More Money Podcast - 178 Improving the Wage Gap & Boosting Financial Confidence - Brynne Conroy, Author of The Feminist Financial Handbook

Episode Date: November 29, 2018

For this episode I chat with Brynne Conroy, the blogger behind Femme Frugality and the new author of The Feminist Financial Handbook, about women, money, the wage gap, financial confidence and what we can all do as a society to make the future a more financially equal one. Long description: I hope you’re ready for a deep dive into women, oppression, victim blaming, leaning in, financial confidence and the wage gap, because that’s exactly what my next guest and I discuss for this episode of the Mo’ Money Podcast. I’m joined by Brynne Conroy, the blogger behind Femme Frugality and the new author of The Feminist Financial Handbook. And as you can guess from the title of her book, instead of writing another how-to finance book, Brynne decided to look at some of the big problems women face when it comes to finance and what we can do about it. I love this interview so much (as you can tell from my many tangents), because I obviously can relate a ton to the content of Brynne’s book. I’m a woman, and growing up I had no idea that I’d be treated differently, or paid less, when I entered the workforce. It’s the 21st century after all! Haven’t we moved past all that? Unfortunately, no we haven’t. There is still a lot of work to be done, and the issues of financial confidence and the wage gap aren’t just women’s problems. They are societal problems that we need to fix together. Women can’t fix the fact that they are paid less without the support of men as their allies. The only way we can make a different future for young girls is to work together now. It’s certainly something I’ve passionate about, and it’s honestly a big reason I was so drawn to personal finance in the first place. All of the books and personal finance experts I saw were men. I want to see more women represented. Luckily, I’m already seeing more women enter the personal finance space compared to 10 years ago, and that makes me incredibly happy and hopeful. For full episode show notes visit https://jessicamoorhouse.com/178 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to Episode 178 of the Mominy Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Morehouse. Thanks so much for joining me for another episode. And there's only a few episodes left in this season, Season 7 of the show. It is crazy. At this point, I think I have been officially doing the podcast for three and a half years. Crazy. Season 7 sounds like a lot. So that's crazy. And we're at episode 178. What's going on? Exciting time. So I've got some really great episodes to kind of close out the season. Today, I've got a great interview with Bryn Conroy. You may know her online if you've been a personal finance blogger for years like myself. She goes under the name Femme Frugality. That is

her blog, FemmeFrugality.com. But now she also has a book. She's an author now, and she's just come out with her book called The Feminist Financial Handbook. And so that's what we're going to be talking about in this episode, personal finance, women, and money, and just how they all kind of play a role in our financial lives. So I know you're going to love this episode. So stick around for that. But just before I get to that interview with Brynn, here's just a few words about this episode's sponsor. This episode of the Momany Podcast is supported by Copower Green Bonds. Looking for a sustainable way to invest in fixed income without sacrificing high returns?

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there's a limited supply of green bonds left. If you're interested in investing this year, don't miss out. To learn more, visit greenbonds.ca. Once again, that's greenbonds.ca. Thank you so much, Brynn, for joining me on the Mo Money Podcast. I'm excited to talk to you about you, your story, but also the new book that you just released called The Feminist Financial Handbook. Very interested in this topic. Definitely. Thank you for having me.

You're so welcome. So in case people aren't familiar with you, or if they are, and they maybe have just never heard your voice on a podcast, I'd like to get a little bit of background. I know of you. I feel like I've been following you and your blog for years. I feel like it's a long time coming that we've, uh, are finally having a one-on-one, uh, conversation. Cause you've had the blog BAM frugality for how long? When did you start that? Um, 2011. Yeah. Yeah. I think I was reading money in my house is like back in 2011. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like we must've started around the same time. Like that's what's so crazy. I'm like, I feel like that was just yesterday or like a year ago. I'm like, no,

it's 2018 now. What happened? I know so much has changed. I know I was like this naive, uh, 20 year old who had no, no clue. I mean, I, it's probably for the best, not knowing what was ahead, but, uh, yeah, a lot of stuff has happened. So let's kind of go from, so why did you originally start your blog? I mean, you've had it for a long time now. Yeah. Originally I was super broke. I was living beneath the poverty line. Oh, wow. And I found out I was expecting and I was super concerned about that. I'm just not becoming pregnant, but just like having the money to provide like I didn't have enough for myself. How was I going to provide for my child? My boyfriend also did not have a very high paying job. Neither of us had a full college education or university education, I guess.

