More Money Podcast - 191 Women, Money & Financial Success - Robin Taub, CPA, Speaker & Author

Episode Date: April 3, 2019

If you’re a long-time listener of the Mo’ Money Podcast, you’ll remember when I had Robin Taub on for episode 32 to talk about her book A Parent’s Guide to Raising Money Smart Kids. Well, that was a few years ago now so I thought it was time to have her back on the show, but to talk about something very different. As I mentioned at the beginning of the show, we bumped into each other at Melissa Leong’s book launch for Happy Go Money and started talking about the different ways both genders think, talk and manage money. It’s a subject that Robin has been researching quite a bit lately, and one that I thought would make for a great conversation on the podcast since gender roles is a fairly hot topic right. As humans, we all deal with money differently from one another. As the saying goes, personal finance is personal so there’s really no such thing as a one-size-fits-all financial solution. But, not only do we deal with money different as individuals, there’s a lot of research to indicate striking differences between how men and women handle money. Here’s one of the studies that Robin mentions in the podcast by CPA Canada: The impact of personality traits: a fresh look at gender differences in financial literacy What much of the research shows is that women tend to be more risk averse or risk conscious, we struggle with financial confidence, and we tend to be better investors than men. We chat about all this and more in the episode, so enjoy! For full episode show notes visit https://jessicamoorhouse.com/191 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, hello, hello. Welcome to episode 191 of the Mo Money Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Morehouse. Welcome back to the show for a fresh new episode. I'm so excited to share this interview with you. So if you're a long time listener of the podcast, and I know there are a ton of you out there, thank you for being so amazing and loyal. You're like crazy, crazy, crazy, thankful. crazy, thankful is what I'm trying to say. I have a guest back on the show who was here for episode 32. So this is that was back in January 2016. I had Robin Tobe on the show and I have her back. She is a financial speaker, writer, consultant, and I had her on the show back in 2016 to talk about her book called A Parent's Guide to Raising Money Smart Kids, which is great if you have kids and you're trying to figure out how can I educate them about money because honestly, you can't rely on the school system to do it.

You need to kind of take a charge. This is a great book to pick up because it goes through how to talk to your kids about this. So they become very money smart adults, which wouldn't what a concept how amazing would that be? So I ran into Robin at the book launch for Melissa Leong's book, Happy Go Money back in January of this year. And we got to chatting just, you know, kind of catching up. And we got to chatting, just kind of catching up. And we started talking about, wouldn't it be great to have another episode, an interview together to talk about specifically women and money? It just seems like there's a lot of great studies that are going around that we could really do a deep dive into. And so that's exactly what we're doing

for this episode, which I feel like is very timely because yesterday was Equal Pay Day. I will be 100% honest. The reason I found out that yesterday was Equal Pay Day was because it was trending on Twitter and a lot of women friends sharing it on Twitter looked it up. And apparently it was started in 1996 by the National Committee on Pay Equity as a public awareness event to illustrate the gap between men's and women's wages. And, you know, they encourage people to wear red on equal pay date to symbolize how far women and minorities are in the red with their pay. It's kind of annoying, I'll be honest, and aggravating that it is 2019. And still there are all these studies and stats coming out that women are still earning less, even though we are doing the same amount of work,

if not more, quite honestly. So we still have a lot of work to do. We have a lot of things to do to get to equal pay. So anyways, we're, you know, we're going to chat about all these great things in this episode. So I'm going to love it. Make anyways, we're, you know, we're going to chat about all these great things in this episode. So I'm going to love it. Make sure to listen to the full episode. And the end of this episode, I've got some very important announcements to share with you. But before I get to this interview with Robin, just a few words about this episode sponsor. This episode of the Mominy podcast is sponsored by the Scotia Momentum Visa Infinite Card. What kind of cash back are you getting with your credit cards?

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time offer? This offer expires April 30th, 2019. Just visit jessicamorehouse.com slash Scotia or visit the show notes for this episode. Once again, that's jessicamorehouse.com slash Scotia or check out the show notes for this episode. Thanks, Robin, for joining me on the Momentum Podcast once again. I'm so glad to finally have you back on the show because it's been several years since I've had you on the show and I feel like a lot has happened in both our lives. Very true. And thank you for having me back. You're so welcome. So yeah, the first episode I had you on, we talked about, you had a book, you talked about just how to educate parents so they can educate their kids

about personal finance, which I think is so important. And still, I haven't found really too many guests besides yourself that really have that much knowledge about that. But I think it's always something that's so... It's always front of mind for me because I'm getting to that age where everyone I know is having babies. Right. So I'm like, let's start introducing these concepts. Don't wait until they're much older.

