Women and Their Finances - WCI Podcast #363 @DowJanesFinancialEducation

This is the White Coat Investor Podcast where we help those who wear the white coat get a fair shake on Wall Street. We've been helping doctors and other high income professionals stop doing dumb things with their money since 2011.

This is White Coat Investor podcast 363 women and their finances with Brit Williams Baker of Dow James.

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All right, welcome back to the White Coat Investor Podcast.

Today we're going to be talking with.

Women and about women and their finances.

What'S unique about their finances and so forth. As part of this discussion we're going to bring on Britt Baker, Brit Williams Baker, who is one of the founders of Dow Janes, which is a super popular channel for women learning about personal finance and investing. By the way, for those of you who aren't aware, we have a women's specific community here at wci. It's called the Few Financially Empowered Women Few. And their next event is coming right up. It's on April 25th at 6pm Mountain. And we've got Joanna Turner coming. Those of you on the White Coat Investor forum probably know Joanna Turner. She's a moderator on there. She's a cpa, does tax prep for docs, has done some advisory stuff in the past as well. But she's going to be teaching about taxes at that event. So sign up for the few@whitecoatinvestor.com Few. Let's do our quote of the day before we get our guest on the line as well. This one comes from Robert G. Allen. He said, how many millionaires do you know who have become wealthy by investing in savings accounts? I rest my case. And that's probably true. You just don't make that much in savings accounts very safe. But they don't pay that much. Thanks to all of you out there in White Coat Investor land. Thanks for being part of the White Coat Investor community. Thanks for doing what you do on your daily job, whether that's medicine or whether that's something else, it's probably not that easy. And that's why you are a high income professional, whether that's law or engineering or tech or medicine or dentistry or some sort of allied health profession. You went to school for a long time, you trained for a long time, you worked long hours. And you may have a thankless job, both from your employer as well as those you serve. So if no one else has said thanks today, let me be the first. All right, let's get Brett on the line and have a discussion about this. Stick around. Afterward, Megan and I are going to talk a little bit about finance for women and some of the things we see as unique there as well.

My guest today on the White Coat Investor podcast is Britt Baker. Britt is a Harvard Business School grad and one of the founders of Dowjanes.com which is a pretty cool company. It's a financial education company. They do some online courses, they do some financial coaching. As you can imagine, with a name like Dow Janes, the target audience is women. And they talk about the things that are unique for women. And a lot of that is what we're going to be talking about today. So welcome to the podcast, Britt.

Thanks so much. Good to be here.

So let's start letting people. Let's start by letting people get to know you a little bit. Tell us about your upbringing and kind of how it shaped your views on money.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So I was one of the lucky ones and that I grew up with parents who taught me about money from a really young age. So I know that most people don't learn about money in the household and don't even learn about it in high school, but my parents decided to teach us. So when I was seven years old, my dad invented what he called the Daddy Bank. And it was a little notebook where we could invest our allowance and earn compound interest, but we had to calculate it ourselves. So from a pretty young age, I learned the value of saving money. They also had these ways of instilling the value of a dollar. So they, if we wanted to buy a toy, they'd say, okay, if you want to buy half, we'll get you the toy. And so you really had to think about if you wanted it or not. It was this little subtle ways that they taught us. You know, money doesn't grow on trees. You have to work for it, you have to earn it. And so really taught us both how to value it and appreciate it from a pretty young age.

So you leave home at 18, really, with. With a substantial financial education already. Where did you go from there?

Yeah, so I went to Georgetown for undergrad and then Harvard Business School for grad school, and then after that moved back to the Bay Area. So I worked in a lot of different jobs. I did management consulting, I worked in startups. I did some freelancing before starting Dow Janes in at the end of 2019.

And Dow Janes, as I mentioned, it's a financial education company, really a service company. Tell us about the motivation to get it started. Why did you decide this is a need? This is my, you know, ikigai in that famous Japanese phrase, the thing the world needs that I can get paid for, that I love and that I'm good at. Why Dow Janes?

Yeah, so, you know, I didn't start it to be a company in the beginning. It started as a living room meetup. My friends, I, you know, I graduated from business school, came back to the Bay Area, and my girlfriends asked me to teach them how to invest. It was this like, you know, we're in our mid-20s, we think we're supposed to be investing, but we don't exactly know how. And so I just created some PowerPoints and taught my friends about diversification and asset allocation and what it means to be invested in the stock market. And it became. It was this really casual way of learning from each other and learning from your peers. And so it started as this living room women's investing club, the name I took from my mom's investing club that she was part of when I was a little girl. And so we called ourselves Dow Jane. So we would have these monthly meetups and talk about, you know, how to create a budget or how to set financial goals, just these common financial topics. And eventually I realized that people, people had these big ambitions of wanting to invest and wanting to save for retirement, but they weren't quite there yet. They needed first to save more than they were saving. And so I backed up. I brought in my friend Lorianne to teach a session on budgeting. And we taught this different approach to budgeting called values aligned Budgeting, where we flipped it on its head and said, this doesn't have to be restrictive. It can be how you share your values in the world. And people loved that. So that was kind of the first time that she and I collaborated in the financial space. And then it was not until late 2019 that enough people had been asking about Dow Janes. And about this meetup that I thought we could reach way more people if we brought it online, you know, people outside of the Bay Area. So we launched an online course at the beginning of 2020, right before the pandemic. And that was the initial online version of Dow Janes.