And yeah, so I started searching hardcore for any ways that I could maximize the hours that I was side hustling, like get paid more money because that's something that I was kind of already doing. But I wanted to up like my per hour pay. And I found ways to go back to school for free. At certain times, I even got paid to do it. And I also found like even more ways to be frugal because again, we were pretty frugal as it was. But we just needed to really up the ante. And then seven years later, I have some kids and we're not in poverty anymore. Yay. So what were you originally doing like as your

job back then? I was working at a daycare back then. And then I entered a field in the realm of education. That's what I got my training and schooling in. And then that worked out professionally, but we had a job shortage unexpectedly. So at that point, I had really loved my job and I loved what I was doing, but I also needed to provide for my family. So I had this blog on the side and I kind of just shifted gears and focused on that and kind of made the switch pretty seamlessly. So are you right now, what do you do? Are you a professional blogger? Yeah, yeah, I guess so. I also write for a lot of outside sites as well.

That's awesome. That's so cool. Especially I feel, and that's like the exciting thing, especially when I do talk to bloggers who I feel like I've known for several years, almost coming to a decade. And we all started around, I guess like lots of us started kind of a few years after the recession because we realized, oh, we're in a situation. I need to figure out my money stuff because I'm broke. And then so many years later, how we've kind of grown. I mean, lots of the blogs I used to follow no longer exist. They decided they wanted to kind of live their lives and they were kind of done telling their story. They wanted to move on. And then some that continued then grew that blog into a business, which is great because for me, it's exciting to hear that because it's,

you know, like your story, it's like you, you were trying to figure out, I just need to kind of get enough money to survive and provide for my family. And then you kind of turn that into now this kind of awesome way for you to build this new career that has a lot more flexibility and freedom. Yeah, definitely. That's amazing. So let's kind of dive into your new book. It's called The Feminist Financial Handbook. Very cool title. And I'm so curious, what inspired you to create this book? Well, pretty much somebody asked me to, um, my publisher wrote to me and asked if it was a project I would be interested in. And I was a little hesitant at first, um, a book is a lot of work and I was very cognizant of that. Um, and I don't know, I had been approached by publishers before in the past and contracts hadn't been ideal. But when I sat down

and talked with the people at Mango, who is my publisher, they were really excited about this idea. And I knew that it's a book that needed to be written and I needed to find a way to make it happen. I also had a lot of encouragement from my peers because again, it's again, it's not something I knew if I wanted to invest my time into. But the publishing house was really great. They worked with me on the contract till everybody was good and comfortable. Yeah. And so we got something written that hasn't been said before. So what is, I guess, like that message that you really wanted to put into a book that you feel like hasn't really been spoken about or hasn't really been represented in other financial books? Absolutely. So Feminist is in the title of the book. The view I take on feminism is intersectional. and what all that means is that women are oppressed but also um depending on your race or

ethnicity you might face oppression um if you're disabled you might if you are lgbtq you might face oppression um so all of these different things that i am a white woman who is in a heterosexual relationship i identify as the gender I was assigned at birth and my journey has been so much easier because of all those facts. So a lot of times I think in the personal finance community, what we end up doing is we end up focusing on the numbers because really the math is pretty easy. And if you do X, Y, and Z, then you'll have a million dollars in however many years, right? And that's wonderful because it's true. But in our day-to-day lives, there are outside forces that no matter how disciplined you are, you're going to have to face those head on.

And being female makes the likelihood of that higher. And also any of those other types of oppression that you might face, that also makes the odds higher that higher. And also, any of those other types of oppression that you might face, that also makes the odds higher that you're going to face those obstacles. So in the book, we talk about them. I interviewed a ton of different women for this book, because there's a lot of perspectives I obviously can't bring to the table. I have no lived experience. And so it was really cool. I got to talk to a bunch of smart, savvy women who had kind of faced these problems and learned what they did to get around those barriers and obstacles. Yeah. And also just to have their stories heard, because I think, again, a lot of these things

are outside forces. There's only so many workarounds we have before we have to be like all right how are we treating people as a society and how can we change it um and so i really wanted to open up that conversation as well so you didn't want to just have a book on how to here are things that you as an individual can do but also let's talk about those but also let's talk about those, but also let's talk about the outside forces. Because I agree with you. I feel like a lot of, especially as women, or just like you mentioned, all the other kind of groups that may deal with oppression, it's like there is math. There are things that you can do.