It's like integrate this part of the conversation early. So it doesn't seem like so hard for them to kind of grasp as a concept. Yeah, it's true. My book came out, I think it's now being eight years. Wow. And my kids are now 22 and 24. So it's really amazing to see how some of the stuff that I, you know, I mean, a lot of the book came from what I lived with them and to see it paying of the stuff that I, you know, I mean, a lot of the book came from what I

lived with them and to see it paying off now that they're in their 20s and, you know, the stakes are higher. And that was sort of the, you know, the key thing in the book was you want to start when they're young and the stakes are low and they can learn and make mistakes because by the time they're at this stage where they finish university and they're working, they really do need to know, you know, more than the basics, but really how to start setting goals and, you know, taking steps towards achieving those goals. Absolutely. That's very cool. Real life experiment that you're doing. I like that. Yeah. My human, my human, what's the word? Guinea pigs. Yeah. Human Guinea pigs. But you're on the show this time because we

uh reconnected at uh melissa leong's uh book launch party which was so great and so fun and we started chatting and uh the kind of topic of kind of uh diversity and genders and money started coming up and i'm like i don't think i've really had um anyone on the show to talk specifically about the differences of men and women in money. Because I clearly know the differences between or like some of the struggles or some of the issues that us women deal with when it comes to money. Those are very apparent, but we don't talk about some like, well, why do we have lots of these differences or struggles? Like what can we talk about? And there's a lot of studies, there's a lot of, you know, kind of different fact sheets and stuff out there that kind of talk about this.

So I thought that'd be fun topic to talk about for this episode. Yeah, so did I just find it so fascinating, because there is a lot of research that shows a significant gap in the knowledge, in the financial knowledge and capability between men and women. But what really accounts for that gap? Is it gender? Is it socio-demographic factors like age, education and income? Or is it personality traits? There's actually a lot going on. And I thought it would be, you know, for my own sake, I was very interested in diving into this and learning a lot more about, you know, which factors do impact people's financial literacy and their ability to form good behaviors and habits. Exactly. So let's jump in. So one of the things that when I think about kind of both genders and

money is, well, historically, men have always been the earnersers the providers the money managers in the family they've had kind of historically more generations more time to really get comfortable with the concept of money whereas it's really been only in the past maybe 100 years maybe even less that women have been really able to earn money uh spend money independently make their own decisions i mean it wasn't honestly sadly that long ago that women were able to finally open up a bank account without their husband's consent, which is just crazy. I think that has obviously got to be part of the equation when it's like, oh, women have a harder time making decisions or aren't as confident. I'm like, well, why do you think? Look at history. Exactly. And women were socialized differently around money. There were societal norms and social forces that kind of implied to women that money's for the men, don't worry about

that, you just kind of take care of the home, you know, the home front, and we'll be the breadwinner. But then, as you know, and as you said, so many women have entered the workforce, you know, in the last 50 or even longer years. So things have really changed in many ways. Now, I feel like the financial industry is still a male domain. Like I read that in the US, 86% of investment advisors are men with an average age of over 50. Yeah, that sounds about right. When you think about it, like when I think of a kind of typical financial advisor, I think of a white old guy, a 50 year old guy in a suit, who's kind of telling me, you know, mansplaining, basically, that is my personal experience.

Yeah. And I think that, you know, I think that that has been a lot of the experience for a lot of people. But I think it goes beyond just the mentality in that. And there's other reasons why women have a different relationship with money and the legacy of the things you described earlier. So as you've probably read, women are paid less than men. There's this gender pay gap that has been all over the news recently. And it's around 80 cents. Women make around 80 cents for every dollar a man makes. And that can really translate into, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars over your working years. Also, women tend to take

more career breaks to care for their kids or for their parents. Just kind of the way it's always been is that it's impacted women's careers more so that women's salaries tend to peak for their kids or for their parents. Just kind of the way it's always been is that it's impacted women's careers more so that women's salaries tend to peak in their 40s while men's peak in their 50s. And then also women live longer than men, almost five years longer. So all of that stuff has financial implications

for women around having savings and saving for retirement. Yeah, it's like we, it just sounds like kind of like we get a rough deal a little bit it's like so we earn less no fault of our own we work just as hard we physically if we want to have you know children and start a family we physically we have to take time off to have said children and to raise them and wean them and then you know like you said we live a lot longer so we have to have more savings than men who you know probably have more savings because they earned more it's not really fair

that sucks there's a lot of factors kind of working against women and then as you said the industry can be kind of like intimidating and there's all the just these barriers that women feel about getting advice or working with someone and and it just all the, just these barriers that women feel about getting advice or working with someone and it just all kind of, it's like a perfect storm. Yeah. And I do find like one of the joys I get for this podcast is talking to women who's like, oh, I just stumbled upon your podcast. I wasn't even looking for something finance related. And then I got hooked. I'm like, that's amazing. That's what I'm trying to do. Cause I don't want, you know, finance can be kind of dry, but also I feel like a lot of the financial

literacy, you know, out there, whether it's like, you know, articles or videos or whatever it is, it is usually you kind of think of a man giving that advice, not so much a women. So it's not just like us women having a hard time with all these other things is we're having a hard time finding someone that, you know, sounds like us, understands us, giving us that information as well, too. That is so true. Like hearing it. I mean, I think a lot of the work that you do with millennials, I think it's so impactful because they're hearing it from a peer. And I think it's similar with this.

