Episode 14 - “Prince Charming Isn’t Coming – Why we need to face our fears around managing our own money” with Barbara Stanny

Alissa Interviews Author, Inspirational Speaker and Financial Expert Barbara Stanny about “Prince Charming Isn’t Coming - Why we need to face our fears around managing our own money”

This program is brought to you by personallifemedia.com. 

[intro music]

Alissa Kriteman:  Welcome to Just for Women, Dating, Relationships, and Sex.  I’m your host Alissa Kriteman.  You are listening to Part 1 of a two part series with Barbara Stanny, inspirational speaker and financial expert.  In Part 1 we cover how to handle your money situation so you can have a better sex life.  How to deal with your money so that you don’t have a crisis happen to you.  We address old beliefs about Prince Charming coming to rescue us.  We learn three easy steps that will help you change your habits around money today.  We discover the inner and outer work of wealth and we talk about lifting the fog and veils around taking care of ourselves financially.  I hope you enjoy this enlivening and very, very moving and deeply insightful interview with Barbara Stanny.  Again, this is Part 1 of a two part series. 

Barbara Stanny:  There has been like two studies that came out recently that said women who are, who have more money, have better sex lives.

Alissa Kriteman:  Interesting.

Barbara Stanny:  I kid you not.  You cannot slice up your life like a pizza and say, okay, I’m gonna work on my money and nothing else.  Because whatever’s going on in your, with your money is going on in all other areas of your life.  Which means if you empower yourself around your money, you’re going to be empowering yourself in terms of your self esteem for sure in terms of your image of yourself for sure.  Which makes you feel a lot more confident and confidence leads to great sex.  What I’ve learned, getting smart about money is not that difficult.  It’s really much simpler than we think.  What I notice is that when women get their safety, survival needs met because we are so nurturing and relationship oriented we naturally, naturally, effortlessly start thinking of how can we help others.  I’m gonna tell you, I’m gonna cause it really doesn’t take a lot of time to get smart.  It doesn’t take a lot of money to create wealth.  That is absolutely true.  So I have three steps and if you do these three steps for 3-6 months you will be amazed at the transformation in you.  You will be amazed.

Alissa Kriteman:  Barbara Stanny, welcome to just for women.

Barbara Stanny:  Thank you, thanks for having me. 

Alissa Kirteman:  I’m so excited to talk to you.  Your book was enlightening and frightening at the same time. 

Barbara Stanny:  I like that.  That’s a good thing, enlightening and frightening.  As long as the frightening serves to motivate you and not paralyze you.

Alissa Kriteman:  Exactly.  Exactly, and we’ll talk a little bit about that because your book really talks a lot about the fog that women get into.  But before we get on to that juicy stuff, let me tell our listeners a little bit about who you are so they have some perspective.  Barbara Stanny is author of three books.  Well, actually four, and probably more at this point.  But you’re the author of Breaking Through: Getting Past the Stuck Points in Your Life;  Overcoming, Underearning;  Secrets of Six Figure Women; and the book we’re going to focus on today is, Prince Charming Isn’t Coming:  How Women Get Smart About Money.  Barbara Stanny is a motivational speaker, financial educator and passionate advocator for women’s personal empowerment.  Which is why I have her on the show today.  She regularly appears in the media on CNN, Fox News Channel, Good Morning America, CNBC, The View, NPR, PBS, Bloomberg, The New York Times, and USA Today.  I’m sure there are more things.out there that you’re doing.  I’m so excited to have you today.  And I know that my show is dedicated to dating, relationships, and sex, and those kinds of things but why I wanted to talk to you today is because finances and money is really about our own empowerment.  And by reading your book I started to understand the link between us as women being unconscious about money and how that completely sucks our power. 

Barbara Stanny:  And let me tell you something, Alissa. 

Alissa Kriteman:  Alissa

Barbara Stanny:  Alissa, sorry Alissa.  There has been like two studies that came out recently that said women who are, have more money have better sex lives.

Alissa Kriteman:  Interesting.

Barbara Stanny:  I kid you not. 

Alissa Kriteman:  Tell me more. 

Barbara Stanny:  Well, I, let me tell you something.  You cannot slice up your life like a pizza and say, okay, I’m gonna work on my money and nothing else.  Because whatever’s going on in your, with your money is going on in all other areas of your life.  Which means if you empower yourself around you’re money, you’re going to be empowering yourself in terms of your self esteem, for sure, in terms of your image of yourself, for sure, which makes you feel a lot more confident and confidence leads to great sex.