You can get a side hustle. You can cut back. You can do all this. However, you may, depending on your situation, may deal with obstacles or issues or struggles that many other people won't so and sometimes those are beyond your control so what do you do in that case it's kind of like a weird uh kind of balance i was reading um some twitter conversations about how that kind of major book lean in um that came out a number of years ago which i i loved because i loved the it was you know about female empowerment at the workplace, taking charge

and all that stuff. But then there's a new conversation kind of coming about how maybe we're thinking about it wrong. Maybe it's society should take more responsibility for what's going on, why women aren't getting these opportunities in the workplace. So there's kind of like this confusing situation where it's, we have to do something as individuals, but we also have to do something as a group in a society to kind of change things. For sure. For sure. And I feel like some of that is parallel to the idea of kind of victim

blaming. Like, I mean, obviously this is not, I mean, you could say you're a victim of economics. I mean, obviously this is not, I mean, you could say you're a victim of economics. I mean, like societal norms, right? I don't want to extend this analogy too, too far. But essentially you're taking the people who are facing these huge obstacles that are imposed on them and you're saying, okay, now you fix it. You figure out a way out. And that's just like, that's not reasonable. And we all do have to take personal ownership. And we always should maintain as much hope as we possibly can and keep trying. But until those things are changed to the

systemic level, we're going to continue having problems with the economic effects of oppression. Absolutely. And so I mentioned to you before I hit the record button that I recently watched Netflix has a kind of a docu-series show called Explained, and they just have a topic, talk about it for like 18 to 20 minutes. And one of the recent episodes I watched was about the gender pay gap, basically, and how a lot of the conversations that have been going on for years is we just need to pay women more, you know, it should really be equal pay for equal work. But a lot of it kind of does come down, like, lots of conversations were like, well, women need to do this, women need to do that. But it's like, that's not really the solution that the solution, one of the solutions we really need to look at is like men need to step up more. Men

need to kind of be like, yeah, no, they should earn more. They need to be, it's a big problem. And there's not just kind of, it's not women, it's not a women's issue, basically, is kind of one of the sentiments that were, was in the show. And I was like, yeah, actually, that's very true. And so they gave an example of what's been going on in Iceland. And now they have, I think the stat that was in the show was their women are paid about like, I don't know, 90 cents on the dollar, which is one of the, you know, closest kind of balances between men and women and the wage gap, which is still like, it's still, it's not like on par though. So we still have quite a ways to go. And that's just in Iceland. And the reason it's, it's gotten to that point of, so we still have quite a ways to go. And that's just in Iceland.

And the reason it's gotten to that point of they've progressed so much is because they started implementing new things, I think, since the 80s or 90s. So it's been decades long to get to this point. And so since Canada and the U.S. and lots of other countries, the U.'t been, you know, working this hard like Iceland. That's why we're still at 70 or 80 cents on the dollar. It's just like, it's so frustrating. It's like a woman who, when I was growing up, I didn't actually, I never knew that there was kind of a wage gap. I really thought it had to do with, oh, you just have to, don't be lazy and work hard, go to school. It's all, you know, again, back to the individual. And then as I did all those things, checked all those boxes and still realized I was being faced with this, you know, why am I still making less? It's like, oh, it's a bigger issue. It's not, you know, it's kind of,

again, beyond my control. It's a bigger issues we have to deal with as a society. Absolutely. And I think Iceland, I did a little bit of research when I first started. So about eight, seven, eight years ago now, I'm good at math, obviously. This is why I like talking about the feelings. No, I'm just kidding. But they've held that first place spot for like, the better part of a decade at the very least. And it just, it really is insane to see how different policies affect that gap. Even in Rwanda. Yeah, that was another example they gave too.

I was shocked. I had no idea. Yeah. Yeah. Like they're doing really well as far as their wage gap is concerned. It's kind of insane. It's kind of insane. It was also, yeah, I had no idea about the background because, I mean, this also just goes to show how very, well, our media only kind of gives us so much information.

So, you know, as, you know, a North American, when I think of Rwanda, I still think of like, oh, yeah, they had that genocide. It's probably really dangerous there, Africa, like don't have a lot of information. And so when I saw that part of the show talking about how Rwanda has actually, they've, you know, really closed that gap. So women are being paid more, there's more women in the workforce, but also it had a lot to do with that genocide, because there was such a, you know, a lot of these men were killed during this war and everything like that women needed to take on lots of these roles, which is similar to, I guess, kind of what happened in World War II. But yeah, it was kind of shocking that most people probably have no idea that Rwanda is actually so progressive in that kind of way. Yeah, definitely.