I mean, I've been investing for probably 30 years ever since I started working. And I have a lot of experience in this area now. And I think you're right. I think women are seeking role models and seeking people that they feel comfortable hearing about this subject from. And then again, maybe we can approach it different language, less jargon,

in ways that will feel more accessible. And that kind of reminds me of with my book too. I really tried to make this issue of teaching your kids about money much more accessible and to help parents feel like, yes, you can do it. You can. You just kind of need a structure, a way to think about it and an approach. But it's kind of the same with this. No, absolutely. And that's, I mean, that's the reason I kind of got into this and got interested in finances. Obviously, a lot of the books that I kind of introduced me to finance, they were by men. But then when I started discovering blogs, those were a lot of them that I read were by women. And it was so interesting to take some of the information I got from these books and then read these women talking about their own financial lives or their journeys and the ups and downs and all of that stuff and feeling like, oh,

like now I have kind of a real life reference point and someone just like me and I can relate to that. And that gave me the motivation to kind of not just read a book like, well, that's that doesn't apply to me because so and so and so. And I think it's really important to have, not just be a woman to continue to seek out this information by people that really resonate with us, but also people out there. If you have a story or have information to share, don't be shy. Go out there and provide that information. Yeah, I'm just looking at my bookshelf and you're right. Most of the books that I've read over the years about personal finance or

investing were mostly by men except for Patricia Lovett Reed. She was always out there kind of as the face of personal finance first for TD bank. And now, you know, she's on CTV news. And she was like one of the first women that was really out there talking about money in a way that was very accessible. And she's such a nice person too. And I always kind of feel like have good memories of that. Yeah. I mean, the good thing that's been happening in the past couple of years I've found, like in the past two to three years, which is really exciting, is

a lot more women are writing personal finance books, which I love. Young people, old people, everybody. And I'm like, yes, let's do this. This is so exciting because looking at my bookshelf, it's like there's still a lot of men, but a lot more women in the past couple of years with their books coming out, which is just so great. Yeah. And especially I see it more with the millennials as well. Lots of young women like your age and stuff that are doing such good work in this area. But I think with investing too, you kind of need experience. You need a bit of a track record. You need to have lived through some economic cycles

and some financial market cycles. And I feel like I started my career in the late 80s. So I've really been around and I've seen a lot. Yeah, let's talk a little bit about investing because that is always a topic that comes up. My audience loves to learn more about investing and I like to put out more interviews with experts about investing because I feel like the more you hear it, the more it'll sink in because it took me years for it to really sink in and me feel confident about like, no, I've heard this one piece of advice five times. I'm

going to believe that it is true. I'm not going to second guess myself. When it comes to women, this is, you know, kind of just from me talking to people in my audience or working with clients, there's a huge, it's not so much that they don't have the information. Sometimes it is a lack of information, but usually it's a lack of confidence. And just looking at some of the stats out there, it's very obvious that we invest differently than men. I know actually lots of the stats point that we're better investors because we don't speculate as much, we don't trade as much, so we're not spending as much money on fees and all that kind of stuff. But still, I think the big issue for women is having that confidence in ourselves that we're making the right decisions

and starting. I feel like that is a big, big thing that I've noticed for especially younger women is they're terrified of actually taking that next step and starting to invest. Why do you feel like that is? I think that you're right. There are some women that don't have confidence in their financial skills and they tend to think that they don't know enough or they don't know enough to get started and um i think some of that may be perception and some may be true um although i really there are as you said there are studies that that have actually shown that um women are not as financially literate as men um and i guess if that is true, if there is a lack of knowledge, it does sometimes translate into hesitation to take action

because you're just not confident in, you know, your abilities. I mean, I think that with women, just in terms of like, when they do start investing um they do tend to start later than men which i think is kind of interesting and you know that can be a problem as as we said earlier given the other barriers um but like you did say some of the once they do start they there's a lot of research that shows that they are actually better investors than men. And I think some of that does go back to these personality traits. And I was hoping that we would have a chance to talk about some of them because, you know, we said at the beginning,

like, what are the reasons that men and women are different with money? Well, is it gender? Is it sociodemographic? Or is it personality traits? And there's really interesting new research around that. Because as I said earlier, it was just assumed that, you know, women were not as financially literate as men. And lots of studies show that even a Stats Canada study from 2014 show that only 15% of women can answer five short financial knowledge questions correctly versus 22% for men. Wow. Yeah. And also like you were saying about confidence, less than a third of women reported feeling financially knowledgeable versus