Alissa Kriteman:  Completely.

Barbara Stanny:  So how do we . . .

Alissa Kriteman:  Let’s go, we’re getting right into it.

(laughter)

Alissa Kriteman:  Where do we start?  Where do we start because I know so many women are walking around exactly in this fog that you’re talking about, this myth that some man is going to come along and just take care of everything for us.  Have the house, have the cars.

Barbara Stanny:  And let me tell you, Prince Charming doesn’t need to be a man. 

Alissa Kriteman:  Right

Barbara Stanny:  There’ll be a lot of women say, well, I don’t have a man, I don’t think a man’s gonna rescue me.  And then they’ll see all these lottery ticket stubs.  Or they’ll start realizing there’s some, something, some magical kind of thinking is going to save me.  Because if you’re not taking action to protect yourself financially somewhere in the back of your mind you’ve got a Prince Charming.

Alissa Kriteman:  Right. 

Barbara Stanny:  You absolutely do.  I will tell you that most women do not get serious about managing money, do not even start really applying themselves until they hit a crisis.  Until they lose a job, they lose a spouse or they’re right up against the brink of retirement, which is the worst time to start. 

Alissa Kriteman:  Right.

Barbara Stanny:  My mission is to empower, to motivate, to inspire women to start now, to make a simple decision.  It’s time to get smart.  I don’t know if you want me to tell my story or not. 

Alissa Kriteman:  Absolutely.

Barbara Stanny:  I grew up absolutely believing that there was going to be a man to take care of me.  I grew up with a wealthy father.  He was the R of H&R Block.  And his only advice to me about money was don’t worry.  Which was great advice, I thought.  I didn’t want to worry.  I just wanted to spend it.  But it turned out that my Prince Charming, who happened to be a financial advisor, was also a compulsive gambler.  So, over the course of our marriage he lost a fortune.  And you want to hear something insane?  I continued to let him manage the money.  Even though I knew he was gambling.  ‘Cause that’s how scared I was, how terrified I was, how intimidated I was by anything financial.  And even after our divorce, even after we got a divorce I decided money’s not my thing, I just didn’t want to deal with it.  Well, I have this theory that if you don’t deal with your money, your money will deal with you. 

Alissa Kirteman:  Sure.

Barbara Stanny:  I got tax bills for over a million dollars.  For back taxes my ex didn’t pay, for illegal deals he got us in, of course, he left the country.  I was left holding the bag, I did not have a million dollars so I called my father and asked him to lend me the money.  And he wouldn’t.  Would not lend me the money.  Now I can  tell you now, that was the best thing he could have done. 

Alissa Kriteman:  Yeah.

Barbara Stanny:  But at the time I was terrified.  I had three daughters.  I was not going to raise them on the street. 

Alissa Kriteman:  Right.

Barbara Stanny:  That was the moment I knew no one will do this for me.  That was the moment I knew I had to get smart.  And that’s why I don’t want anyone to have to go through such an extreme crisis, such an extreme situation to start getting their act together.  Because what I’ve learned, getting smart about money is not that difficult.  It’s really much simpler than we think. 

Alissa Kriteman:  Yeah.  Before we get into that though, and you have some amazing tools, techniques, checklists, things of that nature that we’ll talk about, but let’s talk a little bit more about what is going on.  The pervasiveness in our society that we are as you said, intimidated by taking on our financial freedom.  I think it’s important for us to start to talk about what are these unconscious beliefs about someone coming to take care of us and how we can get, I like to say, sober.  I mean, I know that’s kind of a, but really it’s, I think women are starting to wake up.  So, what is going on in our society, you’ve got some amazing statistics on.

Barbara Stanny:  Let me just tell you that what we’re seeing, I wrote this book ten years ago, it is out for it’s ten year anniversary. 

Alissa Kriteman:  Really, Prince Charming you wrote ten years ago?

Barbara Stanny:  Which means it’s been selling, now I revised it and updated it so it’s all current, but it’s been selling consistently for ten years.

Alissa Kriteman:  Wow.

Barbara Stanny:  The biggest difference between a decade ag0, 1997, and now is one thing.  When I first wrote this book women were not really getting it that money was an important topic.  Today women know it.  Women know they need to get smart.  They know they need to protect themselves.  But here’s what hasn’t changed.  Women aren’t doing anything about it. 

Alissa Kriteman:  Right.

Barbara Stanny:  They’re talking the talk but they’re not walking the walk.  The amount of passivity and ignorance among women when it comes to money is totally frightening.