It's awesome. Yeah, it gives us hope. So anyways, I love talking about the wage gap because it just always gets me really fired up. And for me, it's one of the reasons why I love talking to women, love promoting women, and just, I don't know, just making sure we're all having these conversations and they never kind of stagnate. Because I think it's, a lot of people still have this ridiculous idea that we're like, oh no, we're all equal. It's like, well, in some respects, yes, but in a lot of respects, no, we have a long way to go. Absolutely. And I think that's like in our cultures, like there's a lot of emphasis placed

on the individual and that bootstrapping mindset. And it's all very romantic. And for some people, I mean, like, essentially, I'm a bootstrapping story, right? and that doesn't mean that I haven't faced any types of oppression in my life um but it does mean that like it was harder for me than it would have probably been for somebody else who would face different or less obstacles and it's infinitely easier for me than it was than it would have been like, had I faced others. It's just, it's really, it's hard to understand. Like, I think people to skip through the hard work of talking about these hard issues and just skip ahead to the part where everybody's equal, everything's fine, now just work for it. And you got to realize that not everybody has had the same starting line. Exactly. Exactly. Kind of crazy to me, that whole mentality.

Exactly. It's not so much, and that's kind of one of the arguments that always kind of just drives me crazy is like, well, you know, if you want this, you just have to work hard and get it. And like, yeah, but again, yeah, like you said, it's like everyone's starting from a different starting line or some people start on second base or third base. Like it's just, it isn't equal. It's really, and as a woman woman in general you do have to work a bit harder or just work differently you can't work the same way as a man and get the same result you just can't because you'll you'll be still our society has these um notions of like oh if you you know are very um strict or or whatever as a boss then as a woman then you'll be considered oh well she's she's difficult but as a man it's like oh, he's very confident and he knows what he wants. And it's like, we're in 2018 and we still have this ridiculous notion. Exactly. I think it was, um, I think I'm going to send you the link to this, but I'm pretty sure it was the Wharton school of business. Uh, and an American school,

a British school and Australian school. They all like, all these researchers did this project on like, okay, women don't negotiate enough, right? So we're going to go look at the stats. And out of those three Westernized countries, Australia actually has that data. We don't keep it here in the US, they don't keep it in the UK, but in Australia they do. So they looked at all this data. And what they were finding there was that women are asking for raises just as often as men, but they get turned on 25% more. So when we have, like, I've listened to so many podcasts, like hiring managers who are male generally, I'm talking about all these tips for negotiation, those might not be good tips for women. Because the problem isn't that women aren't asking. The problem is that when we ask like men,

we have to be more agreeable. We have to be nicer. We have to smile more and just do all of this extra like emotional labor stuff within that negotiation yeah just get to the same place as a male would if he had all of our same qualifications absolutely and there's like little things i think a lot of people forget but you know i've worked in a lot of different office spaces and it's still it kind of boggles my mind how women are still in terms of like when there's kind of those social events or whatever at work, which are kind of normal, you know, someone's birthday or whatever, it's always the women that are expected to organize it to just to get it all. I've never seen a man organize a birthday party or a retirement party for anyone in an office.

That's never happened. So it's like, I think people forget. It's like, we also sometimes have to do additional work that we don't get any, you know, recognition or compensation for anything, but we're also expected to do it. And if we don't participate, it looks like we're not a team player and et cetera, et cetera. Right, right. I've typically worked in female dominated fields and now I work like at home by myself with the people I want to. So I don't have that same experience, but that sounds about right to me. Yeah. Yeah. It's yeah.

It's pretty accurate. It's one of the things that I'm like, I'm glad I, it's one of the nice things where I'm like, I'm glad I don't have to deal with that anymore because I do work for myself. So it's not like, that's not one of the things I have to, oh, great. It's my turn to go and get the balloons. I'm like, for God's sakes, I don't want to do this. I want to do my job. But you're throwing yourself a birthday party. I think I might start doing that. That sounds fun.

Yeah. So, okay. So we've, this is a topic I love to talk about. What are some other things? Especially you mentioned kind of the beginning, you talk a lot about obstacles. What are some other obstacles that women face in their kind of career or just their financial lives that you know people may not necessarily think about definitely um well this is kind of a tangent off a lot of time a lot of times people like to blame a significant part of the wage gap on maternity leave policy yes um and that's I I don't really see how that's accurate. I mean, if we look at maternity leave policies across the world, they're just not correlated at all, seemingly with the wage gap. It just doesn't make a whole lot of sense. But also, another problem I think