43% of men. So there's lots of surveys like internationally that have similar gender gaps. But what I found really interesting was when you start looking at these underlying things like age, education, and income, and especially personality differences, that makes a bigger difference in a lot of these areas than just gender. Interesting. So what are some of the different personalities out there? And what are some of the, you can kind of clearly see like the different decisions they make based on

their personalities? Right. So I don't know if you're, if you've ever like studied psychology, but there's, I hadn't studied it at all either, but my son did, and he started talking about it a lot and I sort of got curious. And there's something called the five factor model of personality traits, which is quite well known, often referred to as a big five. And you can think of the acronym ocean. So O is openness, so openness to experience. C is conscientiousness. E is extroversion or positive emotionality, A is agreeableness, and N is neuroticism or negative emotionality. And what's really interesting is when you, some of these personality factors, the research has found gender differences in some of the big five, but not all. And like, if we look at some of the ones where there are gender differences, it's really interesting how it impacts personal finance. So agreeableness

is a tendency to trust and ask fewer questions, and kind of go with the flow. And 30%, 31% of women scored as highly agreeable versus 14% of men in a study that TD Wealth conducted. And that's really consistent with psychological research that just shows that not every woman, but on average, in general, women are more agreeable than men. So when it comes to money, if you're agreeable, then you're less skeptical, and you're more trusting. And, you know, you sometimes do what you're told, because you don't always you sometimes do what you're told because you don't always trust yourself or you nod along, you don't ask questions. So it can have a negative effect on how you manage money. But being agreeable also means that we have a greater tendency to cooperate and help others and experience empathy.

So that might explain why women are more likely to ask for help when we need it. Like, you know, the old cliche about asking for directions when we're lost. So, you know, women are more willing to say, yeah, you know what, I may have a knowledge gap here, or I just need some help. Yep. So I think that's one really interesting way. And then conscientiousness too. In this TD study, 46% of women scored highly, as highly conscientious versus 39 um in this td study 46 of women scored highly as highly conscientious versus 39 for men and not on all aspects but on some aspects of conscientiousness like like self discipline and dutifulness women tend to score higher and this is a huge advantage obviously with personal finance because you're more likely to make a plan and stick to it and take a

disciplined approach to spending, saving, and investing. And that can be a really big advantage for women. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I found, yeah, when I was reading that study too, it was interesting to learn about how women are more trusting and it is kind of, it's both positive and a negative. It's like, it's good. Cause you do want to, when you do feel confident and trusting in someone or, or a strategy or a platform, then you're willing to like move forward. But also you can maybe trust the wrong thing and make a decision. And that's always, I find that when, when we're talking about like fears and stuff, what people have, that's a big fear that I find a lot of, of my kind of women audiences, like they're afraid of making a mistake. Yeah. And that's, yeah. And that's another area that like TD looked at in their study,

which was, they called it reactiveness. And I guess it's the speed with which you react to negative events. And 35% of women scored highly on this attribute versus 24% of men. So, you know, I think it kind of corresponds on the big five to neuroticism, not to be taken in a negative way, but just be more like negative emotionality because, you know, women are quicker to react in certain things like traumas, like death or divorce could cause women more to protect their money more yeah um you know a little more careful around that kind of thing and just wanting to avoid making mistakes or avoid losses yeah because they tend to be more a little more worried

about negative outcomes absolutely yeah but the interesting thing about risk aversion is that there's been some research that shows that women are more risk aware. And I like that term. I like being better investors, because they sort of stay the course, they don't trade as much. I think women are like more rational investors. So they'll take on smart risk, but they're not just going to overtrade and, you know, try to be super aggressive. Yeah, again, women are less aggressive than the men. And again, there's lots of interesting research that shows that women actually do outperform. For those reasons. And it makes a lot of sense too, because whenever I feel like I'm in a group of people and we're having a conversation about investing, it's whenever there's some new like hot stock or

when cryptocurrency was all the rage, you know, this time last year, during Christmas time last year, it was the men that were like, oh yeah, I'm going to double, triple my money and blah, blah, blah. And it was the women like, oh gosh, i'm gonna double triple my money and blah blah and it was the women like oh gosh you know maybe i'll dabble maybe i'll like put a little bit in that but they're very cautious and i mean i'm sure they're laughing now because they didn't lose all their money in cryptocurrency but you know true it's just always so funny whenever i'm in a group of people it's always like the mother is so excited like oh i'm thinking about getting like they're just learning about investing.

And their first instinct is like, I'm thinking about buying some stocks, maybe weed stocks. I'm like, let's relax. Yeah, I was going to say weed also. I feel like I'm more of a male. Like, it appeals to men more. Just like taking that high flyer and hoping that you'll knock one out of the park. And it's interesting because the personality trait of extroversion, it doesn't really, it's not, it's pretty gender neutral, but there's certain

subsets of it. Like men tend to be more assertive. Women tend to be more gregarious. So again, I feel like, and then I think just like, you know, there's hormonal things that show that, you know, testosterone and men are more aggressive and they are willing to take to take, you know, bigger risks. But that can lead to big gains, but it can also lead to big losses. And I think also this whole have you have you been reading a lot about goals based investing? Yeah. So I feel like that appeals to women more as well. Yeah. Like, you know, what are my goals? What do I have to do to reach my goals? How much do I have to save?

