90 Days to Financial Stability

There are many ways to get out of debt and I will be discussing those in later posts but today I want to talk to you about perhaps the most important factor for getting out of debt. Taking responsibility for your actions. By taking responsibility, I don’t mean that you have to blame yourself. There is no blame here.   What I mean is that you acknowledge the fact that you were the one that got yourself into debt or allowed someone else to. Here’s what I mean.   In 1999, I went from earning minimum wage as a part time sales clerk to making $20,000 a year when the federal government hired me. Six months later, I more than doubled that income when I transferred to another position.    Just before my one-year anniversary, I woke up partially paralyzed on one side of my body. The doctors diagnosed me with multiple sclerosis and within three months, I went on disability and took a 30% cut in pay. The problem was that for that year I spent money as i...

I had this blog entry all written on Friday. I thought I had my ‘why’ all figured out. You know, why I do what I do. Then I attended a workshop led by Georgee Low and discovered what I thought I knew was only a wee bit of my why. For the last few months, I have thought that I helped people with their debt because I don’t like to see anyone being left out and being in d ebt leaves a person out of so much. However, as I discovered, my why is more than that. My why in life is to inspire others so that they can feel recognized and powerful.   I do this by living right, honouring and helping with a sense of belonging while making great memories. I guide people through a 5-step process I used to save myself over $400,000.00 in future credit card interest charges so they can pay their debt off faster and regain the power debt took from them. Wow! That is so much more than just helping people not feel left out of life. Wouldn’t you agree? And by living in accordanc...

Did you know that at one time, companies could change the title of a job so they could pay a woman less than a man? A court case in 1970, Schultz vs Wheaton Glass, changed all that.                        In 1972, Katharine Graham became the first female CEO of a fortune 500 company. 1974 saw the passing of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. Until this time, banks required a woman to bring a man with her to co-sign any credit application. It didn’t matter what her income was and a bank could disregard some of it. Sometimes up to 50% of her income! A year later, the first woman-owned commercial bank opens in New York City – appropriately named the First Woman’s Bank. In Ireland in 1976, women were finally able to own their own homes outright. The Pregnancy Discrimination Act passed in the US in 1978. Now an employer couldn’t fire a woman just bec...

In 1922, the UK allows equal inheritance. In the US, Rebecca Felton of Georgia, became the first female Senator. She was 87-years-old, a suffragette and activist. Felton only served one day and in that day she called out southern men for an excess of chivalry but a lack of respect for women’s rights. She wrote, “honeyed phrases are pleasant to listen to, but the sensible women of our country would prefer more substantial gifts.” Two years later, Wyoming’s Nellie Tayloe Ross became the US’s first female governor. In 1938, also in the US, the Fair Labor Standards Act wiped out the wage disparity between men and women’s hourly wages with the federal minimum wage. In the UK in 1956, civil service reform gives government workers – both men and women – the right to equal pay. In India in 1961, there was a law passed that banned dowries for women before marriage and allows women to sue if her husband’s family harasses her for money. Sadly, the anti-dowry law goes wide...

The UK passed the Married Woman’s Property Act and two years later, in Illinois, the freedom of occupational choice was granted to both men and women. Yet, when Myra Colby Bradwell – who studied as her husband’s law apprentice – tried to pass the Illinois bar to practice as a lawyer, the US Supreme Court ruled in 1873 that the Illinois bar didn’t have to grant a license to a married woman. Mary Gage opened a stock exchange for women who wanted to use their own money to speculate on railway stocks. Meanwhile, the Witch of Wall Street – Hetty Green – was consolidating her own fortune. (In a later entry I want to write about Ms. Green) If you were looking at France in 1881, you would see that women are the right to own bank accounts, married women received this right five years later. The US didn’t grant the same rights until the 1960s and the UK, not until 1975. In 1908, Oregon restricted workday hours for females to ten hours – because of course, women were too fragil...

We are continuing our look at women and money over the centuries. Last week, we ended with the 1100s in England. Today, we go across the water to the Americas in 1718. In Pennsylvania, women could own and manage property. But only if their husbands were unable to do so. In 1753, in Russia, there was something called ‘separate economy’. This meant that Russian women could earn their own income and keep it for themselves. The husbands couldn’t demand their wives hand over the money. Just over a decade later, Catherine the Great founded the first state-financed learning institution for women called the Smolny Institute in St. Petersburg. We return to the States in 1771. New York established that husbands needed their wives’ consent if he tried to sell property she had brought into the marriage. A judge would meet privately with the wife to ensure she wasn’t coerced and the signature in question was hers. France in 1791. Revolutionary France gives women equal inhe...

If you look back to Tuesday February 13, 2018, you will see that I am discussing the history of women and money. Today, we continue. Next, we move into ancient Rome. The Romans were more liberal than the Greeks were. This culture allowed women divorce, hold property and inherit. Divorces were easy to get and men had the legal right to retain custody of children. In 565 AD, the Byzantine empire, Justinian laws allowed women to be married without a dowry though there were pre-nuptial gifts which, if a woman cheated on her husband, the man was allowed to divorce her and keep the gifts. He was also entitled to keep the dowry, if there was one, and a third of any property she possessed! Some working women, such as prostitutes and tavern-owners, did not have the right to marry Roman citizens and Roman men could only keep them as concubines. Emperor Justinian’s wife, Empress Theodora – a former actress and wool spinner – left her jobs when the Emperor started to court her. ...