that we have as women is like, A, okay, so you you have a uterus so someday you might have a kid yeah and then in my country right now there's a big concern about like oh well women might not even have the choice anymore in the very near future to oh wow have or not have a kid and then okay so you have a uterus and let's say, heaven forbid, you do decide to start a family with your spouse. You are penalized for that inherently while he is not. And I think when you were talking about like men need to step up to, I think parental leave policies are a huge part of that. Absolutely. Because even after you have the child,

even if you are able to stay in your career, because a lot of times it's not women choosing to stay home. It's being women forced out of the workplace. If we are able to change gender expectations by expecting men to take off when their kids are sick or applauding women for when they do the same thing, because a lot of times we'll applaud men for doing exactly that for taking care of their children like oh he's such a great dad but when a woman will call off to do the same thing it's like oh my god like she just she's always going to something for her yeah she's not taking her job seriously yeah exactly yeah and um yeah so i think that like, if we, we have to look at the workplace, just as like, again, it's that systemic change. Yeah, we have to look at how the system operates, and why women are being forced out of it, because it more policies. I know in Canada it is becoming more common and more accepted for, you know, men to take paternity leave as well. You know, the women usually take like the first six months.

The man takes the next six months. I think that's fairly common. But also I know lots of women, they're like, but I actually, you know, we're the ones that gave birth to the baby. We have this special connection. special connections, it's sometimes very difficult to actually want to cut that maternity leave short and go back to the office and have the, their husband or their partner, you know, continue with that. So it's, there's also a big, you know, struggles like, should I sacrifice my career or should I, you know, stick around for another six months and have this, you know, really beautiful time with my baby that's, you know, kind of once in a lifetime. It's, it's almost like an impossible choice. It's not fair. Yeah, definitely. And I think that, um, kind of back to your original question,

like whenever you have a child, um, it might be a beautiful experience, but there's a very real possibility too, that you could come out with postpartum depression. And then you were expecting that beautiful experience and it just wasn't that. And then you get into this whole like mental health thing. And that's something that women face a lot more than men, not just because postpartum depression is for mothers, but also we face like double the rate of anxiety disorders and depression. We're more likely to get PTSD after a traumatic event.

There's some arguments that that's because women are statistically more likely to be victims of sexual assault or rape. And those things tend to trigger PTSD more often, but we don't really know. There's just this whole list of mental health conditions that really affect your ability to bring in an income. And a lot of these invisible disabilities where at least, at least here in America, they're not really recognized. They're not really given the same deference as other disabilities are. That's not to say that people with other disabilities don't face the same amount of discrimination. They do. But when you have these disorders it's a little bit hard to go to

your boss and be like yeah so i have ptsd because 12 years ago i was raped and like i'm going episode right now and i can't really handle work and i need accommodations and i'm technically protected by laws so like what can you do to help accommodate me yeah like a lot of bosses are not going to respond well to that and so you have problems keeping a job um problems earning a higher income or moving up and getting a promotion absolutely i also found too like i um have worked in lots of different workplaces and i have i felt like there have been certain co-workers that have probably dealt with like an invisible kind of illness, either an anxiety or some other kind of mental disorder. And so they would take a lot of time off, but we as kind of a co-workers

or like a team, and we're pretty close, we're pretty close. We'd have no idea what was really going on. So we would kind of just get irritated because we're like, is this person just not, again, not taking their job seriously? Why do we keep on having to kind of pick up the slack? It's like, if we had more of an open communication and really just understood this person is going through something, they need this time, we would all be respectful and understanding. But I feel like, yeah, we never even, it's a complicated situation because obviously that person may not want people to know what they're going through. But yeah, it's not easy whether you have the, you know, kind of invisible disorder or if you're, you know, a coworker that knows, you know, one of their

coworkers has that and dealing with that on the other side too. There needs to be kind of more openness and acceptance, I think. That's like kind of the only way. Like no one should be suffering and silence or feel guilty about having to take time off work because they need, they need that time to, to get better. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And it doesn't mean that they can't be good at their jobs. Exactly. Accommodations.

Exactly. Yeah. Well, even with like taking vacation days too, and this is, I feel like again, um, it could just be like my last job was like very, very corporate. Um, kind of like I was on Bay Street. So it's like, you know, Wall Street, basically. And people would judge others for like, oh, you're taking a vacation day. Oh, again, you don't take your job seriously.

