Why You Should Read This  I was blessed as one of my parents (my dad) ensured that I understood what banking and credit meant at an early age and I realize my great windfall as I found that many people were not prepared for building their financial savvy until later in life.   This book is not available on Audible and quite frankly, it would be challenging to listen to the concepts in this format.  I recommend buying a physical book because you will want to reference the wisdom in this book frequently.

Gail Shapiro’s book “Money Order: The Money Management Guide for Women” was written in 2001 while she worked at a nonprofit organization in New England that supported the needs of women in her community.  She never preaches and instead uses actual statements made to her by women about their lack of financial clarity.  Step-by-step and over the course of 10 chapters, she walks her reads through how to reframe your mind around money matters that encompass how to open and reconcile a bank account; the importance of insurance coverage; establishing and maintaining credit; financial negotiations; and financial planning.  She encourages the reader to tap into their curiosity and with each chapter, she works to dispel the limiting beliefs that many carry by tapping into our curiosity and replacing these false beliefs with liberating truths.

How You Can Apply This  Knowledge is power and when you share your knowledge, you empower others to be their best. You are choosing to empower yourself through your desire to becoming a lifelong learner.  Understanding how your financial decisions today can impact your ability in the future is critical.  Women live longer than man and we are directly targeted to buy products, rather than invest in ourselves.  We need to shift our focus from what we buy today to what we save for tomorrow.  

While over 20 years are behind us since this book was released, the runway for many women remains unchanged. “Financial Shaming” needs to be extracted from our vocabulary and replaced with “Financial Empowerment” as understanding finances are at the core of how women ascend to leadership roles throughout our career. At the 2019 IAWA General Aviation Forum, our final panel specifically addressed how women who “run a Profit & Loss statement successfully” are the women who are tapped for Chief Executive Officer and President positions.  This means one must understand the short and long term financial consequences of revenue generation and be able to develop strategies to meet or exceed financial targets. As studies show, women who run companies change the way companies think and outperform their male counterparts over the long run

Additional Materials For Reinforcing What You Learned  What we do as women for each other matters.  We can vote with our feet by replacing social media influencers with women who are focused on financial empowerment, such as Sallie Krawcheck, Kara Swisher, Caterina Fake, and Melanie Hobson; and the men who highlight and make space for women, such as Reid Hoffman and Scott Galloway.

If you want to reinforce what you gained from this book, you might enjoy IAWA’s Career Growth Committee’s Q3 2022 focus that is delivering content to develop the understanding of what a balance sheet, income statement, and cash flow statement are through the lens of a financier, a small business owner, and someone who is focused on developing her own Financial Empowerment.  The mission of this four-part series is to empower the people in our community with tangible takeaways so that they can confidently start the steps towards understanding what these financial reports are and why they matter.  We are also curating additional resources to keep learning and feed the questions created by curiosity

This book review was written by Shelley A. Svoren, VP – Leader Development for IAWA and who is the CEO + Founder of Infinite Branches.  You can DM her on LinkedIn.