How do I invest in the right asset mix for my, you know, risk and my time horizon, all that stuff. Whereas I think guys just want to do as well as they can. Yeah. They want to go big or go home. You know, they really want, it's rare when I'm like, oh, so you want to double your money because you want to retire early or like, what's the goal? They, oh, so you want to double your money because you want to retire early or like, what's the goal? They're like, I just want to get rich.

So you feel like they don't always have, it's not tied to a goal. They just kind of, yeah, they just feel like they want to win. Yeah. They want to win. It's a winner take all or kind of like a very competitive attitude. And again, that goes back to women being more agreeable and being more cooperative more nurturing and I really feel like these personality traits explain so many things that I always kind of felt made sense to me intuitively without knowing the science behind it but now that I'm doing all this interesting research it's like yes that really does confirm what I've experienced I used to work at Citibank Canada on the trading floor. And I would say that probably nine out of 10 traders were men.

But on the marketing and sales side, and I was on the marketing derivatives marketing side, it was much more evenly split. Yeah. Yeah. So you just see it playing out everywhere. And then I actually read an article in Bloomberg that was saying that they, the next Warren Buffett could be a woman.

Oh, that'd be nice. Yeah, because the qualities that have made him a successful investor are more common to female investors. I think that's why I like him so much because I'm like, he is speaking my language. He's not this guy like, hey, how to get rich quicker. Hot stocks is just all, you know, all about, you know, kind of that passive thing or just, you know, like, I'm just like, he's kind of my guy. And same with John C. Bogle. I really like his information, his books, just because I'm like, yes.

It resonated with me too. Yeah. He just died, sadly. I know. A lot of podcasts about his career. So I was kind of refreshing myself with his philosophy yeah i agree and i think it's like these being cautious trading less being patient having a long-term focus uh you know men do seem to be more distracted by short-term performance and like

you know investing in bitcoin or you know taking advantage of a run-up in a marijuana stock just so that they can brag somewhere yeah it's yeah true. And not to pick on men because these personalities, like, some women will be at the, you know, not every woman is agreeable or conscientious. There's going to be extremes within everybody. Yeah. So, but anyways, yes, I want to get that out. So, knowing some of these differences, there's a couple of things that come to mind. First, it'd be good to know this information so you can kind of let it sink in and be like, oh, so maybe this will help me find a financial advisor that does speak my language. Because I think a lot of women sometimes are like, maybe it's just me.

I need to try harder. Like I used to do that with a couple couple advisors I've worked with in the past. We just weren't really on the same page. And I thought maybe I just need to make it work. But really like, yeah, I should have just found someone else. It wasn't a good fit. Or also when you're in a couple, having that communication between you and your partner, your spouse, this could be how you can kind of tailor those conversations

instead of being like, why aren't you understanding me? It's because you are coming from different perspectives. So let's first talk about, I guess, the first kind of question I had is how can we kind of use this information, whether we're a man or a woman, to kind of find, if you were looking for financial you know, a financial help from a professional, how can we use this information to help us, you know, find the right fit for us? Right. So I think that it starts with really knowing yourself and maybe you want to go online and take one of these personality tests and figure out kind of where you lie on the spectrum on some of these characteristics, because if, you know, you might know already, or you might have a feeling the way I sort of did. But I think knowing that about yourself is the best place to start. So

let's say you do find out that you are very low on conscientiousness. Yeah. Then I and you know, which translates to sort of self discipline and sticking to a plan, then I think that that would mean that you would be an ideal candidate to set up some kind of an intervention, like an automatic savings plan. So setting up a transfer, an automatic transfer to an investment account, a TFSA or an RSP or something, let's say from your paycheck, because that takes the self-discipline out of the process. You know, that's going to happen every time you get paid or however you set it up. And you'll learn to live off the money that's left. And you know that you're saving without having to

actively take steps to do that. Let's say you score very high in agreeableness. Again, that might mean you would have a tendency to kind of accept what your advisor is telling you without questioning it and not ask questions and not sort of speak up about your own priorities and goals. So if you kind of know that, then you want to look for someone that's like a very good listener, that is asking you questions about that's looking at holistically and asking questions about your life plan, and your goals and your personal situation so that all that is taken into account when you're doing your um you know your financial planning and your investing and just finding that like you said the right fit um someone that's not gonna you know mansplain or just take over and um i mean i think

it's okay to outsource some things but you have to do it in an intelligent way. Yeah. And I think another important thing too, and this is what I realized when I was working with an advisor that, and I did, even though I feel like I'm pretty intelligent, I know a lot of stuff when it comes to finance now. And at that point, this was about three or four years ago now, I was starting to take some courses and stuff. And I even felt when I was in the office with my husband, I was very, well, I didn't like to ask questions because I honestly was afraid of them thinking I was stupid or asking, you know, and I had to actively be like, no, you're here for this, you know, special time to ask him about, you know, what mutual funds you're in.