Yeah, it was a great time to be launching an online course.

Business really worked out. Yeah.

Yeah. All of a sudden people have all kinds of time and they're no longer using their money to go travel or go out to shows. Good timing. Nice work. Must have learned something at Harvard Business School there.

That was luck.

Well, here at White Coat Investor, our big focus is on doctors and other high income professionals and their unique financial needs. But if I'm honest, I'll tell you, 95% of personal finance is the same for everyone. Now your focus is on women. What percentage of financial information or financial experience in life do you feel is unique to women?

Yeah, so I'm with you on that. Most of it is universal. I would say, in fact, all of the information is universal. None of the information is unique to any one population. But how you apply it can be different depending on the population. So since women live longer, for example, we have to be prepared for having a longer retirement, and that's with more savings. That's something that people often don't think about. There's also, this isn't unique to women, but I think we're just more aware of it or in touch with it is the emotions that come with dealing with money and our awareness of our relationship with money. And so that's, you know, all genders and all people should be paying attention to it. But I think women just tend to pay more attention to it. But that's something we really address in our program, is looking back at the root. So what, what were your examples of money growing up? How did you learn to relate to money? And what needs to shift in that realm before you can start shifting the practical pieces?

If you had to identify the, the biggest problem, the biggest roadblock for women gaining financial literacy, what would it be?

Yeah, there are a few. It starts young. So the first is that parents are more likely to talk to their sons about money than they are their daughters. So this starts young with just, you know, lack of education. The second is that women learn best in community and from each other. And since money is still so taboo, it's really, it's one of those last topics that's really hard to talk about with your friends, with your peers. So we miss out on that way of learning and then I'd say third, there aren't a ton of great relatable teachers that women would want to learn from in the personal finance space. You look at the examples that there are today, it's either, you know, stodgy or intimidating or, you know, frankly boring. So that's what Dow Jane's does differently. We make it approachable, we make it relatable, we try to make it enjoyable for people to learn about money.

Yeah, it's certainly a problem. I mean, we talk about, you know, gender equality in medicine and some specialties. You know, you look at gynecology, you look at pediatrics, and there's a lot more women than men in medical school classes right now. There are more women than men, but still, there's some specialties that are. That are very heavy. It's a pretty significant ratio of men to women, and especially orthopedics, emergency medicine, et cetera. But you go to a financial conference and it makes even those specialties in medicine look egalitarian. I mean, you go to a financial advisor conference, it's like 95% men.

Yeah, it's so bad.

Why do women not go into finance?

Well, I think for those, you know, the first reason I mentioned that, you know, people just aren't talking to women about money. It's like it's a boy's thing to talk about your investments and to talk about money. And so it becomes a lot easier to understand when you're talking about it all the time. Women haven't had the exposure that men get. I'd say that's the, probably the biggest reason it's happening more and more. And we've seen that women want to learn from other women. So having women financial advisors and financial professionals really helps. It's who we want to learn from, but there's few and far between at this point.

Yeah.

All right, let's talk about stereotypes. You know, I fully admit these are stereotypes. They don't apply to every person out there. So don't send me hate mail about these next couple of questions, but there's some data out there suggesting that women are better investors than men. I think a lot of it comes down to they're less likely to churn, less likely to gamble with their accounts, look at it more comprehensively, tie it to their values, better, etcetera, etcetera. Do you believe that? Number one. And what else do you think women do better than men in the financial space?

Yeah. So statistically that is true. Women tend, their investment accounts tend to outperform men's and it's exactly what you were saying. It's because we hold on to our investments longer instead of buying and selling them or trading more frequently. And when you hold on to your investments, that tends to be be a strategy that outperforms in the long run. So that is true.

You know, another stereotype is that women are not as good at negotiation as men are, you know, when they go in to negotiate their salary for a.

New job, et cetera.

And that men do a lot better in that. Do you think that's true or do you think that's simply a byproduct of our society? Our society that expects that, you know, that doesn't look at women well when they negotiate, they're not looked at as favorably as men who negotiate. Men who negotiate are looked at as savv. Women who negotiate are looked at as money hungry. What do you think about what? Do women not do as well as men?

Yeah. On the topic of negotiation, from what I have seen, this is definitely due to societal expectations and the fact that no one teaches women how to negotiate and that they're seen in a more negative light than men are who negotiate. Absolutely agree with this. What I have seen is that once you teach women how to negotiate, they're incredible. So we, part of our program is teaching people how to negotiate for raises or to negotiate to lower their bills. And we've seen that once you give them the tools and once you teach them the idea of having a batna, your best alternative to no agreement, once they understand those concepts, they're fantastic. We have seen this over and over again that women can make great negotiators.

