Why Women Don't Know Their Financial Worth with Dr. Brad Klontz

The statistics are grim and appalling - women are clearly disadvantaged when it comes to wealth and money. So, the current thinking is that if more women are taught "financial literacy", this can change it. However, the statistics include all women - high school educated to business owners and while some financial literacy is definitely valuable, the root causes of this disparity are not being truly addressed.

In this episode, Amee speaks again with one of the world's leading financial psychologists and the author of (5) books on the topic including “Mind over Money: Overcoming the Money Disorders that Threaten Our Financial Health” , Dr. Brad Klontz about women and why it really is that they have a hard time identifying that they/we are selling ourselves short when it comes to our value and financial worth. 

Ameé tackles this topic because she has seen it impacting women in two ways – one at a personal level and also, Ameé has seen money disorders affect women she coaches in business – in particular around the concept of “setting our value” that is what we should be charging for our products and services. 

When Ameé has coached women business owners, many times the conversation circles around the topic of valuation and she has coached women out of the “emotional” aspects of thinking they are worth something to showing them how to find “facts” – how to set pricing, how to find out what the market is paying for certain services, on and on – in a dispassionate way and use that as a way of breaking through their emotional barriers to see their own worth. 

But there is another phenomenon when it comes to women business owners & entrepreneurs and that is when the business bank account is the same as the household account – meaning that it’s all treated as personal income – the business can suffer greatly due to carrying whatever money disorders you have driving your thoughts and behaviors – you can’t really separate the two areas of your life from one another and you may be unable to achieve profitability – you may be “successful” in terms of sales and market penetration BUT at the end of the day, this business may not increase your wealth as much as you’d hoped because you are carrying around, as Brad likes to call it “unfinished business” in your life that needs to be understood and tackled.   

And finally, the research shows that women tend to leave the workforce to stay home as the caregiver, which interrupts their momentum in their careers – and that is driven sometimes, by the fact that since she’s already “earning” less, then it makes more financial sense for the husband (if that’s the case) to continue to work – so women can be trapped into a vicious cycle. So are women sacrificing their careers, again from the unfinished business and scripts they have been taught in their lives instead of doing it because they really want to?

In this episode, you'll hear:

• What are some of the typical "unfinished business" scripts or messages women get in their lives that is different from what men are perhaps told or shown as it relates to money and value?
• What common money disorders women have? 
• How often is a money disorder directly related to money itself?
• When we talk about the gender gap in salaries, how much do you think is a combination of what society teaches men about money/wealth & women and what women are led to believe in terms of letting other people tell them how much they are worth?
• How do these messages women receive impact on couples and how their different viewpoints can cause relationship problems?
• How much can financial literacy actually help a woman change her finan