Financial Literacy And Planning

By 2053, Black wealth could fall to zero if current trends continue. This isn't just a number—it’s a stark reminder of systemic inequities and the urgency of collective action. But here’s the thing: statistics like this don’t tell the full story. They don’t account for the power we hold to shift the narrative. As leaders, innovators, and culture-makers, we must embrace wealth equity as a core strategy. Here’s how we can start rewriting the script: 1️⃣ Build Financial Resilience Through Ownership: Ownership—whether it’s businesses, real estate, or intellectual property—is one of the fastest paths to generational wealth. Minority-owned small businesses, for example, often overlook opportunities like supplier diversity programs or university procurement partnerships. Tapping into these underutilized resources can accelerate growth. 2️⃣ Invest In Community-Centric Innovation: Many of the apps, services, and products we rely on don’t center our lived experiences. Imagine if our $1.8 trillion in buying power was directed toward solutions built for us, by us. It’s time to create platforms that reflect our values and needs, not just consume them. 3️⃣ Prioritize Financial Literacy and Intentional Spending: Knowledge is power. From understanding the compounding effect of investments to teaching the next generation how to save and build credit, we must normalize financial conversations. Similarly, supporting Black-owned businesses should be an everyday practice—not just a seasonal one. 4️⃣ Collaborate and Scale Thoughtfully: Sometimes, intentional smallness is the path to big impact. Entrepreneurs, for example, don’t need to scale at the expense of sustainability. We can focus on profitable, community-centered growth without being pressured into rapid expansion. This isn’t just about avoiding a financial cliff—it’s about building a future where our contributions are valued, our stories are told, and our wealth is sustained. So, let’s not wait for solutions to come from elsewhere. Let’s lead. Let’s invest in ourselves, our communities, and our collective power. What steps are you taking today to shift this trajectory? I’d love to hear your perspective.

A significant hurdle to women in asset management becoming Portfolio Managers is that the promotion decision is typically taken around the time many women have children, i.e. early 30s or after approximately 10 years as an Analyst. While most women take extended parental leave, men rarely do; in addition, women typically bear the majority of childcare responsibilities after birth. Moreover, there is an age range where, if a woman has not made PM, she likely never will and is viewed as a career analyst. Relative earnings dynamics within a family amplifies workplace dynamics. If a woman is overlooked for promotion in her early 30s while having children, her earnings may have fallen significantly behind her partner’s by her late 30s. The family dynamic may either dissuade her from returning to work or require her to bear more childcare responsibilities after returning, further increasing inequality. The career interruption from pregnancy applies outside of promotion concerns. A woman in the early stages of pregnancy or intending to become pregnant may be reluctant to take risk (e.g. by speaking up, making a contrarian investment, or switching firm) because, if she is made redundant, it will be difficult for her to find a new job as she will be at a late stage of pregnancy. One interviewee knows of women who have had abortions because they were too new in the job and being pregnant would expose them to too much career risk. This issue is highlighted in my report on Cognitive Diversity in Asset Management for Diversity Project - Investment Industry. https://lnkd.in/eASk7x3P Potential solutions are in my response to the FCA's consultation on Diversity and Inclusion in the Financial Sector at https://lnkd.in/eWgkd8qz (see p7). I would be grateful to learn of additional solutions: please leave a comment.

Is hiring a financial advisor worth it? Gee, I don't know, let's see... - Vanguard's "Advisor's Alpha" studies have consistently found that financial advisors add around 3% in net annual returns for clients. - Russell Investments' 2024 "Value of an Advisor" study found that advisors add about 3.52% in value per year to client portfolios. - The Retirement Income Institute published a study ("Using a Financial Planner and Portfolio Performance") that found that investors who used a financial planner achieved significantly higher returns than self-directed investors for the same level of risk in their portfolios. - Research from the Centre for Economic Policy Research observed that investors who delegate to a financial advisor achieve greater diversification, lower risk, and lower probability of large losses compared to those managing money on their own. - Morningstar's "Mind The Gap' study found that from 2013-2022, fund investors' actual dollar-weighted returns lagged the funds' reported total returns by 1.7% per year on average. This is because they were trying to time the market. Financial advisors help people avoid market timing. - More research from Vanguard ("Putting a Value on Your Value") has shown that advisors can create withdrawal plans to help clients minimize the total taxes paid over their retirements, thereby increasing their wealth and the longevity of their portfolios. - A Hearts & Wallets study ("The Power of Planning: Proven Benefits That Transform Consumer Financial Outcomes") found that Americans with a financial plan reported increased savings, better asset allocation, and more confidence in financial decision-making compared to those without a plan. - More research from Morningstar ("Alpha, Beta, and Now…Gamma") found that astute financial planning can increase a retiree’s sustainable income by about 29%. That's equivalent to roughly what a 30% larger nest egg would generate. So yeah, hiring an advisor is generally worth it. 😁

