Saturday morning may seem an unlikely time to sharpen your financial managment skills. It turns out to be, not only the right time, but with the right person to guide the way. Julie Stav, blond hair, pink suit and seriously articulate, tell us, “Let’s get our money to work for us.” Stav has starred in 5 PBS shows on the topics of her 5 books. Women know a lot more than they think they know about money but they lack confidence, she insists.
Her life lessons were first learned from her father:
Money has nothing to do with class.
Power is something that you take.
Divorced and the mother of a 4 year old, she read a book about financial management and was motivated to study for her license as a stock broker. It is clear that her early training as a teacher translated well into her current career in broadcasting on personal finance. She puts concepts into bite-sized, digestible morsels:
- The Dow Jones indicates how the market is doing by measuring the performance of 30 companies.
- The Standard and Poors 500 is more accurate as ¾ of your investments will go with it.
Her mission is to teach anyone to learn to invest. She encourages us to invest together through investment clubs. She describes investing as walking a tightrope between greed and fear. To measure fear look at the BETA which is found at www.Morningstar.com under risk factors. A risk factor of .5 means the stock is half the volatility of the market over the 3 years. Look at trailing returns for your mutual funds. Bear Market Decile Rank means how that mutual
fund performed in the last 5 years – 1 is the best, 10 is the worst. This information is conveyed with logic and the certainty that women can and will manage their finances well. To do so is essential to a sustainable future.