All right, Women live longer. You mentioned this earlier. They are likely to marry younger. They're likely to live, you know, two, three years longer on average than men are. So they're thus more likely to be widows than men are to be widowers. What implications should that have on their financial planning?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I wish we were more aware of this from the beginning, but what that means is women have to save more for retirement. They're just going to have more years that they're using that money and then, best case, they're learning how to manage money on their own because they're going to be doing it eventually and we're most likely to be widows and so might as well learn how to manage it on our own. The other piece I'd say that most people probably aren't talking about as much or aware of is learning how to find their voice in their relationships when it comes to money so that they can be seen in as an equal partner and have, you know, know where the money is, know where the money is being used so that when they do take it over, eventually it's not a big mystery.

I think, about Social Security.

Right.

I mean, the general rule for, for Social Security is to delay it to 70 if you're in good health, particularly if you're the higher earner in a couple. That seems like particularly good advice for someone that's more likely to live longer. Maybe even. Maybe even women should work a little bit longer than they otherwise would and be more likely to delay Social Security. Does that make sense to you?

I mean, it depends on your financial situation, if you need to do that. But, you know, it's hard to tell people to work longer than they want to. You know, some people are just. Their bodies are done, they're tired. It's hard to work beyond 65. But if you're doing something that you love and it's not super taxing, say, you know, work as long as you can, have an income for as long as you can, because the longer that you have an income, you. The more you can save and the more you can put to it towards investing.

Now, historically speaking, maybe not as much today, but probably still to some extent. Today there are a fair number of women who feel trapped in unhappy marriages for financial reasons. If you were talking with a woman that felt trapped in her marriage, what advice would you have for her?

This is such a hard one. I just can't imagine how bad it would feel to both be in an unhappy marriage, but then to also just feel trapped on top of it. So just want to first say that I'm sorry to anyone who's in that situation. It's also hard to give advice in this realm because each person's situation is so unique. You know, they might actually be trapped. And so I don't want to say something that, you know, someone's like, that's not an option for me, or, you know, that's insensitive for my situation. So, you know, this is not blanket advice. But I would say like anything else, the more you can create your own outlet, meaning have your own source of income, have your own support systems that might make it easier to start seeing a way out from that situation.

Yeah.

And certainly it doesn't hurt to be more financially literate. The more you know about finance, the more options and tools you have to.

Deal with a situation like that.

Exactly.

In a lot of couples, one partner is the saver and one's a spender in a lot of couples. One's, you know, a hobbyist and enthusiast about personal finance, and the other one isn't. So I wanted to ask you what advice you have for women, both in the case that they are the more financially interested partner or spouse, and in the case that they're not really interested in this stuff.

What.

What advice do you have for those.

Two different types of women?

Yeah, so the. For the partner who is more interested in finance, I would just, you know, remind you that what we've seen is that an interest in the financial realm or interest in personal finance is contagious. So we have a lot of women come to us and they say, you know, I'm so excited to take your course, and I really want to learn about this, but I can't get my husband on board. And what we say is, just do it. Just do the course. You know, go do your weekly money ritual. Spend an hour on your finances each week, and you will see that your partner will start to be interested. So that's what we see is like, once you start getting into it, checking your financial statements, setting up savings goals, it often brings the other partner, inspires them to get on board, or in some cases, the partner who's not on board will just hand over household finances to the person who is interested. And, you know, that's a. The place of complete empowerment. So either way, you have a good outcome for the woman who's not interested, the person who's, you know, just letting their partner take care of things. What I would say here is do whatever you can to get interested, because the more you know about family finances, the better. Now, whether that means having a money management meeting, a family money meeting, and say, you know, I will you teach me. I want to know how things are managed. You know, because we live longer, because we're more likely to be widows, there's a good chance that we'll be managing things eventually. And so having a say over what's happening now is going to serve you in the long run. The other thing I'll just say is that finances and partnership are hard. They're tricky. We have a special course on this called Managing Finances in Partnership, and it's for couples to go through together. One thing that's often overlooked in the dynamic between in a marriage and in money is that people are coming in with their own backgrounds and their own money stories. And one person's family may have related to money completely different than the others. And so they just have different expectations. About how money is used and how they talk about money in their relationship. So that's one thing that we start with, is we have people. You'll look at the root and share those stories with each other. So in partnership, you know, what was your earliest memory of money? Or how did your parents deal with finances in your house? And how do you want to do it differently? And really when you get to those root causes and the more emotional pieces, it can create more connection for then dealing with how are we paying the bills.

Yeah, I love that discussion. I think it's even more powerful if you do it before you get married or even before you get engaged.

Totally.

Yeah.

The earlier the better. Just kind of awkward on an early date.

Yeah, that's good stuff. You know, let's talk about mom guilt. Modern mom guilt is a very real phenomenon and many women just feel absolutely torn about it. They want to have it all. They want to be incredible homemakers, raise awesome kids, and also change the world through their paid work. But they feel guilty when they're at work that they're not with their kids, and they feel guilty when they're at home that they're not working. And you know, it seems to be a much bigger deal for women than it is for men. Although I'm sure it goes both ways to some extent. What advice do you have for women who are feeling this? Working women who feel mom guilt?