A man takes a vacation. Good for you. You earned it. But for women, we would always be kind of expected to go above and beyond. Again, this is just my personal experience. I'm not saying for everybody, but it was just this work environment. You were always expected to work overtime, not take all your vacation days. And God forbid, if you ever had to take, because we actually did, I think, have specific days that were meant for like mental

health or just personal care days. No one took any of those, which is awful because you should be able to take those without any kind of, you know of questioning. We all need, man, did I ever need some of those mental health days? And there's a reason they're there too. I mean, they're part of your compensation package. Like if you aren't taking those days, you're essentially working for free during those days. Exactly. And even if you can hand them in at the end of your tenure and get a bonus, that bonus is going to be significantly less than what the company valued your time at. And I think that we judge women both in situations like that where it's like, oh, well, you actually treated yourself to a vacation. Like, how much do you have?

Or that must be nice. Like, we tend to think that women are more shopaholics um and then we but when we look at the numbers men are almost the same rate for shopaholism is that a word i think so i think it is now probably it's probably in the dictionary yeah yeah there's just i think there's it's it's shocking to me too as i've gotten older where i used to think some of these things that we're dealing with currently when when i was in my early 20s or even teens i was aware of them but i thought oh well by the time in my 30s or 40s they're not they're going to be you know there are some things are going to be replaced everything's

going to get better but nothing's really changed like it's it's surprising how little has been changed in the past couple decades in terms of lots of stuff. Um, yeah, shocking, especially to, and I'm not sure if you, um, go into this in the book, but I'd imagine this is something you have an opinion about is, um, I think a lot of the women that I talked to that I work with, um, have issues in terms of, um, managing their money and, uh, investing and specifically when seeking advice from a professional, because usually a professional. Because usually a professional is male. And usually they still, if they've been in the industry for a while, they still have this kind of old mentality that women don't understand math as much,

or they don't understand, oh, let me talk to a man. Let me talk to your husband. And this is just a ridiculous notion. It's so passe. A lot of women, they're very educated. They know they're usually the money managers of the household. But still, they're thing is, is that we shoot lower for our investment goals, we tend to take care of more people. So we're responsible for more people and thus their finances. Yep. And we live longer. So we're going to need more money to last us into our long, long retirements. And it's just, we're not marketed to appropriately. And we do need to take some personal responsibility. This is something that I cover in the book very briefly, more just like, hey, you need to go read up on this and this is why.

Like, he did as a girl and grew up to be a woman who isn't interested in investing money. Let's make sure this doesn't go down another generation. Jackie Cummings Kosky, she's actually the person I interviewed for that chapter. She wrote a whole book like to her daughter that was just like money lessons specifically focusing on investing. So she provided some really great insight into that. Just breaking because investing isn't really that hard if you're going to do it well. Exactly. Yes. um just breaking because investing isn't really that hard if you're going to do it well exactly yes and the other thing is that women are statistically better investors than men like our portfolios earn higher returns but we don't have the same confidence and i think that's what it

comes down to is we don't think girls are good at math. So we talk to our sons about investing and then women grow up to be completely not confident, but our tolerance for risk is better. And so that doesn't necessarily mean it's higher. We're just better at gauging it, maybe because we're less confident. I don't know. But it's really interesting to see that we're actually better investors,

but we don't have that confidence and therefore we don't invest and also we're not marketed to. So absolutely. Yeah. That idea of financial confidence honestly keeps popping up. The more people I talk to, the more women I have on the podcast talking about investing in women. It's, it's crazy. And it's, um, it is because it's so true. It's everyone I talk to every woman that, um, isn't in the personal finance world, but I, you know world, but I go to a networking event or whatever and explain what I do. And then we start chatting about money. That's usually what comes out is I find that they're like, oh, I'm just not good at it. But really what they mean is like, I don't know what to do.

I'm really not confident about making those decisions. I don't want to make a mistake. And it's just we need to, for me, I feel like it really has to go back to when we have kids, when they were young, is don't just talk to your boys about allowances or that lemonade stand. Talk to your girls, too, about this stuff and integrate them into that conversation. For me, it's like I feel like I was integrated into that conversation fairly young with my sisters just because I just had sisters and my mom was the money manager. So she talked to us a lot about being frugal and all that kind of stuff. So I think I had

kind of a unique situation. But I think most people don't have that kind of experience growing up. Yeah, I had really good basic finances. That's not to say that my, I don't know, I'm not going to say whether my parents were awesome or not awesome with money, but they taught me really good lessons either way. And I, a lot of the reason that I survived that period of my life, like I did through that period of poverty was because of those lessons that I had learned. I had an extreme aversion to debt, probably an unhealthy one. But another thing that I think this is because maybe partially because I'm a girl and nobody talked to me about investing. But also because I came of age like pretty, I mean, just like you pretty much right at the height of the recession. And I was terrified of the stock market. I watched my friend's parents lose like a ton of money.

