financial education” is because most people do not have a clear definition of what it is.
The word “education” comes from the word “educe” which means “to draw out, to develop.” Education is a process of discovery. It is not a process of sitting silently in your chair, memorizing, and then regurgitating what you’ve read and heard from the teacher. That falls under the definition of “brainwash: to impose beliefs on somebody or to condition somebody to behave differently.”
True education is meant to draw out the information so that students learn through their own discovery process. The traditional education system will often tell you the answer such as: “The burner on the stove is hot. Don’t touch it.” True education is when you see the burner for the first time, and you’re curious. You walk to it and touch it. You get burned. Where is the greater learning? True education is discovering things for yourself. And sometimes the process is painful.
What about financial education? The school system will bring a banker into a classroom of 10-year-olds to explain how they can open a bank account. Or they bring a stockbroker into a high school to explain stocks and mutual funds while handing out their business cards and encouraging the teens to open a trading account. This is not education. This is a sales pitch.
Financial education is discovering where you are and what you have financially and then determining where you want to go. The key word is you. Everyone’s financial situation is different. I hear financial “experts” declare to everyone, “You should not have more that 15 percent of your portfolio in gold.” How in the world do they know what’s best for every individual? Or “Pay off the mortgage on your primary residence.” That may be good advice for one person, but bad advice for someone else. You have to find out what you need and want when it comes to your money and your financial future. Then seek out the knowledge that will get you there.
But what kind of knowledge should you look for, and where do you find it? In school, we usually don’t have much of a choice about whom we will listen to. The information comes from classroom teachers, already pre-selected. But outside of school, we do have a choice of what teachers we want to listen to. We can choose our mentors, our advisers, our coaches, our “teachers.” Most of my teachers don’t even realize they are teachers. They are simply passing on their experience and real-world knowledge to me.
This freedom to choose also brings with it a certain level of confusion, at least in the beginning. That’s because there is no one place, such as a physical school building, that has all the information and knowledge you need to become financially independent. You will have to search for it.
And where should you search? In books, seminars, meetings, and investment clubs. In online research, videos, and chats. In discussions with experts in their fields—people who are doing what you want to do. In finding mentors and coaches who can guide you through your process and in networking with other investors. These are just a few places to look. Nothing can replace this kind of financial education. It is a step that cannot be bypassed or delegated to someone else. This is a must-do, because the rewards are so worth it.
Lorraine Stylianou of London, England, shares her story of the value she got from her own financial education.
I am the breadwinner for my family with two small children under five years old. I had just started working a second job to pay for my newly acquired mortgage on a family home in North London, a very modest three-bedroom terraced family house. However, I had little time to spend with my children since I worked over 40 hours a week in a full-time job and then worked every weekend in a self-employed administrative role.
I was on a huge hamster wheel and had to watch every penny.
One Saturday I took my children shopping and found I had only one £2 coin left in my purse. We were hungry and decided to share one kid’s meal in that famous burger chain. We each had one chicken nugget and about four fries each!
From that moment, I realized something had to change. I decided I would go to the business section of the local library and read every finance and business book I could get my hands on. I enrolled in a women’s money-and-investing weekend that year and later signed up for four property courses. I purchased my first tiny one-bed rental flat in Scotland four months later as a no-money-down deal.
Only 18 months after my first property purchase, I now have eight investment properties and have resigned from my full-time job. We live temporarily in one of our investment properties while I’m renting out my family home. I have experienced a huge improvement in my quality of life by doing so. My painting hobby is now turning into a lucrative business, and I’ve ditched the hamster wheel of daily commutes into Central London. I no longer feel miserable in a job that made life unbearable.
Today I am my own boss. I accomplished all this primarily with the financial education I acquired through books, seminars, and just getting out there and doing it.
That is the value of seeking out the financial education that works for you.
The second missing piece of the puzzle that holds women back is the invisible.
Beyond the knowledge that comes from financial education lies the invisible, where the “secret formula” is found. This secret formula has very little to do with facts and figures. It’s invisible because it cannot be seen, and it’s secret because it’s hidden from most of us.
A woman’s true strength, purpose, and genius reside in the invisible. The secret is to make the invisible visible. And that is what we will do.
To realize your financial dreams, you must blend the information of what to do and how to do it with the thoughts, emotions, and spirit of the invisible. We’ll explore the details of this invisible secret next.