Oh, this one is too real. I think I need advice on this one right now. I am a new mom. My 6 month old is at home and. And I'm really feeling this one. I'll just share a quick story which is, you know, last week my son started crawling and he did it during a baby class that his nanny took him to. And I cried for hours because I wasn't there. And I didn't see that moment that he first started crawling. And it really got me and you know, it didn't affect my husband at all. He's like, there's going to be many firsts and we'll see other things. But it tore me up and you know, I'm. I'm like trying to give myself, be soft with myself because I love my work and I feel, you know, so much passion about the good we're doing in the world. And even so, it's really hard to leave him all day. So the advice I'm trying to give myself is that, you know, my, the way that it's not the hours that I spend with him, but it's how present I can be with him. So when I'm with him, you know, giving him my full attention and really savoring those moments at the beginning of the day and the end of the day and, you know, all weekend long. But it is hard. I'm not here to tell moms it's any easier than it is because it's brutal.

Yeah.

Thank you for being vulnerable enough to share that. It's true. You can't be in two places at once. And it's hard. It's hard to do it all. It really is. And, you know, I've got two jobs, essentially two part time jobs, and I get torn just between those, you know, and if you add in some community service and you add in some time with my kids, balance is elusive. It's extremely difficult. It's something you'll struggle with your entire life.

Yeah.

Yeah.

All right. Well, a lot of people start this process late. You know, 40s, 50s, 60s, they're like, I got to figure out my finances. I got to start saving for retirement. What advice do you have for late starters? Is it ever too late? I mean, should you do things differently if you're just starting to figure it out in your 40s, 50s, and 60s?

Yes, yes. We get this question all the time. And I want to say with a resounding in all caps, it is never too late. And the reason for that is, you know, what else are you going to do? If you don't start tackling things now, it's only going to get worse. And so you have to just start. Whether you're in your 40s or 50s or 60s, now is the time to get your finances handled. Some people say, like, when's the best time to start investing? Yesterday. The sooner the better. And if you have less time, if you're starting later, it just means you have to save more, Means you have to do everything you can to save as much as you can because your money doesn't have as long to grow. And that can be hard. You're in your 40s or 50s, you've gotten used to a certain lifestyle. It's hard to make those shifts where you can actually start saving a decent amount of money each month. I will say the good news is that you have more time than you think. And that's because you don't take all of your money out of your investments the day you retire. You just take enough out to live on that year. And so, especially as women, since we live longer, your money is going to have that many more years to grow. So you have more time than you think, just start.

Even if you're 50, you may still be an investor for 40 more years.

Totally. Exactly.

Plus, starting at 50 and 55, your retirement accounts and your HSA start letting you put more money in there, right?

I mean, yeah, exactly.

The government wants to help you. They want you to save. They're going to do what they can to help you. All right. You know, as I thumbed through your material on your site, one of the.

Things I was struck by was just.

How many people were dealing with credit card debt. And, you know, I think about Finance 101, right? If there were one line that's Finance 101, it would be, don't carry a balance on a credit card. That 58% of credit card owners are carrying a balance month to month. And it's not because they can't do math. I'm confident that the vast majority of them understand that 29% interest rates are not a good thing. How do we actually get people to stop doing things like that?

Yeah, well, with the way that things are right now, with the inflation we've had recently, with the astronomical cost of living and underpaid work, it's just harder and harder to make ends meet. So I'll just start by saying I get it. You know, as much as you don't want to, sometimes it's your only option is to rely on credit card debt to get by. And it's tough. You know, I know. I know a lot of people with personally with credit card debt who, you know, have feelings of shame about it and just first want to say that, like, sometimes it is out of your control that you're in this situation. To answer your question, you know, the global solution, how do we stop people, get people to stop living on credit card debt, is to implement a universal basic income. But that is not something I have any control over. So let's talk about what we can do. What we do in our program is, you know, yes, people understand the math. They can do the math, but they don't comprehend the cost, the true cost of carrying a balance on their card. So, you know, yes, they maybe understand that it snowballs or that, you know, how daily compound interest works against them. Maybe, you know, they see 29% interest, but I don't know if they understand really daily compound interest. So some of the things we do are just extrapolate, like, here's what it actually costs you in dollars, but the bigger cost, and this is what we really teach, is the opportunity cost. So when your money is stuck in debt, it means you, you know, you can't even start saving yet because your first thing you need to do is pay off that credit card debt. That's the biggest expense in your life. So that's the first thing you have to do with any additional savings, which means you can't start investing. So you can't start investing until you've paid off your debt. And that's what. That's what's holding you back. And that's what we try to get people to understand, is that the sooner you can pay off your debt, the sooner your money can start cool growing, and you can get compound interests working for you instead of against you.

It's good advice. It's so difficult to change behavior.

And I don't know how much of it is.