Alissa Kriteman:  Why?  Why are we so passive and ignorant? 

Barbara Stanny:  Part of the reason is that they’re so busy juggling so many roles.  They’re so busy making money that they don’t take the time or have the knowledge of the skills to manage it. 

Alissa Kriteman:  Got it. 

Barbara Stanny:  But money is very easy to ignore until you can’t ignore it anymore.  Which is why it often takes a crisis.  And there is truly, I believe, something in our collective unconsciousness that has this rescue fanstasy still operating.  Which is why for most women there is a tremendous amount of resistance.  And resistance shows up in different ways.  Resistance sounds like, oh I don’t have time.  Oh this is too difficult.  Oh this is boring.  Oh I don’t care about, all those are signs we are in resistance.  That we haven’t made money a priority.  But let me tell you.  This is not about money.   I say that about all my books.  Every book I write, everything I write about women and money.  It’s not about the money.  It’s about power.  And I believe that we women are very frightened, feel very uncomfortable really stepping into our power . 

Alissa Kriteman:  I get it.  I get it.  So what would that mean.  Let’s look at this now.  If women were empowered, if we actually started to, and I think we are, which is why we’re talking today.  I think women are waking up, they are stepping more into their power.  So what is that mean?  Like,

Barbara Stanny:  But not enough. 

Alissa Kriteman:  Not enough.

Barbara Stanny:  Not enough.  Not nearly enough. 

Alissa Kriteman:  Okay.

Barbara Stanny:  Because they aren’t taking charge.  They aren’t understanding money.  And they aren’t protecting themselves.  And they aren’t creating wealth to the degree which gives them power.  Because the money doesn’t , it’s not the money, money doesn’t do anything for us.  Money is a tool.  The, money is not the end.  Money is a means to the end.  I really believe when enough women become financially savvy, financially responsible, and financially independent, we will have the sensitivity, the vision, the values, the resources to change this world.  To heal this planet.  And Mother Theresa said, “It takes a checkbook to change the world.” 

Alissa Kriteman:  Really. 

Barbara Stanny:  And I think that what I found from interviewing women who are smart with money, from interviewing women who made a lot of money, who were creating wealth, it wasn’t just that they had money in the bank.  It was what they were doing with their money.  They were using their money to make a difference in their own lives, in the lives of people they loved, in the world around them. 

Alissa Kriteman:  So you’re saying we have to take this out to a bigger sphere, not just our own, okay I can feed my children and put clothes on them and send them to a school that they want to go to.   But you’re saying we can affect change on a global level.  I mean this is almost getting into a spiritual kind of calling. 

Barbara Stanny:  It is.  There’s no doubt in my mind.  This is something greater.  This is something far greater than just having more money.  But at the same time I’m not saying that anyone should.  What I notice is that when women get their safety, survival needs met, because we are so nurturing and relationship oriented, we naturally, naturally, effortlessly start thinking of how can we help others. 

Alissa Kriteman:  Right.

Barbara Stanny:  The Indians have a saying, “When you’re hungry, you can’t be charitable.”  But when you have that foundation, that financial foundation, automatically, just instinctually, we start thinking how can we help. 

Alissa Kriteman:  Hmm hmm.  You know, let’s go back for a second.  I’m just getting this thought.  There’s something about, you know, when women talk to each other or I mean it’s rampant.  When we talk to each other there’s this sense of, and it’s primal, it’s kind of going back to what you just said,  you know.  Being taken care of.  Oh, she scored.  Oh, she’s set.  Things of that nature.  Right?  Like talk to me about that kind of unconscious, it’s like giving away our power.  Like someone is going to come and, you know, have everything be set for us.  And at the same time, can we as empowered women, I mean, hold that someone would come in and take care of us and yet the same time we want to have our own stake in the world.  Do you see what I’m saying?  It’s almost like a double, it’s like a no-win.  You can’t win.  If you’re going to be in a relationship with someone and, I have to say, I was thinking of this myself and in past relationships I wanted a man to come and take care of everything and at the same time I would struggle against it because I wanted to have my own sense of myself and contribution in the world.  So how do we get out of that weird?

Barbara Stanny:  Very good question.  Now let me tell you, I scored big in two ways.  I scored because I had a rich father.  I scored because I married a man who was really smart about money. 

Alissa Kriteman:  Or so you thought.

Barbara Stanny:  But let me tell you, just cause you have money doesn’t mean you’ll keep it. 

Alissa Kriteman:   Hmmm.