My parents never talked to me about investing, so I don't know if they lost some or not. But it was just really bad. I watched so many people lose their jobs and I was at a point where at one point I was like, okay, I'm just going to stuff money under my mattress because this has happened before. We know what's coming.

Insurance, I mean, insurance isn't going to work if our government's bank, I don't know, tutorial, but that's the way I felt. And for a long time, I was not comfortable with investing at all. And I kick myself now because I look back and realize that was a really dumb move. That's when I should have been pouring a ton of money into the market yeah but yeah yeah I think so I think that we also need to kind of cut ourselves a break um because a lot of these cultural norms are kind of passed down without thinking yeah like women didn't used to need to know how to invest um maybe they should have been taught anyways for a form of empowerment, but we come from a very sexist society historically. And so when women didn't need to

invest, you didn't talk to them about that. But now we're in a world where a man's not going to provide for you. Even if that's something that you want in a partner, I personally don't feel like that's what I, that's not the primary thing I look for in a partner. No. There's no guarantee of that anymore. Like divorce rates are really high. And even if you are included on a spousal IRA, that goes up, or I'm sorry, that's a different account. R. RRSP. Yeah. RRSP. So I mean, at least here, those retirement accounts are up for litigation. Yeah. So you don't have that security anymore that you might have once had through a marriage. And so it becomes even more important. So while we might not talk about

these things because of leftovers from our old culture, now we're in a new culture and we kind of, we don't need to blame ourselves, but we just need to wake up and talk to our kids, you know? Yeah. And just, yeah, get rid of a lot of the things that we were kind of taught younger, just because a lot, yeah, so much has changed. I think most people just don't, you know, a lot of people are like, why has things, you know, have they changed so quickly? I'm like, well, they just have. It's because of the internet. It's because of social media. Things have changed so drastically in the last decade. And so, yeah, it is kind of hard to kind of keep up, but we have to do our best. We have to, especially for younger generations. I think that's the reason why I'm so, like,

passionate about educating specifically women, also men, though, young men, about these things because I don't want people to kind of go through the same struggles that I had to. I want to make it better for other generations. And I want to get rid of this idea of financial confidence. I want everyone to feel confident. It's ridiculous that we are good with money historically. There's a lot of data that says so. And yet we don't feel good about the decision we're making. We don't feel confident about it.

Exactly. Yeah. Well, this has been an amazing chat. I bet there's a lot of great, more conversations that could be had. I feel like this would be a good book club book. The Feminist Financial Handbook is your book. Where can people grab a copy so they can dive in and start some conversations with their friends?

Yeah, absolutely. So right now it's available for pre-order on Amazon. And then it will, it's also on Barnes and Noble if you want to pre-order. And then it will go live launch prints on October 15th. So if you pre-order now, you can be one of the first people to get your hands on a copy. Exciting. Well, thank you so much, Bryn, for taking the time to chat with me. It was a pleasure. Hope to have you on again. Me, absolutely. And that was episode 178 of the Momany Podcast with Bryn Conroy. Make sure to check her out at femfrugality.com and grab a copy of her book, The Feminist Financial Handbook. I think this is a great opportunity, a great time to start making your

reading list. I don't know why, but winter time, because winter's coming, or winter's here really. I'm in Toronto. It's already snowing. It is the perfect perfect time to kind of get your kind of stack of books, finance books if you want, and start reading because I don't know. I never feel like really reading when it's like nice out in summertime. It's not like my kind of jam, but wintertime, I'm all about binging the books. So add that to your reading list. Why don't you? So I have a few things to share with you. So don't go away. Here's just a few words about this episode's sponsor. This episode of the Mo Money Podcast is supported by Copower Greenbonds. What's in your investment portfolio? Like seriously, what kind of companies are you

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greenbonds.ca. So I forgot to mention also, if you want to learn more about Brynn, her book, and just everything we talked about in this episode, make sure to check out the show notes. You can always check out the show notes on my website. For every single episode on the show, just go to jessicamorehouse.com slash whatever that number of the episode is. So this episode is 178. So just go jessicamorehouse.com slash 178 to find these show notes. But speaking of my website, if you've never checked it out, and that's, you know, that's totally fine. Maybe you're just a podcast listener. And that's where you listen to me. And that's cool. That's cool. But if you want to basically take advantage of some of the cool things I've got going on my site, I've got a ton of free resources that you may want to check out because they're free.

