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Money, A Memoir: Book Review |
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Book Reviews -
Home and Finances
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Written by M. J. Chatfield, Ph. D.
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Written by Liz Perle
Reviewed by M. J. Chatfield, Ph. D.
 How can independent, financially successful women so easily fall in to poverty and depression while their male counterparts thrive? This is the question author Liz Perle explores in her latest book, subtitled Women, Emotions, and Cash. A highly successful book publisher, married to an equally successful businessman, Perle guides the reader through her own financial demise and reclamation. This bold self-examination of her own relationship with money, from childhood to middle age, easily coalesces with anecdotes and insights of financial experts, leading psychologists, and more than 200 women in various stages of life and wealth. The outcome is a fresh understanding of the complicated emotional roller coaster women ride in their unspoken treaty with finances.
In the sexual revolution, the interplay of money, love, and power has not really changed for men; their identities and power come from their survival-based role as provider. And women still give them this role. “On an unconscious level” Perle writes, “it has to do with knowing that she and her children will survive. When we talk about money, we’re talking about providing for basic human needs; this is basic human wiring. And while providing and dependent roles have changed in the last seventy-five years, to brain stem psychology, that’s no time at all.” Men continue to use money to establish power in a relationship, and women continue to use money as a surrogate for love and attention.
Only a generation ago, our mothers went to college, married, found a
job, and then left the workforce to care for their children. Most
middle-class women expected to depend on their husbands for money.
Basic feminine wiles, beauty, diplomacy, and discretion were still
believed key to marriage and thus a woman’s financial security. This
attitude seems untenable to a new generation of women who are their
husband’s full and equal financial partners. Yet while intellectually
that may be true, our emotions have yet to breach the divide. Perle
writes “we’ve gotten caught in a time warp where our economic realities
have changed faster than our expectations and identities”.
Perle sequentially delves into the feminine battle of feelings versus
finances, from women’s shame, guilt, and entitlement in spending;
parental influences and role models; ambivalence of needing employment;
the need to be desirable, married and cared for; and the chaotic
result. “Money is never just money; it’s our proxy for identity and
love and promises made and perhaps never fulfilled. It’s our social
sorter. It’s the ticket to our dreams. Yet …there’s nothing I want as
badly that I’m more ashamed of wanting than money.”
Not surprisingly, these conflicted emotions and mixed-messages are
creating havoc as women neglect their own need for establishing
financial security. Perle’s interviews with numerous financial
experts reveals startling statistics regarding women and their finances:
- While one in three women out-earns her husband, 60% of women
spend as little time as possible managing their investments
- 58% of baby-boomer women have less than $10,000 saved in a pension or 401(k) plan
- Three out of four women are widowed at an average age of 56, and 87% of the impoverished elderly are women
Added to this are the financial predictions that:
- 1 in 6 six mothers will go bankrupt by the end of the decade
- The average woman born between 1946 and 1964 will probably
have to work until age 74 due to failure to save sufficiently
Money, A Memoir is both confession and recognition of the ambivalent
associations women have with money. Perle makes a strong case that
women must separate feeling from finance to take responsibility for
their own financial futures. Woman cannot afford to be ambivalent about
money and financial security, or assume that Prince Charming will
arrive to provide the happily ever after. These insights provide
essential reading for any woman seeking financial stability and
independence, and for the men who expect to understand them.
Read an excerpt from Money, A Memoir: Are We Paid What We Are Worth?
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