People really don't learn the difference between needs and wants. And they buy things that they think are needs but are actually wants. I don't know how much of it really is from people who are really. Their back is against the wall and they do not eat, or they don't take their medications, or they are evicted if they don't put debt on a credit card. And how much of it is people that just, you know, oh, everybody else is doing this. I'll do it too, but the only means I have right now are a credit card. And then once you're in that hole, it's hard to get out. I mean, at 19 or 15 or 29%, you know.

Exactly.

You've got a serious opponent to your finances at that point.

Totally. Totally. And, you know, I love that you brought up needs and wants and just awareness, because that's a big thing we talk about, too, is bringing more consciousness to your spending. So. So we have people track every dollar that goes in and out of their life early on in our program. And then whether or not it's a need or a want and how they feel about that purchase, do they feel positive, negative, or neutral? And bringing that level of consciousness to your daily spending instantly changes things for people they become aware of. Like, oh, I, you know, I went out to brunch with friends because that's just the default, and it was $75. And now I'm looking at that charge, and I actually feel negative about that charge. And so how now do I want to do things differently? So bringing that level of awareness and consciousness to spending, that's another way that it can really help.

Yeah.

Now, Brett, you've been learning about finance since you were seven. Then you went to Georgetown, you went to Harvard Business School. Now you teach women how to manage their finances and investors. What does your investment portfolio look like? What do you invest in?

Yeah, yeah. So I, you know, for a long time just, you know, followed the index fund approach and had pretty simple investments. Recently I have spent the last couple years building a values aligned investment portfolio. So it has been really important to me that I feel really good about what my money is being used for. So I have a pretty varied portfolio at this point. I have some money in socially responsible ETFs and mutual funds. I have some money in real estate. I have some money in venture capital and, you know, small businesses that I believe in and our values aligned. And then I have some money in community loans.

So have you completely divested out of broadly diversified index funds?

Yes, I have.

What, what do you tell someone who's just getting started? They've never invested a dollar in their life. What should they invest in?

Yeah, I would first open a Roth IRA, love Roth IRAs. And then buy a Target Date Fund. It's the simplest way to get started. At least, you know, there aren't a lot of decisions that have to be made. And I think that's a big piece that holds people back when they're getting invested. Is just the, the analysis paralysis. There's so many options out there. How am I going to choose? How am I going to choose the right option? And so buying a Target Date fund that's based on the year that they plan to retire is a really simple set it and forget it approach to investing. And then for the people who care more about values aligned investing or want to really understand it or get into it, we do have a program called Intentional Investing where we walk people through how to build an investment portfolio that they feel good about. So it's a little bit more complicated, but I think it's worth it.

Where do you send people to? Do you send them to Vanguard or Fidelity or Schwab or. Where would you go from that Roth IRA and get a Target Fund?

Yeah, you know, I can't send anyone anywhere, SEC compliance rules, but I invest at Vanguard. You know, Fidelity also makes it super easy. You know all the big names, Schwab, Fidelity, Vanguard, they're all great.

Now Britt, we're coming to the end of our time here, but if you had, you know, you've got the ear of 30 or 35,000 high income professionals. What have we not talked about today that you feel like they ought to know about finance and so forth?

One thing that didn't come up is, I mean, I touched on it briefly here and there. But the idea that how we use money is a way of voting, voting with your dollar, of using your voice. And that the way that you choose to either spend money or invest your money can really be an amplifier of what you stand for in the world. And I think that's something that is often overlooked. People just think about voting on the ballot. But the way that we use money, whether that's to buy organic food or to buy an electric car or whatever it is, can really speak to what you care about, the world you want to see in the future.

And where can people go to learn more about you and what you're doing?

Dowjanes.com on the Internet, on Instagram, on YouTube. You'll find us in all those places.

We've been talking with Brit Williams Baker, co founder of Dow Janes. We've been talking about some of the things that are unique about women and her work in helping women become financially literate and financially successful. Thank you so much for your time today, Brittany.

Thank you.

All right.

I hope you enjoyed that interview.

It's always good, I think, to reach out and think about what's the same and what's different. You know, what's the same for doctors, what's different between doctors and other professions, what's the same as for men, as is for women. And the truth is most of it is the same. Let's be honest, right? 95% ish. Obviously a statistic I just made up off the top of my head like most statistics. But most stuff is the same for everybody, right? The tax brackets don't change if you're a man or if you're a woman. How your investment performs doesn't care. Your investment doesn't care if you're a man or a woman, if you own that index fund or that investment property or whatever. So most stuff is going to be the same. So let's focus on some of the stuff that's not the same.

Life insurance, it costs less for women. It's cheaper for you to buy life insurance.

You know, a 20 year old or 25 or 30 year old is probably more likely time to be buying life insurance. You can get a million dollars in life insurance as a healthy 30 year old woman for like 550 bucks. If you're a man, that's going to cost you 50 to 100 bucks more a year. And the reason why you're more likely to die, Yep, it's true.

Disability insurance, women pay more.

