We’re at the start of 2018.

A moment is just a moment. These moments quickly roll into days, weeks, then months.  And in no time it’ll be Christmas, again.

Will yours be another year, another missed opportunity without taking control of your financial future?

On New Year’s Eve, will you be able to say: ‘I’ve moved my financial needle this year. I can dream, plan, create, live. Live fully. Today and tomorrow. Because I have the means to do so.’

Deanne Carter

For a woman, there is a specific conversation around ensuring she’s guiding the financial trajectory of her life, and that of her family.  As women, we’ve learnt our relationship with money from our mothers and grandmothers who, for the most part, handed the responsibility for financial management to their husbands, particularly around big decisions like investing.  We really haven’t been given a financial blueprint around how to create wealth.  This has left most of us now with little idea about how to optimally manage our finances, and to really bed down a strong financial platform.

Now more than ever, it’s really important for women to lean into the conversation around money, particularly in Australia where we have so much opportunity. Right now we’re seeing a new wave of women in their fifties, sixties and seventies who are finding themselves financially vulnerable, or worse, homeless.  These are women who would never have expected to find themselves in this situation.  But it’s because they’re of the generation where their mothers didn’t have a strong relationship with money.  I think this is a clear warning sign of what’s about to come if we do not start changing our approach.

 If you think that these are women who’ve also spent their life raising children, they can’t teach us what they don’t know.   So now we have young women in their twenties, thirties, maybe early forties who are also on this same pathway.  But the game has changed since the 1950’s.  Life is completely different.  So it’s really important that we interrupt this cycle and start giving women financial certainty, the skills they need to manage, to invest and create a financial platform for themselves.

In Australia, we’re in a very privileged country where I see so many gifted, talented women sharing their gifts to the world, whether it be through their career, their contribution to the family or the community.  But from a financial viewpoint, because they don’t have the tools they need, they’re not really positioned to take full advantage of the opportunities they have.  If we can arm them with those tools, this puts them in a far more powerful position to not only impact the financial trajectory of their own families, their immediate communities but also the wider global community.  

Women are nurturers so it’s only natural that a woman wants to give.  And if she feels she has enough to look after her family then she’s in a position to provide greater contribution to others.  The problem is when you don’t feel like you have much to give.  When you have more, you are willing to risk and give more.  So there’s nothing more satisfying for a woman when, from a financial viewpoint, she has created more than enough for her family, and her own future security.   She’s then in a position to be generous in her help and easily support others.  I want to see that no woman is left behind – in Australia or overseas – a life well lived is all about making sure we give all women a helping hand.  And the more we have, the more we can achieve this.

My quest is to empower women to take charge of their money, to be financially free.  When they know the choices available from a financial viewpoint, they can see they have options. They can truly choose how they want to create their own life.  A women is the hub of her family, she inherently feels what it is that her family needs.  And, when she feels certain about her own family’s financial position, she has far greater capacity to lean in and help other women.

I’m delighted to speak at Opportunity’s Women4Women seminar in Perth because that’s exactly what Opportunity does – it helps women in developing countries to become financially stable. Opportunity is helping women living in poverty set up micro businesses, earn regular incomes, and send their children to school, which ultimately has massive potential to change their lives entirely.   Millions of women are lifting their families out of poverty as a result of Opportunity’s work.

Deanne Carter is CEO of Womens Money Forum and is speaking at Opportunity’s Women4Women seminar - 5.30-7.30PM, 7 February 2018 at The Platform - Level 3, 256 Adelaide Terrace, Perth Book now 

To find out more about Womens Money Forum membership and programs head to www.womensmoneyforum.com.au