The U.S. Senate has passed a resolution designating April as Financial Literacy Month. Many accounting firms and other financial institutions are sponsoring a number of activities to educate the public about personal money management.

I know you have heard me say this again and again and I’ll say it again today -  financial literacy is crucial for women! As a group women are more financially illiterate than other groups. In a study conducted by Professor Annamaria Lusardi of Dartmouth Coll...

The Business of Me has six weekly sessions followed by three monthly sessions. Each weekly session has an inspirational message. I have talked about the inspirational message for the first three sessions (http://www.thebusinessofme.com/the-business-of-me-blog.php ). Today I am going to talk about the inspirational message for week four.

The inspirational message for Week 4 is “Standing Tall and Proud”. This is the beginning of the second half of the weekly sessions.

By this time the pa...

It’s Halloween time again and like last year the most purchased costume for little girls is a Princess costume. This year there will be at least 4.3 million little princesses knocking on doors on Halloween.

On June 16^th I blogged about how important it is to teach our young women how to be financially literate. That blog post is below. The message is so important that I request that you pass it on to your networks!

Thank you for helping me get this message to as many people as we can…

The Business of Me guides our participants through a personal SWOT Analysis. Normally when I tell people we use a SWOT Analysis the normal response is “Huh?”

A “SWOT” Analysis is normally used in business and is a strategic planning method to analyze the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats of a business opportunity.  Well run businesses are always looking for new ways to make money. When they want to explore an idea for a new product or service that they may want to off...

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month and I need your help. On August 26^th I wrote a blog about “What is Domestic Violence?” I point out that the definition of domestic violence put forth by both the CDC and WHO (World Health Organization) does not include economic abuse.

Economic abuse is a very real form of abuse and the “scars” from it may not be visible but will have lasting effects long after the abusive relationship has ended. These scars as I point out in the blog post...

More specifically The Business of Me takes a disparate group of women who come together at a domestic violence shelter- who in all probability have never met until ...

The Business of Me has from its inception used the term “Self-Ability”. “Self-Ability” is defined in The Business of Me as one's perception of what one is "able" to do.

Domestic violence includes emotional abuse. Abusive partners use emotional domination as a control mechanism that includes imposing feelings of worthlessness on their partner. Our participants are so often mired in what they perceive as being "wrong" with them that they carry that way of thinking into the way that th...

Do you day dream? I know I do. I dream about how much money I want to make. I dream about the kind of home I want to live in. I dream about my career goals. I dream about a comfortable retirement. I dream about the places I want to travel to. I even dream about the kinds of clothes I want to wear.

Yes I dream and when I find myself dreaming I write those dreams down. Why? Because I really want the things I dream about and I won’t reach my goals unless I make a plan to achieve them. 

The ...

There is an adorable MasterCard commercial about three little boys about six years old on their first day of  the new school year. The little boys greet each other in  the school hall and together do the “robot dance” to their class to the music of “We Want The Funk”. The commercial ends with the statement “Being with people who understand you-priceless”.

The valuable lesson of this commercial is people need to be with people who understand them and do not judge them. This is es...

This year the World Health Organization (WHO) issued a report about preventing intimate partner and sexual violence against women. The 102 page report addressed the magnitude and risk factors of intimate partner and sexual violence against women. But the report also studied current strategies that are used to prevent violence against women. The findings may surprise you.

The strategies were grouped by what the WHO referred to as life stage. Meaning they studied strategies developed for child...

What is domestic violence? If we look at the definition put forth by the CDC it says there are four main types of intimate partner violence (domestic violence), physical violence, sexual violence, threats of physical or sexual violence and psychological/emotional violence.

The WHO (World Health Organization) has similar definition “behaviour within an intimate relationship that causes physical, sexual or psychological harm, including acts of physical aggression, sexual coercion, psycholog...

Recently The Toronto Star interviewed me for an article that appeared in that newspaper today. During the interview we talked about my life but the reporter, Trish Crawford, was also interested in why financial literacy skills are so important for women.

I told Trish financial literacy is especially important for women who are in abusive relationships. Having bank accounts and credit cards in their own name is their safety net to be able to leave the relationship.

The abuser controls the ...

Survivors of domestic are resilient. I have always believed that and so does Professor Kim Anderson of the University of Missouri. Professor Anderson suggests that we work with survivors to help them recognize the strength and resilience they learned from their situations.

For years The Business of Me has worked with survivors to identify their strengths and use those strengths to help move the vision they have for their life forward. We call this part of the program “Values Assessment”...

Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy is   (www.jumpstart.org) a non-profit coalition that has an interest in advancing financial literacy among students in pre-kindergarten through college. Since 1997 Jump$tart has administered surveys to high school seniors regarding financial literacy. The survey has 31 multiple choice questions. During 2008 they administered the survey and the average score was……….47.5%.

Our children are failing financial literacy. This is a disast...

In my June 21st post I talked about the economic reasons for women returning to their abuser.

Paula Horton in her The News of Tacoma article today cites other issues facing these women when they leave their abuser http://www.thenewstribune.com/2010/07/12/1260779/domestic-violence-victims-find.html.

Women return for a multitude of reasons. Many times the abuser is relentless and wears the woman down and women sometimes feel that it’s just easier to go back; as hard as she is trying to bre...

I always wanted to be a writer and now I am. It did not happen overnight and it did not happen just because I wished it to be so. It happened because I had a vision and turned that vision into a plan.

It started with an aspiration. An aspiration is a goal and I began the process of achieving my goal/aspiration with a well thought out plan.

In the first weekly session of “The Business of Me” we include a section about visioning and request the participants to create a vision for their l...

I was speaking to a woman recently about different issues regarding domestic violence. During our discussion it became clear that she didn't understand why women who have left abusive relationships often return. Many people place blame on the victim for returning suggesting that they even like or thrive on the abuse. The attitude is; if they didn’t like being abused they would leave and not return, right?

The reasons why women return to abusive relationships are extremely complex and hav...