Don't be afraid to ask a question. I think there's always that fear. It's like having that in the back of your mind. It's like, usually you're afraid of asking a question. So don't be afraid this time you've wrote it down on your notepad that you were going to ask this question, ask your question. So I actually think that's like a really good thing to do is go in prepared with your list of questions and make sure that you ask them before the meeting's over. I mean, it could have been your advisor was directing the conversation more towards your husband. I think there's that bias there. Yeah. Oh yeah. That definitely happened. And I'm like, you said no. Talk to me. I'm the one who's done all the research. She's just here to hang out. Right. Yeah. And I think that some of these investment firms, like I know Burgundy Asset Management is making a really big

effort. They have the women of Burgundy and they have a lot of education for their female clients. And they're trying to encourage them to come to the meetings and to ask questions and not to just sit there and let their husbands take over. Because as I said earlier, like things, unfortunately, things happen in life and women may find themselves alone either through divorce or death or uh you know and then it's your responsibility and you really if you have no experience you've never been involved if you've never taken an active role or even a passive role but being informed it's like a shock to the system to suddenly have to do all that stuff by yourself so and i i feel like too when you do finally uh i feel like this is for men and women And I feel like too, when you do finally, I feel like this is for men and women, because I feel like in some couples, I see like the woman

is taking charge or it's the man. But I feel like it's really should be an equal partnership because you are both contributing in some way, either financially or you're, you know, if you're a stay at home parent, you're still contributing and organizing things and keeping things running. You both need to be in equal partnership because I feel like it is just good for both you as a couple. You'll be more on the same page, less arguments about money. But I feel like going back to just like the idea of like women, we're working, we're earning money. We need to be part of that conversation. It helps you in your career in that you'll think more about maybe I should ask for a raise. Maybe I should ask for a promotion. I'm not earning enough here. Maybe I should look for a different

job that will pay me more because then I know how this will affect kind of our family finances in a positive way. Yeah, it's true. You'll have so much more, you'll be so much more invested in the whole process, no pun intended. If you, you're right. I mean, if you are, you are contributing in some way, shape or form to the inputs, you kind of want to be contributing to the outputs, you know, long-term planning and like, you know, they should be shared goals as a couple or as a family. And if you go back to goals-based investing, it's like, what are you trying to achieve as a couple, as a family? And what do you have to do to, you know, to make that a reality. And it is so much easier if you're not working at cross purposes, right? Absolutely. So going back to the idea of,

you know, a couple working together, I see this a lot. Usually they're not on the same page because they've never really talked about money. How, how can we, you know, as like, you know, male, well, I guess you can be any gender kind of couple, go into a conversation about money and understanding that kind of lots of the things that we touched on, the different personalities, the different kind of struggles or things that we experience. How can we go into these conversations kind of, I guess, on a better foot instead of just, you know, kind of bickering because we're like, why can't you understand the language that I'm trying to use to explain myself? I think that with goal setting and it all goes back to your personal value. So yeah, one of the first things you want to do is to think about your personal values.

What's the most, what's most important to you in life? What are you willing to take a stand for? You know, what is, you know know and for some families that's going to be education or it's going to be uh security and maybe in the form of home ownership um if for others it could be adventure and travel and that kind of thing so knowing what those what those values are and using those as a framework to help prioritize your spending and shape your goals. You have to do that as an individual, but then bringing that together as a couple. What are our shared values? Where's the overlap? Hopefully, you're with someone where there's a lot of overlap.

Then you can use those to form the basis of your financial plan and absolutely and you're investing now sometimes maybe you do need to work with someone so that there is a bit of a moderator that can help you find common ground but I think you just start with what do I want to have and do in life and why and what's important to me and then try and have that conversation without like getting into like you spent too much on this and you spent too much on that like just looking at the big picture initially and then working backwards yeah no I found that to be so successful in my own life but also yeah working with clients when you and that's it just makes it more exciting to to talk about financial planning or managing

the you know having your monthly money meeting or whatever, when you focus on your values and your goals first, because those are the fun bits and all the other kind of day to day annoying things. Those are, those are kind of part of it, but it's, it's always good to, I think, refocus every, you know, once in a while and be like, what's the big picture? What do we want in life? What do we want to achieve with our money? And then like talk about insurance or whatever. Yeah yeah I know because you're right then it does kind of get into the nitty-gritty of like yeah these products and yeah um you know paying bills and all that stuff but like I think you're right I think you get energized more around your goals and then and um I think that the goals that are tied to your values are so much more

compelling and motivating and exciting and and you'll be pulled towards them um and you just have to somehow keep that big picture in mind i think so i'm stuck in the minutiae of like your you know yeah your day-to-day but um like things like keeping track of money and making ends meet and planning ahead are actually, there's not a lot of difference between women and men. Like this was a, CPA Canada did a study that was interesting. One of the first studies that looked at these other factors. So, you know, women do budget well. They do do a good job of, you know, keeping track and, and figuring out how they're going to stretch the resources and stuff. Where there were small gender differences were more along things like

choosing financial products, staying informed about finances, and, you know, actual having actual financial knowledge. But again, personality played a much bigger role than just gender. So I think like you kind of want to, you don't want to waste time in areas where you're already pretty strong. Yeah. Right. So if you're already doing a good job with your budgeting and bill paying and day to day, great. Focus more on areas where you're not as strong. You know, like you said, maybe you just need to be keeping up to date by reading blogs and listening to podcasts and staying informed that way. And that will also help increase your financial knowledge. Just kind of knowing where your weaknesses are and trying to mitigate those somehow, either doing things yourself or working with someone in an intelligent outsourcing kind of way.