They're more likely to be disabled That's a little bit different than it is for men. And so that's why women are always trying to get unisex pricing on their disability insurance, because it costs more if they have gender specific pricing. Those are a few unique things as well. We talked about investing prowess. Women are far more likely to leave their investments alone. It's like that infamous study at Fidelity. They did that one time. I don't even think it's real. It's probably apocryphal. But they said basically the best investors at Fidelity were the ones who had already died because they didn't mess with their investments. They just let them ride, they bought and they held. Whether that study actually exists or not, when they have looked at women versus men and their investment performance, the women get performance much more similar to that of the investment. Right. The time weighted return rather than the dollar weighted return. I think that's pretty clear out there that women in general. And this is a stereotype, right. Obviously, if men do the same thing women do in general, they're going to get just the same investment returns. We talked about negotiation. Negotiation is one of those things that's really hard. And I think it's even more nuanced than the discussion we had during the interview. Part of it is discrimination. Women are more likely to be discriminated against by an employer. Now, do all employers discriminate? Of course not. But it's far more likely if you're going to discriminate against one gender that it's going to be discrimination against a woman. They're more likely to feel like they can't or shouldn't negotiate due to societal expectations. They also are more likely to care about stuff other than salary. The benefits are often more important. The time off, the ability to have flexibility. Because women are more likely to have child related duties or duties related to extended members of the family or grandparents. They're much more likely to have those needs come up at work. And so they care more about that sort of stuff during negotiation. As a result, that might mean leaving salary on the table in order to get that flexibility. But hey, Megan's got some thoughts on this.

We don't get her on the podcast.

Very often, so let me turn the microphone a bit toward Megan. What do you think, Megan, what do you think men do better than women?

What do women do better than men?

Okay, Jim, I think that's a good question and I think it's a tough question because no two people are the same and no two family dynamics are the same. So I think it's hard to throw a blanket statement over something like, you know, what are men good at? What are women good at? What are they bad at? I think that's complicated and tricky. But what I do think is that, you know, men are traditionally more comfortable in the financial space, and maybe that's totally, totally unfair, and men feel just as uncomfortable with their knowledge. But if we're talking about stereotypes, you know, there's more ground to make up to get women feeling like they are comfortable with their financial literacy, that they're comfortable communicating about finances. You know, And I also really agreed with something that Britt said. She talked about how women like to learn from other women. And that is absolutely true for me. And I would actually change that to say that people like learning from people like them. I think for me, it's that I like the feeling that somebody knows what it's like to be female like me, or in your case, male like you. Or perhaps, you know, people who are African American or Latin American, they relate to people who understand a little bit, at least their life or their way of being. And, you know, I prefer female physicians, and I try to find female teachers to educate my daughters in whatever their extracurricular things are that they're doing. So I think there's, at least for me, there is a lot of truth to that that we want to learn from other women. And, you know, is that true for other women? I don't really know. Do they also value those things? I'm not sure. So maybe that is something that's different between men and women. Maybe that matters more to women, to men. But the point of that is that if we want to learn, if as a woman, I want to learn finances from other women, there's just a lot less mentors out in that space. There are less women who are financial professionals, whether that's, you know, a financial advisor or a tax professional or a financial educator or coach. There are just less people to turn to. So I think it's really important to continue to have these conversations and do what we're doing here at White Coat and do what Brit is doing at Dow Jane's and trying to help raise the education and the financial awareness, the financial literacy for women, so that there are more of us out there who are confident in what we're doing and, you know, in our investing and our financial planning so that we can then teach others and, you know, elevate the financial knowledge and financial literacy of everybody. And I am not an expert by any means in finance, and I'm Certainly not an expert in behavioral finance, but we have talked a lot about this at our house. Just this idea of how much of how we show up in the world as men or as women is inherent to who we are versus how much of that is learned behavior from our upbringing at home or from our cultures. And again, I keep saying this, but I don't know the answer to that. But I suspect an awful lot of the way we show up in the world has to do with societal expectations or cultural expectations, the education we get. And I think those cultural and societal norms are really hard to shake. You know, I grew up in a home with very traditional Christian values. Stay at home, mom, working dad. Dad was the leader of the home, handled all the finances. And, you know, the early years of my marriage looked really similar to that. And we have really drastically changed all of that since then. And it's taken an awful lot of work and time to undo those narratives of what we're supposed to be and what we're supposed to do and who's in charge of what, you know, the messages that we got growing up. And it's. It takes a lot of intentionality to change that.

To be fair, your husband is, you know, was a personal finance enthusiast, a hobbyist if ever there was one, and now a professional.

Right.

We're talking about a dentist who's transitioned to being a financial planner. And so no surprise that he's going to have more knowledge and interest in.

This sort of stuff than you, given his professional and hobby interests there. But even so, I think it's a truism across much of society.

