If you ask me, there is not that one single moment I decided to get my shit together and my financial life back in track.
It was a lot of incidents happening one after the other that set me on this path.
One of them was attending a financial workshop for women. This was sometime in July last year. The germ of starting something for women’s financial literacy made me sign-up for a workshop, just to see how such things are organised.
This was a paid event, a full day workshop where the very basics of investing were taught.
The women were all seated, some 25+ of us, in a huge hall around the round tables. Everyone smiled at each other, settled down and the session started.
As we proceeded through the session, the lecturer made some things very clear — the hall had women of all ages, there were women who invest and women who wanted to invest, there were those who had all their savings in FD and those who had no savings at all, there were students, working women and housewives.
In short, it was a diverse crowd.
But we had commonalities too — each one of us wanted to manage money on our own, wanted to understand what better can we do with our money, what have we been doing wrong, what were our prejudices and what were our motivations.
It was suddenly home.
To know that there are other women who are trying, who want to understand more or may be make a career in financial services. It was a happy day.
And then we lost touch and got busy with our lives.
Then recently one of the woman I met there requested to meet up.
I have been taking keen interest in my own finances but was struggling to find someone in my circle, a woman, who I can discuss things with. So I decided to meet her too. Why not?
I was eager to catch up and see what happened after the workshop.
This woman, a qualified doctor in her mid 40s, has not only decided to learn more, she has decided to learn the very fundamentals and technicals.
So you know, finance is a vast field and when you get involved, you kind-of figure out your interest. For me it’s more about financial planning, money managements etc. For her, it is more about fundamental analysis, valuation, stock market etc. And we talked and talked.
She told me she wanted to meet me because she has no one else in her circle, a woman, that has interest in finance. “The husbands control finances and so women are not bothered”, she said.
Till that day I thought that was the usual vibe of my tribe.
But I met her and saw hope.
I saw hope in that workshop too.
What more, I now see hope in me.
This vibe is there, the one I want to see, but it needs encouragement, courage and confidence to come out and shine.
I know that day when we met, we gave each other just that.
Hope.
Originally published at She Talk Cents.
She Talk Cents 