No, absolutely. I found in my own life, I used to be so, it was very easy for me to grasp certain concepts and other ones just scared the crap out of me just because I just, they were my weaknesses. I just didn't have that knowledge and I didn't. And I take a concerted effort. I'm like, no, I am going to learn about these things that scare me that I know I'm not very good at. And once you kind of make that effort and start educating yourself about that, the whole, you know, idea of a financial plan becomes less scary because you're like, I know all the elements now and I'm not scared of any of them because I know how they all work. And it just kind of builds your, you know, going back to the confidence thing, we talked at the beginning of this episode, it builds your confidence in all aspects. And you'll be, you know, you, your partner, everyone will be better for it.

Yeah, it's true. Knowledge is power. That cliche is true. But I agree with you. And I think it's like a virtuous cycle. Like the more you learn, the more confident you feel, the more confident you feel that, you know, the more willing you are to learn new things or harder things. Like you said, certain things were easy. Other things you have to kind of push yourself. But you feel like, oh, you know, I got it. I think I can probably get it if I just sit down and figure it out or spend some time on it. So it's not always easy to force yourself to do things that don't come naturally.

But it's supposed to. I mean, that's part of growth. If you're not uncomfortable, then you're not growing. So just embrace that discomfort. That's what I found. Knowing what your personality is like too. I think, again, that goes back to that. And I mean, I feel like I know that I'm definitely on the highly conscientious side. So that explains a lot about my approach to this stuff. And I'm not sure where like the, I guess maybe openness has to do with like willingness to learn new things and be open to new experiences. Yeah.

But yeah, I think everyone should take one of those quizzes to find out where they fall under that kind of personality kind of categorization. Yeah, it's pretty, it seems sort of obvious when you think about, of course, those things would be important when it comes to personal finance. It's just amazing that it had never really been studied

that much until recently. I know, it's just amazing that it had never really been studied that much until recently. I know. It's crazy. Well, I feel like we could talk for another hour, but I won't do that to you. Thank you so much, Robin, for chatting with me. I think this is such an important topic that people need to hear and research on their own after this, where can more people learn more about you and what you do? Cause you're always out there, you know, doing talks and writing amazing articles. Where can people kind of start following you if they're not already? So they can visit my website, which is robintaube.com, Robin with an I, T-A-U-B.com. And I do a lot of writing. I contribute a lot to the Tangerine Forward Thinking blog.

So you can link to my portfolio of writing on their blog through my website. You know, we'll also list upcoming talks and podcasts and things like this. I'm also on Twitter. My handle is at Robin Tobe. And I mean, this is an area that I've just really like it just started in the fall that I started exploring this and developing a really major interest in this area so I'm hoping to you know start creating more content and more things in this space like pivoting a little bit away from the kids and money. You know, that's always something that I will be talking about. But this is something, especially women and investing. And it just feels like at this stage of my life, I mean,

as I said, like the kid, the kids book kind of came out of that stage of my life, where I was raising sort of young kids up until, you know, up until they went to university. Now they're young adults and now I'm kind of thinking at this stage of my life more about investing and making sure that I'm doing a good job with that so it really feels like a an interesting and timely way to be developing new material yeah awesome I referenced a bunch of studies. There's so much stuff out there. There really is. But the CPA Canada study, if you go... I'll link to them in the show notes because I've got some of the links. But yeah, there was the CPA study you referenced and there was one by TD, I believe. Yeah. TD

Wealth also created this discovery tool where you can actually, you know again like figure out your your personality stuff as well as some of the other we haven't even talked about this but like the behavioral finance behavioral economics stuff around how we think so there's all these other biases and like blind spots that we have as investors and financial planners um which is really interesting so they have information about that on their website um the c Canada study also has tons of, in the references, they reference like so many other studies on financial literacy, financial capability. So it depends how deep into this hole you want to go.