When we talk about the cost of childcare, there’s often an assumption that mom will leave the workforce if her salary doesn’t cover it. It’s treated like a short-term solution—a temporary pause to save money during the early years. But the reality? It’s anything but short-term. When women leave the workforce, they don’t just lose a paycheck. They lose Social Security contributions, retirement savings, career growth, and long-term earning potential. They risk falling behind in their field, missing out on promotions, and struggling to re-enter the workforce later—often at lower pay or in positions beneath their qualifications. This isn’t just an individual issue. It’s systemic. Women already face the motherhood penalty—earning less and being seen as less committed once they have kids. And when they step away entirely, the financial impact compounds. Research shows women hold fewer retirement assets and are more likely to face poverty in old age than men. So no, leaving the workforce to save on childcare isn’t a short-term fix. It’s a decision with lifelong consequences. That’s why we need to stop framing childcare costs as a personal problem for moms to solve and start treating it like the shared family and societal issue it is. Because when we assume moms will just “pause” their careers, we’re setting women back—and setting families up for long-term financial insecurity. Let’s rethink the way we approach this conversation. Affordable childcare isn’t just a nice-to-have. It’s a necessity for gender equity and economic stability. What do you think? Have you experienced or witnessed the long-term effects of taking time out of the workforce for childcare? I’d love to hear your thoughts. #affordablechildcare #workingmom

If we treated this like any other economic shock, we’d call it what it is: a structural failure. In my latest Fortune byline, I break down why the U.S. labor market is diverging along lines of race, gender, and pay: 🔹 Black women down 297,000 jobs since February 🔹 Men up +621,000 jobs 🔹 673,000 women still missing from the workforce since the pandemic 🔹 Job growth concentrated in the lowest-paying sectors for women 🔹 Pay gaps widening (again) This is not happening by accident. It’s happening by design. When the most educated female cohort in the country is pushed out of stable, high-wage sectors, and concentrated in the lowest-paying ones, that is a policy choice. When we continue to count only who is in the labor market, and ignore who has been pushed out, that is a modeling failure. And when we treat women’s economic participation as optional rather than foundational, that is a national risk. The Exit Economy is what emerges when exclusion becomes the operating system. It doesn’t just cost women. It costs the entire country. #GenderEconomist #LaborMarket #EconomicEquity #WomenAndTheEconomy #BlackWomenAtWork #IntersectionalEconomics #JobsReport #EconomicData #FutureOfWork #EquityAsEconomicStrategy Nick Lichtenberg Emma Hinchliffe Jessica Sibley AJ Hess Ray Vanessa Mobley Rachel Wolfe

Clear long-term plans let me “retire” as an Amazon VP at 50, travel 5 months a year, and still make money. Here’s how I did it and how you can apply the same thinking to your own life. Bill Gates once said, “Most people overestimate what they can do in one year but underestimate what they can do in 10 years.” I agree. Here are four real long-term plans I’ve created: – A 5-year savings plan that let me retire – A 10-year travel plan to see the world – A 10-year business plan for impact – A 40-year health plan to stay fit through age 95 Plan 1: Retire in 5 Years As my career progressed, I started thinking about financial independence. I followed three simple financial rules throughout my life to make this a possibility: 1. Live on less than I make 2. Invest for the long term 3. Max out my 401(k) match In my 40s, I calculated how much I needed to retire and I realized I was about 5 years away. The plan stretched to 7.5 years, but I made it. Even if plans shift, having one gives you clarity and options. Plan 2: A Business Plan for Purpose Post-retirement, I built a 10-year business plan to help others find career success and satisfaction. The plan includes scaling my impact and reaching 1 million people. Like all good long-term plans, this one evolves, but the overarching vision stays constant. Plan 3: See the World I made a list of everywhere I wanted to go and started planning travel around those dreams. Galapagos. Iceland. Switzerland. This is my “active years” travel plan, and it only works because of Plan 1—financial freedom. But you don’t need to be wealthy to travel, just committed to a plan. Budget, partner with others, and get creative. Plan 4: Be Healthy at 95 This is the longest-range plan I’ve made. Inspired by Dr. Peter Attia’s concept of the “Centenarian Decathlon,” I mapped out what I want to be able to do at age 95 and then worked backward. If I want to lift a grandkid off the floor at 95, I need to be strong enough today. The details of each of these plans are in my newsletter. But before I link that, I want to give you some specific tips to create powerful long term plans: 1. Decide what area to focus on (my four plans were financial, business, travel, and health) Trying to create a single holistic life and career plan at this scale is likely too complex. Take it on in pieces. 2. Figure out where you want to be in 5, 10, or 40 years. What is the ultimate goal. 3. Work backwards from the end as well as forward from where you are. Meet in the middle. 4. Iterate. You can draft the plan all in one sitting, but these plans benefit from periodic revision. I have clarified, updated, and changed all of my plans once to twice a year. The end goals have rarely to never changed, but the next steps and priorities within the plan definitely do. 5. Be flexible. The plan exists to help you, not to constrain you. Link: https://buff.ly/03hEvz2 Readers—share your long-term plans.