Something else that I've thought about as we have talked about both here today and in my own life, that men are better at finances or more comfortable with finances. I would imagine that that also comes with a lot of pressure and expectation there that, you know, if you don't actually feel comfortable with your financial literacy and knowledge, that there's probably some guilt and shame, embarrassment, fear baked into that, that you are supposed to be this, like, provider for your family, you know, that can go towards the men or the women. But I think that this notion that we're supposed to be anything is really something that can be internalized by both genders. But as a female, I can say that we definitely internalize who we're supposed to be and can really carry a lot of stories around that, too. You know, speaking of guilt, we touched on this in the podcast, that this mom guilt thing, it's like, been coined a phrase because it's so common. Mom guilt. And men don't seem to feel this struggle in quite the same way that women do. They love their children and their families. They work incredibly hard for them. But in my experience, anecdotally, at least, you know, this area is not as big of an issue for them. And I feel pretty lucky on this front because I spent the, you know, the younger years of my children's younger years at home with them. I spent better part of a decade at home raising my young children, not having a career at that time. And, you know, now that they're a little bit older and back in school, I've gone back to work full time. And, you know, thanks to you, Jim, I have a really flexible job that allows me time off and flexibility to go on a field trip or help in the classroom. So I feel like I need to acknowledge my privilege on that point. But I think as women, we can be pretty extreme perfectionists. I think we put a lot of weight on our shoulders of what is a, you know, quote unquote good mom or a good wife, or, you know, in my case, a good podcast producer, and what that's supposed to look like. And I've worked really hard to stop with all of the shoulds and to focus more on what I'm grateful for, who I love, and, you know, how present I am with those people. And presence can be a super hard thing to come by in our world, and that is not gender specific. And it takes a really intentional effort, I think, to practice presence. But that, for me has been the biggest cure for my mom. Guilt is doing whatever I'm doing with my full attention. So when I'm at work, I give it my all. And when I'm home, I'm with my people. And my kids have shown me how resilient they are. And I think we layer a lot of our own stories on top of them. And when I give them the opportunity to just be the cool little people that they are, and I show up with a lot of presence and love, it really works out for both of us. And so that has been my practice and my way of battling off all of that. Another area that I have thought about with differences between men and women, and are there really any, or is it more family dynamics is spending and saving. And when I think about spending, I've been trying to think if women or men are more traditionally the higher spenders. And I think that's a hard question. I think that's a hard question to answer, too, which is not very helpful. But, you know, in My house, I am certainly the spender, but I am also the buyer. And what I mean by that is I buy everything for our family. You know, I, I am. And, and that seems fairly consistent among my female friends as well. You know, I make sure that the kids have clothes that fit. I buy the school supplies. I decorate our home so it's nice and comfortable. I make sure the fridge is full and the cats are fed. And you know, I'm the one going out and purchasing what it takes for us to live our lives. And so I wonder if, because I am the one who is doing all of that buying the necessary buying, if that is more likely to impact me being a spender because I'm out in the world, I am, you know, getting access to more stuff and I buy more stuff. So, you know, I love buying myself things. I certainly buy myself a lot more stuff than my husband buys. And, you know, so is that because that's my role in our family? Is that because it's my personality? Is it because it's my gender? I don't know. I don't know. But on the other side of that, I also love budget. I love watching our investments grow. The more I learn about my finances, the more excited I get about finances. I love that I finally understand the difference between Roth and pre tax money and knowing what a target date fund is. So I think it's drastically oversimplifying it to say that women are good at one thing and men are bad at that same thing, because I just don't think it's that simple. The other thing with spending is I also think that spending feels different if you are the earner. I spent the better part of 10 years taking a break from my career to raise my children. And you know, I was a full time stay at home mom to three small daughters. And it was grueling and you know, it was awesome and it was hard. So when Ty, my husband, would get home from work, I wanted to get out of there. I wanted to go to dinner or go get drinks or meet a friend somewhere or do absolutely anything but be home for one more minute. And when Ty would get home after a long day of dentistry, he was exhausted and burned out and he wanted to crash on the couch and he wanted to cook at home. And so we had these really different desires around spending and spending time and money. But on the flip side, because I wasn't working, I felt really guilty spending money. And I wanted to spend because it gave me something to do, but it was causing me a lot of stress, too. So now that I'm back working full time, I feel more of the desire to be home, to relax, to stay in, because my days are more full and less exhausting from chasing toddlers around. But I also spend a lot more freely, one, because I'm contributing financially. And I think two, more importantly, we have finally put a financial plan in place, so I know that I have that money to spend, you know, so none of this is linear, right, Jim? It's like things are. There's caveats and asterisks to everything that we're talking about here. And I. I think that is just part of the trick of life. And, you know, are there differences between men and women? Yeah, I think so. I. I think that's probably a fair thing to say. But. But, you know, as far as finances go, I don't think there is such a thing as, like, special male finance or female finance. You know, I think there's behavioral finance, which is, you know, not necessarily gender specific. I think that's person specific. And in my experience, you know, the bigger thing is that, you know, we just need more examples for women to have financial mentors and educators that they can learn from in ways that are comfortable for them. And, and I think that that's true for everyone, right? Finding people and places to learn and to gain financial confidence in spaces that feel right for them. That's where the magic is going to happen, you know? Could this also be true for men? Absolutely. You know, in my experience, women love to gather together. We love a community, a book club, a girls night, a weekend away together. We love to be together. So I think, you know, finding opportunities where we can create and empower each other in the ways that are meaningful, whether that is in a traditionally male space, like on a golf course, or a more traditionally female space, like at a. In a club or at a community, you know, the better off we will all be. And, you know, that's largely why we created the Financially Empowered Women group, because all of the women here at WCI were like, this is how we want to learn. This is how we want to do this. We want to see other women who know their stuff and who are going to give us confidence that if they can do it, so can we. You know, so I think there is something to that. But is that the power of community? Is that the power of harnessing what we know about women and how they like to learn and connect? Maybe it's both. But, you know, most importantly, I think, is education. We have an incredible community full of incredibly intelligent, hardworking people who have shown that they have the capacity to learn anything that they want to learn. You know, these are smart, high income professionals who have difficult jobs and any one of us of any gender identity will have the ability to learn how to run our finances and how to be financially successful. And the key is education, right? I think so much more than something specific to a gender is just getting good education out to people in the ways that will connect with them. And I hope that the work we're doing here at White Coat and the work that Britt's doing at Dow Jane's and there's so many other people out there doing it as well. I hope that that will help bring more women into the financial world feeling more confident and empowered to take those finances on side by side with their partner, or if you don't have a partner, as the head of your own life or as the single parent in your own life. You know, I just love the vision, the idea that we can all do this and we can find the way that works best for us and there's a lot of resources out there for us to do it. And I hope that, you know, the work we're doing here will help empower people to keep doing that. And for me, I'm really passionate about female education and growth. And so for me, when I make that statement, I really hope that the work that we're doing here at White Coat will empower women specifically to expand their financial knowledge and their confidence. And I know for myself that the more I have expanded that knowledge, the happier I am, the more relaxed I am. It's such a great feeling knowing that everything's going to be okay, I'm going to be able to retire, can spend the money that I have because everything's taken care of and every dollar has a job that has been such a gift. And I think that is true regardless of your gender. So those are my thoughts. Jim, what do you think?

