You’ve Got Mail: Reader Questions Answered

photo credit: yanyin

With the mention from Good Morning America and the Wall Street Journal came more than a few questions from new readers. First, I’d like to say thank you for taking the time to read through the site and send in your questions. I love reader mail! I’ll just say that some of you didn’t reserve asking even what some would consider rather personal questions but I’m happy to share. I answered some of those questions via email. The rest, I answered here.

Now on to question #1

I’m looking for resources on investing for women. Are there any articles
on your site that offer advice to 30 something woman who is FINALLY trying
to get on the right track by investing? Thank you!

I haven’t written much for the investing crowd because I don’t do much active investing myself. I am rather passive and truth be told I am rather intimidated by the stock market. I know, the girl power thing, breaking financial ceilings and all don’t quite go with my admitted intimidation by the stock market. But, what I can tell you is that fellow blogger Millionaire Mommy Next Door has written awesome articles around this subject. Some of my favorite investing articles from her include:

• How Do I Select My Investments? Why Are They Performing So Well?
• When I was a beginning investor with a small portfolio, these were my first considerations
• My Investment Portfolio Revealed
• I Make Thousands of Dollars Working Two Hours (or less) a Month: Demystifying the Investing Experience
• How I Stomach the Market’s Bumpy Ride

I live in <insert state outside DC, MD, VA>, can I attend one of your meetups?

You sure can! We welcome all women who want to take charge of their finances. If you are coming from out of state then you should sign up for the meetup so that you will get updates and notifications about our upcoming events along with any changes that may happen before the event dates such as a rain location or cancellation. Please note that unless we have a someone who is qualified to speak to you about your financial situation, nothing is to be taken from any member of the group as financial advice.

Are you a financial advisor? What is your background in personal finance?

I am none of the above, just a woman obsessed with her own personal finances, frugality and real estate. However, I do feel qualified to share my own story in an effort to engender others to do the same. Too often personal finance is seen as a taboo that no one talks about openly, yet they may be facing the same situation. By opening the dialogue here amongst the mainly female readership, I hope that we CAN break financial ceilings as women tend to keep mum around money issues due to lack of knowledge or the age old taboo about not talking about personal finances ever.

Hi Ginger, I’m so glad I came to your site from the WSJ article. Do you have any advice on how to talk to my fiance about what will be OUR money as of August 30, 2008?

You may want to read through the following articles to gain some clarity on how best to approach your fiance about how you’ll manage your finances once you’re married. This is something that should have been discussed before this point, but better late than never. You’ll have an adjustment period as one talk won’t nip everything in the bud but that’s what it’s all about, trial and error. Good luck!

• Personal Finance Tips For Newlyweds-Part 2
• Who Buys the Milk?
• Fighting Fair about Finances: How do you measure up?

Are you in debt? What is your financial situation and why don’t you post your specific debt load, personal income as other PF bloggers do?

Yes, I am in debt up to my eyeballs! LOL! I kid but between my student loan debt and mortgage we are looking at paying off a pretty penny. But I can’t say that I am worried about it because we have a plan to knock out the student loan debt with my salary in 5 years. We have some consumer debt but that is on track to be paid off within a few months. The mortgage will be paid off once we decide to sell but I can’t say that we will be here long enough to really consider paying it off ourselves.

I don’t post our personal income or debt information because my husband is rather uncomfortable with doing so and I have to respect that as we have quite a few people within our personal circle that read the blog (hi!). We don’t mind discussing specific situations amongst friends but he draws the line at sharing with the Internet PF reader/blogger community at large. And, his specific salary information is off limits to everyone except for my self and his superiors.

I see where you state that you’re a student and graduating this year. What do you do outside of that and what are your plans after you graduate?

That’s all up in the air right now and I am doing some planning as to what my next major step will be. While I want to work in my chosen field of psychology, I realize that I have so many other competing interests and I am blessed to be able to have my hand in most if not all of them right now. Besides interning and taking the last of my classes I am also a writer for a local real estate company where I write about the local DC Metro real estate. The articles there range from the informative to local real estate issues and news as it happens here in DC Metro. I also own two other websites/blogs and plan to put those into development towards the end of the summer. My other interests lie in criminal investigations, yoga and art/design.

Ultimately, I’d like whatever I end up doing to be able to give me the flexibility to work from anywhere in the world as long as I have an Internet connection. I don’t fancy being tied to a desk or a schedule and in exploring my options I hope to be able to have this figured out by the end of the year. I must say that my career development professor has been instrumental in helping me realize that I don’t have to follow the masses and get a desk job just to satisfy the requirement of the standard 9-5 after graduation. Life is made to be lived by my rules and if that means that I carve out how I want to live it then so be it. I look forward to the outcome and Im having fun with it as I go along as I am going through one of those periods where I am firmly entrenched in the busom of self discovery and I’m loving it!

Ideally, I’d love to become a life coach, maintain this website and others, sell a few books, open up a Phoenix Yoga practice in a trendy section of DC and start a nonprofit. So you see, I have quite a few things on the horizon and I am working my way to the end goal whatever that may be. There was a time when that would have frightened me to say that out loud but I have learned to take joy in the journey and not the destination.

That’s all for now, I will try to make this a weekly installation as more questions come in.

Happy Monday!

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