Barbara Stanny:  Because no matter who you marry, what you inherit, or how much you make unless you’re in charge of it that money, unless you are what I call, unless you are a container that can hold the money instead of a sieve where it goes through your fingers you may have your Prince Charming but Prince Charmings leave.  Prince Charmings die.  Prince Charmings aren’t always such great money managers.  Now here’s what I say.  Because it’s not how we get the money or that we have to do it all ourselves.  But here’s the powerful stance I want each woman to take.  What I want you and every other woman to do Alissa, is understand, make financial decisions from a place of knowledge.  Not fear, ignorance or habit.  That’s powerful.  If you can participate in financial decisions from a place of knowledge and not ignorance, habit or fear that’s a whole different way of being.  You can be in your relationship.  You can be where ever you want to be as long as you’re participating in the decision. 


Alissa Kriteman:  And the only way really to do that is to educate yourself.  So what are some things we can do right now, today to start becoming more educated about making financial decisions. 

Barbara Stanny:  I’m gonna tell you, I’m gonna, it really doesn’t take a lot of time to get smart.  It doesn’t take a lot of money to create wealth.  That is absolutely true.  So I have three steps.  And if you do these three steps for 3-6 months you will be amazed at the transformation in you.  You will be amazed.  If everyday, first step, everyday read something about money.  Even if it’s just the headlines of the business section of a newspaper.  Even if it’s just for a minute.  Even if you just glance at it.  ‘Cause so much of getting smart or smarter about money is just familiarizing ourselves with the jargon, with the current trends.  So, you know, open the newspaper.  Turn on a financial show on TV.  Listen, read about money just for a minute every single day. 

Alissa Kriteman:  For at least one minute.

Barbara Stanny:  And you might find yourself wanting to do that more.  You know, you may be standing in the checkout line of the grocery store.  Pick up money magazine and leaf through it . That’s all. 

Alissa Kriteman:  Right.

Barbara Stanny:  Every week have a conversation with money, about money, preferably with somebody who knows more than you.  See I think we women do not talk about money.  We will moan and groan about it, we’ll complain about it, but when’s the last time you sat down with your girlfriend and said, how are you, what are you doing in your 401(k) or have you bought a mutual fund lately?

Alissa Kriteman:  Right.

Barbara Stanny:  We don’t.  We don’t.  So I started, when I started doing this I started picking everybody’s brain.  Anybody who knew anything about money I’d take them to lunch, take them for tea and I’d say, tell me, what did you do?  How’ve you gotten smart?  What advice would you give me to learn?  So everyday read something.  Every week have a conversation.  And what a lot of women are doing is they’re forming study groups or  book clubs on the subject of money. 

Alissa Kriteman:  Nice.

Barbara Stanny:  And they’re meeting once a month, it’s a great idea.  Every week, talk.  Every month, save.  Automatically, automatically so you don’t have to think about it.  Automatically have money taken from your checking account or your payroll check to a savings account.  And this could be five dollars.  I don’t care the amount. 

Alissa Kriteman:  Got it.

Barbara Stanny:  Have money transferred because you don’t miss what you don’t see.  And everybody always says, but I have no money left over at the end of the month.  And there’s that classic example that if you would forego one thing, like your coffee late, like a lunch, once a week and you take that money and you put it in a jar at the end of three months you’ll have enough.

Alissa Kriteman:  Also if you don’t have anything left that’s gonna be a nice fire under your butt to actually make more. 

Barbara Stanny:  It, sometimes it is, Alissa.  And sometimes what happens is people get so paralyzed by fear, they get so discouraged, they get so into the, you know, cynicism and resignation and feel so pessimistic that they don’t do anything. 

Alissa Kriteman:  Hmmm.  So how do we get out of those spaces?

Barbara Stanny:  If you read, if you talk, if you save.  And these, our behavior around money it’s habitual.

Alissa Kriteman:  Habitual.  So we need new habits.

Barbara Stanny:  What we need to do is shift and starting doing different habits.  And you know changing habits is never easy.  It never feels comfortable, it never feels right.

Alissa Kriteman:  Right.

Barbara Stanny:  You keep wanting to go back to the old way.  So if you could do this with a buddy, if you could do this with a friend, if you could do this with a spouse, and pair off, have someone to be accountable with, that makes it even more effective.

Alissa Kriteman:  Gotcha.

Barbara Stanny:  And the thing is what happens, see.  Here’s what happens.  It starts getting fun.  It starts getting absolutely delightful.  It may take awhile to get there and then what happens.  And this is what happens with everybody who does these three steps for six months.  They say to me, always, I have to tell you Barbara I feel so powerful.

