We're a brand new home for a growing community of young-ish women practicing #HappyMoneyManagement to make saving and investing more fun.

Unlike the hundreds of blogs focusing only on frugal living or only on investment strategy, we are taking a holistic, balanced approach to personal finance. We believe in Happy Money Management, none of this stressful save-every-cent-you-make-so-you-can-retire-at-40 nonsense. We provide actionable recommendations to help you pay off your debt and save money with minimal negative impact on your daily life.

The Unique Financial Challenges and Opportunities for Today’s Young Women

We're in a totally different financial situation than the generations before us. And as much as we're all pushing for equality, we still face some unique financial challenges as women.

Challenges of the Y and Z Generations (who else is sick to death of the M-Word?!):

Out of control housing costs: Rent is now exceeding 50% of the average salary in some markets.
Debilitating Student Loan Debt: But now that employers require a degree, what are we supposed to do?
Lack of basic financial education: Seems like parents thought schools had it covered and schools thought parents had it covered, so no one ever taught us this very necessary skill for survival!
Multi-generational households: Living with your parents after college sucks.
Instant gratification: Almost everything we want is available at our fingertips on demand. So we struggle to find the patience it takes to grow personal wealth.

Financial Challenges we face as Women:

The Wage Gap: We’ve all heard that women are currently making 77 cents on the dollar compared to a male salary, but it’s not for the reason you think (blog post coming soon!).
Childcare costs: Or so our mom-friends tell us. We’ll need some help from some moms to explore this issue.
Women are becoming breadwinners: We’re marrying later, and the divorce rate is increasing, so we’ve got more women living solely on their single salaries.
Living longer: This is bad news from a financial POV because it’s just more years of retirement we need to fund.

But we have a few things going for us:

We’re creative and innovative
We’ve got the foresight to be more prepared than Gen X-ers and Boomers
We’re more educated than any generation in history
We’re socially and environmentally conscious
We work collaboratively, using each others' strengths to improve life for everyone
We’re able to benefit from a global market instead of being confined to our local area
Careers are offering more flexibility to improve our work/life balances

And we have unique opportunities:

We can learn from the mistakes of the previous generation, avoiding another housing crash and working together to find a solution to the education costs in the US
Once we teach ourselves basic personal finance, we can pass that knowledge along to the next generation, giving them the financial education our generation never received
Time is on our side: If we start investing immediately, we have enough time before retirement to take advantage of compound interest, which is freakin magic!
We can use technology as an "unfair advantage". For now, our generation has more tech knowledge than any other, and we can use that advantage to provide high-demand tech services to increase our incomes.
We can foster a useful money mindset. Our country seems divided between “money is the root of all evil” and “if I don’t have money, I’m not successful." Let’s promote the “money is a tool” mindset that recognizes the importance of money as a tool for survival and for more meaningful pursuits.

4 Biggest Personal Finance Myths

Time to dispel some long-standing myths getting in your way. Don't fall for these!

#1 Personal Finances are too complex and you’re not qualified to handle them:

Personal Finance is only complicated if you want it to be.

If you want to be a fancy investor who’s uber involved with frequent stock trading and sophisticated deals, sure, you can make it all kinds of complex! But if that doesn’t interest you, there’s no reason to go there. Have you heard of the 80/20 rule? It says 20% of your effort will provide 80% of your results. Well, we can teach you the 20% that will make an 80% difference in your finances in just the first 5 blog posts!

When you think about it, no matter how complex people want to make personal finance, it all comes down to 4 core principles:

Reduce Expenses
Reduce Debt
Increase Income
Increase Assets

As you spend less and pay off more of your debt, you can funnel more of your money into assets that generate additional income. Simple.

And what makes you qualified to handle your finances yourself? Well, who knows your financial situation better than you do? Who knows your financial goals better? Who else is willing to manage your finances without getting paid to do it? 😉

With all the DIY banking and investing available online, and the support and knowledge of the S&S Community, you can handle 99% of your finances on your own. That other 1% is optional, and we’re full of advice for helping you find qualified professionals to protect the money you worked so hard for.

#2 Personal Finance is Boring

Ok, this can be true, but only if you’re doing it wrong.

The wrong way to do it is muddling through without really knowing what you’re doing. Of course it won’t be fun if you don’t understand it. Then it just makes you feel dumb, and feeling dumb is the worst!

The right way to do it is to get a basic understanding of some things you can do TODAY that will make the biggest change in your finances and your life. Starting out with a big win is crazy motivating! Then as your wealth starts increasing, you’ll find it’s actually FUN to check all your balances and see how your balances have grown on their own while you were going about your life.

#3 Personal Finances take too much time to manage

There are so many free tools available online to automate the entire process for you! You can be involved as much or as little as you want. The most time-consuming part is reviewing your statements and recent spending to get a clear picture of your current financial position.

Setting up new accounts (like a retirement or money market account) takes a little time, but you only have to do it once, then you can automate the settings and go about your life. As you begin to notice your wealth growing, you might actually find yourself wanting to take more time to be more involved in your finances.

#4 Personal Finance is only for people with money

Technically, we all have money. It may only be $30, but it's money. And we're going to do something with it, so we should have a basic level of financial literacy to guide us in using that $30. So I guess technically, this is fact. Hmm. We’ll have to think of a new 4th myth 🙂

Where Do I Start?

The 5-Post Series that will change your life!

How to be Debt-Free 13 Years Sooner and Save $38,600 in the Process

The $831,751 Reason to Save for Retirement While You’re Young and Broke

The 3 Accounts You Need to Grow Your Savings

Fool-Proofing Savings for Guaranteed Financial Success

The Rich Get Richer: How to be One of Them

If you’re serious about getting your finances together, but also want to make the process as tolerable FUN as possible, head to Post 1 and get started today!

And of course there’s still plenty more to discuss and learn from one another after your 5-post head start. Come back for happy hour every Friday to see what’s new in the community! We'll have weekly blog posts covering specific topics like: