Real Simple Magazine - Solutions don't work unless you are going to bake your banker a cake!

Today I read Real Simple magazine and came across an article on Your Biggest Money Worries (http://www.realsimple.com/realsimple/package/1,21861,1697911-1710778,00.html). It caught my attention because you can't walk out of your house these days without thinking about money and we will be teaching women how to have greater financial confidence on May 2. HOWEVER, the solutions mentioned for resolving your money issues in this popular magazine FLOORED me. They included things like:
- are you spending too much. spend less. (You think?)
- remove all but one credit card from your wallet. (okay, I'll give 'em that one)
- go get happy about something (Are you kidding?)
- make sure everything you buy is returnable. (okay, that does it!)

Not only are women looking for real financial solutions, they face a REAL problem and the solutions in Real Simple magazine are almost laughable. Sure, you can cut down on the Starbuck's and return that impulse buy, but here are some REAL facts that you also need to know to increase your financial confidence.

• 76% of women are eventually widowed
• 80% of these women were not poor when their husbands were alive.
• 70% of the USs elderly poor people are women
• The savings rate of a single woman is 1.5% vs 2.1% for single men
• In the first year after a divorce a woman's standard of living drops an average of 73%.

Now, you could say that these are due to salary differences or time away from work, but the real issue seems to be that women don't know as much about money and making it work for them in general, as their male counterparts do. Women are usually not taught money issues as children. They are instead taught how to keep a clean home, cook a good meal and take care of a family. Right or wrong, those skills do not impress a banker, unless you are going to bake him or her a cake. If you don't know your own credit score, your own bank balance, and for that matter, if you don't HAVE your own credit and own bank account, that will eat away at your CONFIDENCE in a serious way. Learn that stuf today. Your future, your retirement and your very survival through tough times such as these depends on it.