Alissa Kriteman:  Hmmm.  Nice.

Barbara Stanny:  Power.  Very sweet. 

Alissa Kriteman:  Great, all right.  There’s so many questions I have but we need to take a break to support our sponsors.  This is Alissa Kriteman, you’re listening to Just For Women.  I’m talking with Barbara Stanny, pioneer, advocate, inspirational speaker, financial expert, helping us wake up to what’s possible in our own empowerment as women when we take a hold of our finances.  We’ll be right back. 
We’re back.  I’m Alissa Kriteman, your host of Just For Women.  Dating, Relationships, Sex.  We’re speaking with Barbara Stanny, financial expert, author, and inspirational speaker, who is giving us the skinny on what we need to know about taking control of our financial abundance which actually leads to our own personal power.  So before the break, we were talking about changing our habits.  The three steps to take, daily, weekly, monthly, to start changing the way we handle our finances and getting more and more access to this power.  So, Barbara, now I want to talk a little bit about this inner and outer work around wealth.  And you say that the inner work is psychological and the outer work is more practical.  So.

Barbara Stanny:  Yes, so what I thought in my years and years, most of my adult life, when I tried to figure this money thing out it’s like my eyes would glaze over.  My brain would fog up.  I just couldn’t get it.  (laughter)  And I’d keep going to these classes and I’d keep learning the difference between a stock and a bond and an IRA and a Roth IRA and I just, it would just be mush.  And then I discovered that if you do the outer work, which is important, along with the inner work, which is at the same time you’re exploring the facts and the figures and the technical material, you are also examining your beliefs and attitudes and decisions about yourself and money that you have made probably very early in life.  And when you can start putting those together, the inner work and the outer work, it lifts those veils.  It’s like my eyes just unglazed.  My brain defogged.  I started understanding everything.  

Alissa Kriteman:  So what did you find out about your own beliefs and attitudes that you weren’t aware of prior?

Barbara Stanny:  Well as I was doing this work to figure out the finances I was also doing work on me personally.  And I’d do things like go to seminars.  I went to counseling.  And I saw as I went deeper in my soul searching that I had tremendous fear.  That, I went to a counselor one time.

Alissa Kriteman:  A therapist?

Barbara Stranny:  A therapist.  A psycho-therapist.  And I said to him, first appointment, I said I’m here cause I really want to get smart about money.  I really do.  I’m just so frustrated.  And he said to me Barbara, now stop.  And he took another chair.  And he said now talk to me like I’m a voice in your head.  Like you’re talking to yourself.  And I’m going to respond as a voice in your head.  So I looked at him and I said , okay Barbara, you want to get smart, I want to get smart, let’s get smart about money.  We gotta do this.  And the voice responded, no you don’t.  And it, Alissa, I was like, I couldn’t argue.  It was like someone took the air out of my balloon.  And I got in touch at that moment with the part of me that absolutely, positively, did not want to get smart about money.  That sabotaged my every move.  And this part as I got to know it better through journaling, through counseling, through exercises, which are in my book, I have a lot of exercises in the book,

Alissa Kriteman:  Yeah.

Barbara Stranny:  Prince Charming Isn’t Coming.  But as I got to know, I saw that I was terrified.  This was not conscious.  That I was terrified that my parents wouldn’t love me, that a man wouldn’t love me, if I really was financially independent.   If I could take care of myself no one would love me or take care of me. 

Alissa Kriteman:  Isn’t that wild!

Barbara Stranny:  That sounds so ridiculous to say but we make decisions.  We make decisions very early in life and we act as if those decisions are true.  So anytime we are in resistance, anytime we see ourselves not doing what we know we need to do it’s because all resistance comes from fear.  And at the root of every fear is a belief.  And the core of every belief is a decision.  It’s a decision you made about yourself or the way the world works.  Usually made when you’re very young.  That’s totally irrational.  And it has, and it’s totally unconscious.  And if you can go back and dig out those early decisions and then decide differently it’ll change everything.  Your whole behavior will change.  As Einstein said, “You cannot solve a problem at the same level of thinking you were at when you created it.”   So the inner work is about shifting our thinking. 

Alissa Kriteman:  Got it.

Barbara Stanny:  About shifting and replacing those limited beliefs we have. 

Alissa Kriteman:  Also it sounds like feeling your feelings.

Barbara Stanny:  It is about feeling the feelings.  It is about telling the truth about what’s so for you. 

Alissa Kriteman:  Yeah. 