I think part of it is you become more comfortable from doing because Katie and I have had the traditional thing, we work on our budget together.

But guess who does the income side, right?

I do the income side. I add up all the income from our investments and the business income and my clinical income and all that sort of stuff.

And she adds up the outgo, you.

Know, she adds up our, you know, goes through the credit cards, make sure there's nothing that was fraudulent on there, and goes through the bank account and adds it all up. And then we put the two together and decide, well, how much is left over to be invested or given or whatever for this month. And so that's very traditional. But what we've tried to do is to actually go and do the job chores of each other for her to.

Actually put in the buy and sell.

Orders in an investment account, for her to actually do the logging in to the account to see where it's at. And we don't do as much of that as we should because I'm the spreadsheet guy, you know, but, you know, I think that's, that's an important thing because if I get hit by a bus, right? Who's managing the money in this family? So she's know how to do it.

So even for those of you out.

There that you're not super interested in.

This, you're not a hobbyist, you're not.

An enthusiast, somebody just made you listen to this podcast. You know, you got to know how to do the basics. You've got to know how to log into those 401ks and IRAs and that taxable account, and you got to know about how much you can take out of that account every year and live on. And, you know, you do have to learn this stuff. So if you need help, one of the greatest things we have out there is our fire your financial advisor online course. This is designed to be taken together by couples so that you're on the same page financially, so you're both financially literate, so that you have a financial plan that you've both written together and can help you whether you're a man, woman, whether you're interested, not that interested, because everybody needs a written financial plan. I truly believe that you will be.

More successful actually write down what you're.

Going to do with your finances than if you don't. So hope this episode has been helpful to you whether you're a man, whether you're a woman, whatever kind of partner situation you're in. And we're grateful for you listening and being a part of this show.

As I mentioned at the top of.

The podcast, SOFI is helping medical professionals like U.S. bank, borrow and invest to achieve financial wellness. Whether you're a resident or close to retirement, SOFI offers medical professionals exclusive rates and services to help you get your money right. Visit their dedicated page to see all that SOFI has to offer. The Whitecoatinvestor.com SoFi one more time, that's Whitecoatinvestor.com sofi loans originated by SoFi Bank NA NMLS 696891 advisory services by SoFi Wealth, LLC. The brokerage product is offered by SoFi Securities, LLC. Member Ephinra SIPC investing comes with risk, including risk of loss. Additional terms and conditions may apply.

Don't forget Financially Empowered Women event is coming right up April 25th at 6pm.

It'll be Joanna Turner talking about taxes. Sign up for that@whitecoatinvestor.com Few thanks for those of you leaving us 5 star reviews and helping spread the word about this podcast. We had a most recent one come in said thank you. I am so grateful for all this podcast has taught me. I've been listening since I was in residency about five years ago and the impact WCI and Dr. Daly have made on my personal and financial life has been profound. Thank you for all you've done for my family and I. Keep your head up, shoulders back. You've got this. We'll see you next time on the White Coat Investor Podcast.

The hosts of the White Coat Investor are not licensed accountants, attorneys or financial advisors. This podcast is for your entertainment and information only. It should not be considered professional or personalized financial advice. You should consult the appropriate professional for specific advice relating to your situation.