Let The Smart Cookies show you how to eliminate debt, spend smarter, save better, and achieve financial freedom--without sacrificing your social life or your sanity!
They were five dynamic young women: smart, successful--and secretly drowning in debt. Inspired by an episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show on personal finance, Andrea, Angela, Katie, Robyn, and Sandra formed a money club, together developing strategies for turning their finances around. Just one year later they had dramatically improved their financial situations--and had made major developments in their careers, relationships, and life goals to boot. Their proven recipe for success has since been featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show, MSNBC, and in the New York Daily News.
How did they do it? These five women--with varied careers in marketing, public relations, social work, and TV production--joined forces to create a fun, simple, effective strategy for achieving financial success, forming a money club and supporting each other every step of the way. Now, in this extraordinary hands-on guide, the women, who soon dubbed themselves The Smart Cookies, share the secrets of their success.
Weaving anecdotes from their own lives with practical, how-to advice, The Smart Cookies offer strategies that cut across the financial spectrum, whether you're deeply in debt or just want to manage your money better. Tackling the unique financial challenges facing women today, they offer easy-to-follow advice on everything from creating a spending plan to boosting your income to starting your own money club.
From the Hardcover edition.
Excerpts
Chapter One...
The Taboo Topic
Starting the Conversation about Money
Money.
How often have you said the word aloud? How often do you talk about it with your friends, your family, or your colleagues at work? Do you know your best friend's credit-card balance? Or how much your parents owe on their mortgage? Have you ever asked your colleagues how they manage their money?
Probably not. To do so would seem almost as intrusive as asking about their bedroom activities, right? Or worse! In fact, we're probably more likely to share stories of our sexual exploits than to divulge details about our paychecks or credit-card statements with our friends and family.
Money is ever-present in our lives. We use it daily and can't survive without it, yet women hardly ever talk about it with each other. We've been conditioned to believe that it's impolite to ask how much money someone makes, or how much they paid for their home, and distasteful to disclose how much we earn from our investments. We're discouraged from discussing how much money we have, and we worry about being perceived as greedy for wanting to earn more--or, at least, saying so out loud--especially if we have a job that we love. (The Smart Cookies definitely do not subscribe to this belief. It's one of many myths about money we'll discuss in this book that keep women from earning what we're worth.)
You probably have no problem telling your girlfriends about the great deal you got on that Isaac Mizrahi dress at Target. But have you ever compared earnings or investment strategies over cocktails?
Until we formed the Smart Cookies Money Group, we hadn't either. In fact, we would consciously keep from talking about how much money we had, made, or owed, to avoid making anyone uncomfortable, including ourselves. Instead, we'd steer the conversation toward more neutral topics like dating or shopping or the last great book we read. We didn't want to find out that our friends were making a lot more than we were or to admit that our paychecks weren't as big as we wished they were. Some of us were embarrassed to disclose how much credit-card debt we had or, worse, to admit that we had no idea what our bank-account or credit-card balances were.
Whatever the reason we gave, we know now that our collective refusal to discuss our money problems only made them worse, and that our explanations were really all just excuses. Do any of these sound familiar?
IF I DON'T ACKNOWLEDGE MY DEBT, MAYBE IT WILL GO AWAY
(Robyn)
I used to live by the motto "ignorance is bliss" when it came to money: If I didn't think or talk about my growing debt, I thought, I wouldn't have to worry about it. Of course, I knew deep down that it was there. But I figured I'd pay it off at some point. In the meantime, I just didn't want to stress out about it. So I avoided looking at my ATM receipts and credit-card statements. I rarely even kept track of my bank balance (it was usually so depressingly low). I regularly went over my checking-account limit and paid extra fees as a result. But if my debit card was declined, I'd just pull out a credit card. That would explain why, at the time I joined the Smart Cookies Money Group, I had nearly $12,000 in debt.
I'M NO GOOD WITH MONEY, SO WHY TALK ABOUT IT?
(Angela)
I didn't like to discuss money because that would have meant revealing my ignorance on the topic. I remember being so clueless about my finances when we had our first money-group meeting that I actually had to check with my then-boyfriend to find out how much we had in our bank account and what we paid on our mortgage each month. It is awful to admit, but I...
Reviews
Liz Pulliam Weston, MSN Money columnist and author of Deal With Your Debt and Easy Money...
"Anyone who's afraid to take hold of her financial life should grab this inspiring book with both hands. These five women, who started as a 'collective financial mess,' turned their situations around in less than a year. They can show you how to do the same."
Howard S. Dvorkin, founder of Consolidated Credit Counseling Services, Inc., author of Credit Hell: How to Dig Out of Debt...
"Smart Cookies is a great motivator for anyone looking to sharpen their financial skills and shine a bright light on their financial life. Witty and insightful, this book shows people how they can band together and achieve their financial wishes by getting those dirty little money secrets out in the open and working in concert with one another. It's a great read."
Publishers Weekly, starred review...
"A perfect gift for recent grads--or anyone who needs convincing that financial health is attainable."
About the Author
The Smart Cookieshave been meeting since March 2006. As five fabulous women who appeared to have it all, each shared a major financial problem she was hesitant to reveal. When The Smart Cookies created the money club, they barely knew one another but today have become close, committed friends and business partners. With support, accountability, and simple strategies for attracting more money, they managed to turn their financial picture around in under a year. Andrea, Angela, Katie, Robyn, and Sandra reside in Vancouver, British Columbia. They are passionate about helping women everywhere start money clubs and begin talking about money.
Jennifer Barrett has written about financial issues for the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and Newsweek, where she is currently a general editor. She lives in New York City with her husband, Victor Ozols, and their son.
From the Hardcover...
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The Smart Cookies' Guide to Making More Dough
by The Smart Cookies