Barbara Stanny:  It absolutely is and if you can this in conjunction with reading the books and going to the classes and listening  to the TV shows, money shows, it, the veils lift so quickly.  Because not only is there the inner work and the outer work but there’s a third prong and that’s what I call the higher work of wealth.  And it’s what we talked about earlier.  That once you start feeling financially secure and financially fit and you really understand what you’re doing and what it means, you start thinking about what’s next for me.  How can I use this knowledge and this security to change the world?  To make a difference in somebody or something else’s life.  And you start thinking about areas where you feel passionate about.  And this is where the real fun and the real joy is.

Alissa Kriteman:  Hmmm.  You know, yeah. and it, I’m just noticing like baby steps.  Baby steps.  Because even for myself when I think about having the kind of wealth where I want to affect change in the world, it’s like alright but I need to get an IRA.  (laughter)

Barbara Stanny:  That’s right.

Alissa Kriteman:  Which, you know, I didn’t really know what that was a year ago.  (laughter)

Barbara Stanny:  That’s exactly right, you need, we all need to start that retirement account, the younger we are, the better.  The retirement account like the Individual Retirement Account, the IRA or the Roth IRA, or our 401(k) at work or the 403(b).  They’re all just different names for different retirement accounts which are gifts from the government gods.  And the government gods give us very few gifts.  What that means is we put our money into this account, now we can’t touch ‘till we get older. 

Alissa Kriteman:  Yeah.

Barbara Stanny:  But it grows either tax-free or tax-deferred.  So we don’t have to pay taxes on that money that’s growing. 

Alissa Kriteman:  Right.

Barbara Stanny:  This is a very good thing. 

Alissa Kriteman:  We don’t even, you know, that’s like, that’s like this seems to be, what you’re saying is all this work, and maybe not all this work, but there’s work we have to do emotionally before we can even get through these veils and fogs that you’re talking about to listen to a conversation about what a tax-deferred IRA is. 

Barbara Stanny:  We need to do the inner work and the outer work concurrently.

Alissa Kriteman:  Concurrently.  So you’re saying, go to seminars, learn, learn, learn, but also don’t forget the feelings. 

Barbara Stanny:  Uh uh.

Alissa Kriteman:  When you say concurrently it’s we have to go to these courses and seminars but at the same time we can’t forget to feel the feelings. 

Barbara Stanny:  And journal about them.  Or talk about them with friends. 

Alissa Kriteman:  Okay.

Barbara Stanny:  But always ask yourself it’s not what do I need to do but often the question is what do I need to let go of.  What are the feelings, what are the beliefs, what are the attitudes I have about myself or money that aren’t serving me.  Because you know, so much, I would say 99% of our behavior around money is inherited from our parents.

Alissa Kriteman:  Got it.

Barbara Stanny:  And people who tend to be over spenders the tendency is for the parents to be over spenders.  The people who, in chronic debt, the tendency is their parents were the same way.  So these are habitual behaviors that require a lot of attention.  And a lot of self discipline and a lot of awareness to change.  But when those change, those behaviors change you’ll be amazed how everything in your life changes.  Because whatever is affecting your money life is affecting all areas of your life. 

Alissa Kriteman:  Here’s what’s interesting about what you’re saying, you’re the inherited behavior, it could be that but you, there’s also the other side of that double whammy which is your father told you not to worry.  So not only, maybe you inherited, you didn’t necessarily inherit a behavior, you were like the reaction to something that was oh, I don’t have to worry. 

Barbara Stanny:  I did inherit a behavior.  Because I saw my mother.

Alissa Kriteman:  Oh, talk about that.

Barbara Stanny:  See,my father, see, I believed that men make and manage the money.  I absolutely believed that.  It’s not a woman’s job.  I inherited that.  I also inherited his frugality, his philanthropy, his good sense of values which have served me very well. 

Alissa Kriteman:  Hmmm hmmm.

Barbara Stanny:  What was not served me well is the role models I had of the man doing all the work around the money and the woman spending it.

Alissa Kriteman:  Gotcha.

Barbara Stanny:  And it was so interesting.  When my book, Prince Charming Isn’t Coming, first came out ten years ago my father called me and he said, I loved this book.  He said, for the first time I realize I better explain my finances to your mother.  It had never occurred to him. 

Alissa Kriteman:  Right. 