I didn't know what a college fund was until I was 20. But my six-month old baby is already a millionaire. I remember it like it was yesterday. A classmate mentioned her parents were buying her a new apartment. We were sitting in my dumpy little Toronto apartment that I'd been paying for on my own since I was 17. Half my furniture was from the dumpster. And I had quite a few free-loading roommates: cockroaches. I nodded along. Then, she said: "Yeah, they've been saving for my school since I was born." I didn't even know that was a thing. My dad was blind. My mom was a cashier. Neither graduated high school. I wrote a letter to a billionaire asking him to pay for my tuition. He said yes. The rest came from low-income grants. That conversation was the first time I realized there's an entire playbook for building wealth that some families pass down. And some of us never even knew it existed. So here's what I'm doing differently for my son: 1. My son has a job. My son has been earning income since he was born. He appears in my content, so I pay him for it. That income goes straight into a Custodial Roth IRA. The math: $7,000/year from age 0-17. At 8% returns, that's $283K by 18. And $5.7M by retirement. Tax-free. 2. Maximized 529 + Roth IRA accounts. 529 plans used to be risky. If your kid skipped college, you'd pay penalties. But the rules changed in 2024. Now you can roll unused 529 funds into a Roth IRA (up to $35K), and you can use funds towards home-schooling or private school tuition. So I'm doing both: 529 for tax-advantaged education savings, Roth IRA for flexibility. 3. Teach financial literacy. The wealth gap isn't just about income, but about knowledge. It's the stuff no one teaches you because they assume you already know. I won't wait till my son is an adult to teach him financial literacy. I put together a free guide with everything I learned and how I'm making my child a millionaire: https://lnkd.in/gvVPKsgR Are you doing this for your kids? 🔔 Follow Jenny Stojkovic for more. ♻️ Share this with a parent who needs to see it.

It was a little ironic. The opening session of the UN's Commission on the Status of Women (CSW68) this week had five men in a row speaking on gender equality. However, it wasn't planned this way. Speaker number 3, the President of the UN Economic and Social Council, was called away to a family emergency, as her (male) replacement wryly noted: "so instead of the female president, you are getting the male vice president, adding to the agenda disbalance of this opening”. There were dry chuckles in the room. Despite the not-to-ideal opening, I found the CSW68 opening session inspiring and impactful. During this session, and some of the others I have attended this week, we were reminded of the stark inequalities that persist around the world. Some particularly resonant take aways from me have been: 👉 Secretary General of the UN, Antonio Guterres' powerful opening speech, where he stated: "Patriarchy is far from vanquished – it is regaining ground, autocrats and others are promoting ‘traditional values’. Patriarchy is an age old tradition. We don’t want to bring it back, we want to turn it back. We don’t want granddaughters to enjoy less freedoms than their grandmothers had". I found this very moving. 👉 UN Women Executive Director, Sima Bahous' address, where she explained: "Poverty continues to have a women’s face. More women experience poverty than men. 1 in 10 women live in extreme poverty. 342m women and girls will be living in poverty by 2030 at current rate of progress". Wow, just wow. 👉 UN Women Senior Data and Policy Specialist, Ginette Azcona's update on progress against the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): With only 6 years remaining until the 2030 target, NONE of the 17 SDGs have been met, and only 2 are close to target. There has been very little progress since last year. And if that isn't depressing enough, consider these facts: 👉 54% of countries still lack key laws on gender equality, including on equal rights to enter a marriage and initiate a divorce 👉 Globally women hold just 27% of seats in parliament 👉 With the current (slow) pace of change, women are on track to hold just 30% of managerial roles by 2030 👉 At the current (slow) rate of progress, by 2050 women will spend on average an additional 2.3 hours per day on unpaid care and domestic work than men. The time is NOW to lean forward and take meaningful actions to accelerate the pace of change. Not sure what to do? How about signing up to the UN's Women's Empowerment Principles (WEPs): https://www.weps.org/about You can check here whether your organisation is a WEPs signatory, and if not, ask your leadership team why not: https://lnkd.in/eHgu2cRC #GenderEquality #GenderEquity https://lnkd.in/eWfeqHrY

