Rich Minx

I’m not a complete disaster with money. I don’t stand on streets rattling cans at strangers. I’ve never been declared bankrupt and I don’t get red letters from credit card companies. But neither am I rich, and I want to learn more about this mysterious thing we call finance and see if it can surprise me by being interesting. So below, as an introduction, is an overview of my money background.

Money Minx As a Financial Kitten

Flashback to school and college: I studied the arts, with a bit of science thrown in just in case. But I wouldn’t touch accounting or economics or commerce. Yuck! Who would want to? The truth was, it made me squirm. I’d always been average at Maths and avoided anything numerical if I could. My parents never really discussed money, although they encouraged me to save for the things I wanted. Growing up, I did save for stuff I wanted: a doll with hair that smelled of strawberries, a Michael Jackson tape, a Sweet Valley High book for my burgeoning collection. Later, I did after-school jobs to earn spending money. That went on burgers, booze, CDs, movies. College jobs raised money for similar expenses, till I discovered All You Can Spend student loans. That went on a car, a trip to Australia.

After college, money was spent on travel. All of it. Travel, travel, travel. Though I did manage to pay off the loan at one point, thank heavens. Finally, $1500 given back from a compulsory retirement savings scheme gave me a nest egg which I promptly, and to the amazement of those who knew me, used to invest in some Google shares which were $180 each at the time. Did I research Net Gains, P/E Ratio, Yields, Dividends, Annual Reports? Nah. But I liked Google. I used Google every day. I had faith. So far, it’s worked: Google shares are currently $470 each. So I had that, but a recent birthday and relationship upheaval brought it home that apart from my Golden Google Shares I had nothing else. How’d that happen? I had a decent job. But a quick flick through my memory showed more travel, dubious shopping excursions, no spending cap on all those ‘little’ purchases. I didn’t have a Plan.

So now what?

Well, I started looking around at other women and saw that most we’re any better off than I was. In fact, some were in terrible debt or simply not saving because they didn’t want to think about it, or were relying on someone else to look after them. So I decided to start a money blog about lessons learned from a female perspective, but I’m not going to be tallying my grocery budget. How dull. I’m swotting up on investment, saving, spending, shopping and site optimization and starting to ask myself: why’d I wait so long? It’s not just a topic for boys, after all. Money is abundant, let’s go out and get some.

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