Barbara Stanny:  And my mother called me and she said, I read the book.  And they had just had the talk, the money talk, and she said I didn’t understand anything he said.  Nothing.  (laughter) But I’m not gonna wait ‘till he dies.  I’m going to educate myself.  And lo and behold she did.  She got together with her friends.  They started an investment club.  She started talking to people about money.  She started reading about it.  So that by the time my father died three years ago all she had to do was grieve because her finances were not only all in place but she understood where they were. 

Alissa Kriteman:  Wow.  I didn’t even think about that.  It, you know, women who, who aren’t responsible for understanding about money, when their spouse passes away, that’s a extra loaded fear. 

Barbara Stanny:  And what’s so, what happens so many times, the horror stories of all these women who trusted their husbands and their husbands did not take good care of their money. 

Alissa Kriteman:  Right, so not only are they now widowed but maybe many times they don’t even have any money.  Is that what you’re saying?

Barbara Stanny:  I interviewed, I mean, interviewed, I had a woman come up to me once when I was talking and she was 84 years old and she said her husband was a very wealthy physician.  So she just let him take care of the money.  When he died 14 years before, she was 70, he not only didn’t leave her any money but he left her saddled in debt. 

Alissa Kriteman:  Oh my God. 

Barbara Stanny:  But she said immediately she started going to classes, she got a financial advisor, she started doing what she needed to do.  So she said to me, 14 years later, I’m a very wealthy woman today.  And she did it herself.  So I just, I don’t like the idea of surprises.  It’s not fun to start thinking about money when you just had the rug pulled up under your feet. 

Alissa Kriteman:  Right.

Barbara Stanny:  And it’s so much fun to start doing it in a group with your friends.  And do it when the pressure’s off. 

Alissa Kriteman:  What if your friends aren’t interested in, yeah, get new friends, but no but, what you’re saying is we can be, on our own, the women that affect change in our circles.  And if there aren’t, if our women, our current women friends aren’t interested in starting to talk about investing, saving—

Barbara Stanny:  And our men friends, too.  Don’t forget them. 

Alissa Kriteman:  Right.  Right.  And that it can actually, we can take it on as fun. 

Barbara Stanny:  It’s very fun.

Alissa Kriteman:  Yeah.

Barbara Stanny:  We could start a book club or a study group, there is a site, a website, that I would really love to recommend. 

Alissa Kriteman:  Tell me.

Barbara Stanny:  It’s called wife.org.  W-I-F-E.  And it stand for the Women’s Institute of Financial Education. 

Alissa Kriteman:  Oh, I love it. 

Barbara Stanny:  Wife.org.  And they have, you can have access to money clubs, to money groups.  They have all kinds of study groups.  It’s a fabulous, I think it’s the best women’s financial site. 

Alissa Kriteman:  That is—

Barbara Stanny:  And of course, probably mention mine.  BarbaraStanny.com. 

Alissa Kriteman;  Oh, of course.

Barbara Stanny:  I’d love everyone to go on there, too.

Alissa Kriteman:  Yeah, and we’ll, I’m gonna talk a little bit more about your site at the close because it’s absolutely fantastic what you have going on there.  And it’s evident that this is such a hot topic because you’re being called to do interviews and not only that but I guess we can talk about it now, your course.  The Prince Charming Isn’t Coming course that you have.

Barbara Stanny:  Right. 

Alissa Kriteman:  That you have right.

Barbara Stanny.  It’s actually, I have two courses.

Alissa Kriteman:  Okay.

Barbara Stanny:  And the one that I have been doing recently is called Becoming Your Own Prince Charming. 

Alissa Kriteman:  Love it.

Barbara Stanny:  And it’s been phenomenal.  I’m doing my last one in New York.  Like, this month.  And I have another course called Overcoming Underearning.  So, and they’ve just been very well received. 

Alissa Kriteman:  What do women get out of doing Becoming Your Own Prince Charming? 

Barbara Stanny:  I believe that really understanding money, really taking charge of your money, becoming financially responsible, financially successful, is a rite of passage into your power.  And I have structured the whole day as a rite of passage.  So what happens when women come in and we start talking about this and they realize first, they’re not alone.  Two, so much of what is keeping them has been these mixed up beliefs and thoughts and mindset they had about money.  When they can clearly see where that came from and they can start absorbing the basic information and they can talk to each other, it is not only personally transforming but so freeing.  And so fun.  We do a lot of laughing . There’s also Kleenex.  There’s a lot of crying.  It’s really about delving deep within and then looking at what your highest vision for you life is. 

Alissa Kriteman:  I have to tell you.  Was there one more thing you wanted to say about that?

Barbara Stanny:  Nope.  That was it.