You know, that's what I started, like I realized, the more I start looking into it, the more I'm learning that there is out there I know it's a whole new world of finance yeah I really feel like it's used it's very practical I think yes these things can really help you uh do a better job and whether like you know just even one last thing like we talked a bit about risk aversion like if you know that you're tend to be risk averse but you also know that you need to take some risk in order to reach your goals, you know, again, maybe working with someone and expressing that and working through that and understanding really the

risk return profiles of different investments could really make a difference in that area. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, thanks again, Robin, for chatting with me. My pleasure. Thank you for having me. And that was episode 191 with Robin Tobe. Make sure to check her out on her website, robintobe.com. Remember, her name is R-O-B-I-N-T-A-U-B. You can also find her on Twitter at Robin Tobe and on Instagram, Robin Tobe. And make sure to check out the show notes for this episode, which is just jessicamorehouse.com slash 191. I'll, uh, include some of the stats and things that we talked about in this episode that you'll definitely want to check out. I'll also include a handy, uh, you know, a couple of

links and buttons for a couple of exciting things I get to share with you right now. Well, just in a sec, I'm just going to, uh, share a few words about this episode's sponsor first. This episode of the Mo Money Podcast is sponsored by the Scotia Momentum Visa Infinite card. Looking for your award-winning cashback card? The Scotia Momentum Visa Infinite card might be just what you're looking for. For a limited time, you'll earn 10% cash back on everyday purchases in the first three months, up to $2,000 in total purchases. Plus, the annual fee will be waived for the first year. That's a value of up to $299. This offer expires April 30th. But wait, there is more! With great benefits like access to hotel room upgrades, best available rates, VIP guest status,

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freddie okay number yeah i'm going to start with the most important one um so uh if you follow me on social media then you will already maybe know know myself and the wonderful Erin Lowry are teaming up because she is doing a book tour. She's releasing her second book called Broke Millennial Takes on Investing. And we're teaming up in Toronto to do a big event all about financial literacy and specifically investing. It's called Level Up Your Money. It's happening on May 7th in Toronto. Tickets went on sale, early bird tickets went on sale Monday and they sold out. So I am releasing a few more early bird tickets. So make sure to check out the show notes for a link to that. Or you can just go to jessicamorehouse.com slash level up and it'll take you right to the event page so you can buy some tickets. It is going to be phenomenal. If you've ever been to one of my

events, it's going to be like that, but like times two or three or four. I don't know. It's going to be like bigger and better. Not to say that my events aren't always amazing, but this is going to be fabulous. It's going to be a big event. We're hoping for like a hundred people. There's going to be drinks. You're going to get some delicious food. You're going to get a copy of her book, which will basically pay for the ticket. You're going to get a ton of awesome value. Also, we're doing a panel discussion. Myself, Erin's going to be the moderator. We are going to have Barry Choi on the panel. Myself is on the panel. And then we're also going to have an investing expert from TD Direct Investing, who is the

wonderful sponsor of that event. So make sure to grab your tickets while you can. It's going to be a phenomenal event. I cannot freaking wait. And I hope to see you there. If you cannot make that event, because I understand you may not live in the city. It is happening on a weeknight. It's happening on a Tuesday. I know. I get it. And I'm sorry. What can I do? I hope to

do many more events throughout the year. And by many more, I mean like maybe one or two because you know me. I've done in two, what is it? This is like year three of me doing events. I've done like four, five, five. This will be number six. So yeah, I'll try my best to also you know pop in i'm coming to vancouver in the summer in july so i'm going to do something there so you know um but anyway so totally understand but if you are in toronto um and you're free this week like tomorrow thursday april 4th um come on down to the sheraton uh toronto and uh because i'm going to be there we're doing a uh i'm going to be there, we're doing a I'm going to be joined by a bunch of people. The host of the event is Rubina Amanhak, who's also been on the show.

And there's a big product launch of cloud tax, which is a new free income tax software. So I know, you're probably fully aware of the software called SimpleTax. This is basically like SimpleTax, but in my opinion, a little bit better. And I wrote a blog post all about that. So you can find more info on my website, JessicaMorehouse.com. More info on my Twitter. It's a free event. So if you want to hang out with me and talk some taxes and chill, that'd be cool.

I hope to see you there. It's April 4th. It is at the Sheridan Center, Toronto, and it goes down at 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. So that'd be kind of cool. Just putting that out there. One last thing. I promise this is for real the last thing. If you want to share what you think of the podcast and get a shout out on a future episode, all you have to do is take two seconds out of your day and leave me a podcast review. I would really, really appreciate it. And again, you'll get a shout out or read it out and it'll be nice. The only one I got in recent days was one from the US. And I love you friends from the US, but I get a lot of like, I'm going to guess just kind of old man trolls kind of thing interviews. But I kind of old man trolls, you know, kind of thing, interviews.

But I kind of have to share this one because it literally made me laugh out loud and my husband laughed out loud. And so hopefully this will be not what you give me. Maybe, you know, especially my American friends, you can give me a nice review. That would be nice. This person, Ams4467 from the US of A says terrible interviews no information they never get to the point it's a jerk off between finance nerds well i i don't even know what to say i mean gotta you know agree to disagree i suppose but uh thank you ams 4467 for that hilarious uh itunes review i mean who spends time to write that and put that? I don't know. Good luck to you. I wish you all the best. Actually, I'm totally going to

be snooping on this guy because I think you can click on someone and see all their reviews. I think I'm going to do that later. Anyways, thanks so much for listening. I'm going to be here next Wednesday, obviously with a fresh new episode. So I'll see you then. Have a great rest of your week. This podcast is distributed by the Women in Media Podcast Network. Find out more at womeninmedia.network.