My daughter, Troi, is 26. She doesn’t make millions (yet). But she’s quietly building wealth — one smart habit at a time. As her dad and a financial planner for 30+ years, I see her doing things most people don’t figure out until their 40s. Here are the 5 habits she’s building that could make her a millionaire (and more importantly — financially free): 💡 𝗛𝗮𝗯𝗶𝘁 𝟭: 𝗦𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗮𝘆𝘀 𝗵𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗲𝗹𝗳 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁. Every time she gets paid, she moves a chunk straight into savings or investments. Even before paying any bills, brunches, or travel plans. Then jokes about being “broke” for the next two weeks. 😂 But that’s not broke, that’s discipline. 💡 𝗛𝗮𝗯𝗶𝘁 𝟮: 𝗦𝗵𝗲 𝗶𝗻𝘃𝗲𝘀𝘁𝘀 𝗮𝘂𝘁𝗼𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆. Same day. Same amount. Every month. Whether the market’s up, down, or sideways. The secret isn’t timing the market, It’s time in the market. 💡 𝗛𝗮𝗯𝗶𝘁 𝟯: 𝗦𝗵𝗲 𝗸𝗻𝗼𝘄𝘀 𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗴𝗼𝗮𝗹𝘀. Last year, she wrote down three: 🎯 Build a $25K emergency fund. 🎯 Save for her first home. 🎯 Start investing toward early retirement. Every financial decision she makes ladders up to one of these. You're not just "saving" when you have clear written goals — short-term, mid-term, and long-term. Clarity turns wishes into strategy. 💡 𝗛𝗮𝗯𝗶𝘁 𝟰: 𝗦𝗵𝗲 𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗻𝗱𝘀 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝗶𝗰 𝗱𝗲𝗯𝘁. Troi knows not all debt is bad. She avoids high-interest credit card debt but isn’t afraid of good debt that builds assets or future income. Like financing certifications, investing in herself, or someday buying property. Debt doesn’t have to drown you, it can be a tool if used wisely. 💡 𝗛𝗮𝗯𝗶𝘁 𝟱: 𝗦𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗱𝘀 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗶𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻. She enjoys her life. But she spends on experiences, not flexes. Every dollar has a job — either to grow, give, or bring joy. ✨ 𝗕𝗼𝗻𝘂𝘀 𝗛𝗮𝗯𝗶𝘁: 𝗦𝗵𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝗴𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗮𝘁𝗲𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘄𝗲𝗮𝗹𝘁𝗵, 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝘀𝗮𝗹𝗮𝗿𝘆. As she grows in her corporate career, she’s learned that money isn’t just about what you earn now. Wealth comes from building assets. She’s already asking smart questions about equity, ESOPs, and long-term benefits. Because ownership > income. — If she keeps these habits up… She’s not just on track to be wealthy, She’s on track to be free. 💪🏾 Wealth isn't luck, it’s consistent, intentional habits — done early and done often. — And if you’re helping your daughter or niece (or yourself!) build wealth from the ground up with the right habits: 📘 My book “The Journey” is for you. It’s a practical, approachable guide to building wealth and financial independence for women. Comment below if you'd like a copy! 👋🏾 #Investing101 #FinancialPlanning

Most women don’t *plan* to lose their financial independence. It happens quietly...through caregiving, career pauses, relationship dynamics, and the thousand small choices we make to keep a family afloat. On this week’s Hello Monday, I sit down with Steph L Wagner to talk about what it really takes to rebuild your financial life when life cracks open. Her new book is "Fly! A Woman’s Guide to Financial Freedom and Building a Life You Love." Steph built a strong career in investment banking. She loved numbers, strategy, the sense that she could shape her own path. But a short break to raise her children turned into 14 years. Over time, the financial control she once had slipped away—first quietly, then completely. When her marriage ended when she uncovered her husband's double life. The emotional blow was matched by a practical one: she no longer had income, confidence, or a clear sense of who she was without the financial partnership she’d relied on. Steph's story is relatable to anyone who’s lost their footing (through divorce, loss, or an unexpected life turn) and had to rebuild from the inside out. We focus on three takeaways every woman should hear: 1. Pay attention to the quiet drift. Financial power erodes slowly. Steph explains the subtle signs—when you stop making decisions, when you outsource the money conversations, when you tell yourself it’s “just temporary.” Awareness is the first safeguard. 2. Understand your money story. Most of us inherit beliefs about money from childhood—scarcity, fear, guilt—and they show up in our habits. Steph shares how identifying her “money personality” helped her break patterns she didn’t know she had. 3. Build systems that actually work. Forget rigid budgets. Steph’s 45/20/35 model gives structure without shame—and helps you regain momentum even when you’re starting from zero. Steph’s journey is a reminder that financial freedom isn’t really about having more. It’s about reclaiming agency, rebuilding trust in yourself, and making choices that align with who you want to become. Find the full episode here: 🎥 YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gwbUM5rY   🎧 Apple Podcasts: https://lnkd.in/gbApx_SR   🎧  Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gtptWAGA