Just go to jessicamorehouse.com. Specifically, I've got a great resource library. So basically, I've created a number of different worksheets or cheat sheets or spreadsheets or online training videos, webinars, what have you. And they all exist on my resource library. So really all you have to do is go to jessicamorris.com slash resources, make yourself an account for free, and then you get to access all of them in one awesome place. And I'm always adding new things. I'm very excited to add more resources in 2019 because I'm hoping that when I take my little break from the podcast in December, that's what I'm going excited to add more resources in 2019 because I'm hoping that when I take my little break from the podcast in December, that's what I'm going to be spending my time on.

Obviously, I'm also going to be spending my time on prepping, launching my first online course. I'm very excited about it. So I've kind of teased that course a lot, a little bit, a lot of it. I don't know. But I've been talking about this damn course since the summer because I thought, oh, this won't be that hard to launch. I'll just launch it in a month. No, it's like November, so not going to happen. So basically, if you want to be the first to know when I will officially launch the course, get on my email list or join my Facebook group or follow me on social media. The game plan is to officially launch my course called Investing Foundations for Canadians at the beginning, maybe the first week of January. I'm also hoping, fingers crossed, that I will also have my second online course ready to launch alongside that, which will be more about how to implement the indexing strategy.

So we've had a lot of guests on the show to talk to me about what does it mean to do passive investing, index investing, ETFs, and all that kind of jargon that you're like, what is that? Basically, it's just how, okay, once you know what, the what of investing, what it means, how it works, then how do I implement? How do I take action? So that's kind of going to be the second part of the course. So make sure to look out for that. I will definitely be sharing news about that on the podcast next season. But just wanted to kind of tease one more time and also give me some accountability because I'm like, girl, you need to just buckle down and get it done. So it is ready to launch in January. So now that I'm saying that, I've got to

do it. Got to keep myself accountable. Anyways, before I let you go, I think there's a few iTunes reviews I just want to give some shout outs to. All right. I've got one from N Serena from Canada. She says, great financial education for the week. This was a great episode that goes into ETF investing. I think she's talking about the episode I did with Tom Safe, which I believe is episode 176. So make sure to check that out. But also, where the future may go also gives good reference websites to increase your knowledge. Thank you for a Canadian-based financial podcast. Yeah, I've been getting a lot of feedback from that particular episode, which is great. A lot of people that are at the beginning stage of their kind of investing journey were kind of freaked

out just by some of his thoughts and opinions on just like the future of investing. The thing that I would like to remind you of, like, Sam Saif is an amazing guy, but he's very, you know, he's very advanced when it comes to investing. So just because he has certain kind of ideas about where the future may go in terms of ETFs and cryptocurrency, don't let that freak you out or scare you into not investing. He is also, as he mentioned in the episode, one of the co-founders of Wealthsimple, a robo-advisor. So he also does believe in just the indexing strategy, buying low cost, index-based ETFs and all that kind of stuff. So if you haven't listened to that episode, you'll understand a little bit more if you take a listen. So thank you so much for your review. And Serena from Canada, really appreciate it. If you want to give me an iTunes review, I would love you forever and give you a shout out

on a future episode. So really, it takes no time at all. The easiest way is really to do it through the podcast app. I believe you can also just do it on the iTunes, like, you know, software. What's it called? Software web, you know, you know, desktop kind of thing, whatever it is. I clearly don't really use the desktop thing too much. You should just use the podcast app, but it takes you two seconds. Well, let me know what you think. Also, let me know what you do think, what you want to learn

more about. You can do that via an iTunes review or just hit me up over Twitter, Instagram, or my email. You can email me directly. I email back every freaking email I get, especially for my readers and listeners. You're always at the top of my list when I get an email from you. So you can just email me directly at jessica at jessicamorehouse.com. Oh, one thing I'm going to let you know before I go. Sorry, I probably should have put that before, but whatever. Hopefully you're still listening. If you're from the Vancouver area, I'm coming to town. I am coming back home for the holidays. I'm going to be doing a mini meetup. I've already got like a list of a bunch of people that are going to join me. But basically, it's like you want to grab a drink with good old Jessica over here. You want to meet up in Vancouver over the kind of Christmas holiday,

hit me up jessica at jessicamorehouse.com. Email me say that you're interested. I'll put you on my kind of list. And then once I kind of have a, you know, solid idea of how many people we're talking about here, I can find a venue and a date and we'll have a drinky poo of have a solid idea of how many people we're talking about here, I can find a venue and a date and we'll have a drinky poo and have a good time. It'll be kind of fun. So let me know if you want to come. But yeah, that's it for me. Thanks so much for listening.

I will be back here next Wednesday with a fresh new episode of the Mo Money Podcast.