Alissa Kriteman:  I have to say, you keep saying, it can be fun, it can be fun.  And when I read your book, I felt everything you said.  I felt frozen, I felt scared. All this, you know what came up was my little self-critic who was saying to me, you should have known this.  You know what I’m saying?  And I know that happens for women because Allison Armstrong talks about it, too, with understanding men.  You’re talking about it with understanding women and we have to have compassion for ourselves that we didn’t know.  And that we were never taught about money or about sex or about finances.  Right?

Barbara Stanny:  Yes, but I will tell you that when you really get that, that compassion for yourself and to give yourself permission to go through the overwhelm of learning, to really stay with it, your relationship not only with money will change but your relationship with men will change.  Your energy will be different.  When you know that you have the resources to take care of yourself then that requires a whole new kind of relationship for you.  You know women look at the title of my book, especially single women, and they go Prince Charming Isn’t Coming, and they go, oh that’s so depressing.  And I go, no, no, no, no, no.  It’s not the man, it’s the myth we have to give up.  We can still have our prince, we just change the job description.  He’s no longer our savior, our rescuer, he’s our partner.

Alissa Kriteman:  Exactly. 

Barbara Stanny:  And the kind of men you will attract with that mindset will be a whole new and higher quality of man. 

Alissa Kriteman:  You know, this is really interesting.  I am starting to come up with this body of knowledge I will call lovership.  And really it’s about the gap between dating and having a long term, committed partnership or marriage.  This is one of those pivotal keys that you’re talking about.  We will start to have whole new relationships with men if we aren’t unconsciously in fear around money.  We become better partners. 

Barbara Stanny:  What happens, now I’ve been teaching this to groups and to individuals for over ten years now.  And what I see and what women say to me all the time is, when you start dealing with your money it shakes up your life. 

Alissa Kriteman:  Yeah.

Barbara Stanny:  Which is why people sometimes want to shut down.  But it does shake up your life with your current relationships.  It does.

Alissa Kriteman:  Yeah.

Barbara Stanny:  But what it does, it shakes it up in a way that it comes out with a whole new quality of relationship.  No only when you are not in fear but flip that over.  When you are confident.  When you are secure.  When you are self assured.  When you have the self-esteem that can only come by knowing you can take care of yourself.  Imagine energetically the kind of man that will attract to you. 

Alissa Kriteman:  Well, it’s even like what you said.  You know just by taking on your finances you realized you were terrified of not being loved.  I mean that’s not something I would necessarily think was associated with money but yes, there it is. 

Barbara Stanny:  Because to me, my model of a relationship was control and dependency.  The man was the control and the woman was dependent. 

Alissa Kriteman:  And that was an unconscious model, yeah?

Barbara Stanny:  I never thought about it.  I just assumed that’s the way everything was because that was my world.

Alissa Kriteman:  Yes.

Barbara Stanny:  That’s the world I grew up in.  Now for some people they grew up in a very different world. 

Alissa Kriteman:  Sure.

Barbara Stanny:  You know there are some people who believe that if they have a lot of money they, their, people won’t like them.  That, this is the nobility of poverty.  That people will reject them.  I mean we have all kinds of crazy, crazy beliefs (laughter) about money.  Absolutely completely insane. 

Alissa Kriteman:  You know it’s funny, it’s like, who knew?  If you don’t have money you have beliefs about the rich.  If you’re rich you have beliefs about yourself and the poor.  You know what I’m saying?  It’s like how can we win here?

Barbara Stanny:  You know what Henry Ford said.  Henry Ford said, “Believe you can, believe you can’t.  Either way you’ll be right.”  (laughter)  Beliefs are arbitrary.  Choose your beliefs.  Which is easier to say than do but it really does require that kind of shift where I started doing affirmation.  People love powerful women.  Men love powerful women.  My father loves powerful women.  My mother loves powerful women.  I am powerful.  Those kinds of affirmations said regularly can really make a difference. 

Alissa Kriteman:  Not only that.  Affirming that kind of power, but also I think one other belief, and this is pervasive and now they have a term for it, alpha female, but it’s that powerful women have to be bitches or that powerful women have to be rude and condescending or whatever.  But we’re going to talk about that when we come back, this is Alissa Kriteman on Just For Women, Dating Relationships and Sex.  We’re talking with Barbara Stanny about reclaiming our power through financial freedom.  

This is the end of Part 1 of a two part series with Barbara Stanny.  You’re listening to Just For Women, Dating, Relationships, and Sex.

This concludes Part 1.  The interview will be continued in the next episode of this show.

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