Aspen Women’s Wealth: Your habits determine your financial future – The Aspen Times

Raychl Keeling and Ron Speaker, from Equus Private Wealth, are the developers of the nonprofit educational outreach program Aspen Women’s Wealth.
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The goal of Aspen Women’s Wealth is to inspire, encourage, connect and support women in their pursuit of better money management skills. This runs the gamut from better budgeting tools to understanding investment strategies tailored to your risk tolerances. Why? Because 90% of women will outlive their partners and will be the key money manager of their financial affairs. By not preparing today, women risk creating a successful future outcome and create a knowledge deficit with each passing year.

Recently, a close friend of ours responded, like so many others have to our consistent encouragement, with the simple statement: “I’ve got so much going on right now, I can barely focus on getting through the day.” We get it, people are busy with plenty of other obligations.

So, how can busy moms, working women, retirees and active females stay attune to their finances, their own needs and the needs of their family? Should we just hire someone to run our important financial affairs? If you do, be careful of their experience and motivations. Could we just open a basic account and put all our assets into index funds? There are no right or wrong answers. Often, simple plans can work just as well as the complicated and seductive hedge fund and private equity returns that we often overhear in Aspen conversations.

The key is creating a personal savings and investing plan, on your own, or with an adviser who works within your risk tolerances. This way, you do not have to worry about the day-to-day gyrations of the market. If part of your plan was a consistent contribution, recent volatility has provided you with an opportunity as the equity market declined. Dollar cost-averaging takes the emotion out of the market’s ups and downs and keeps your eye on long-term savings and retirement goals.

Let us repeat a key part from above. You need both a savings and investment plan. If you want to grow your net worth, you need to be saving money each month or year and investing wisely for the long game. Last month, during a fireside chat we attended in Vail, a former financial planner made a striking comment. She chose to leave her profession after 20 years of frustration because her clients typically did not want to do their part (saving) and only wanted her to make them rich on their initial investment. Building wealth is a two-part …….

Source: https://www.aspentimes.com/opinion/aspen-womens-wealth-your-habits-determine-your-financial-future/