Liz Perle, author of Money, a Memoir,  lost her financial security when her husband decided he wanted a divorce after she had quit her editing job in New York City and moved with him and her four-year-old to Asia. With fifteen $100 dollar bills her husband peeled from a wad, she headed back to the states with their son, where she ended up bunking with a friend in San Francisco as she put her life back together. She was 42 years old and starting over.

Perle grew up in what she terms the “Club of Disposable Income.” She was well educated and thoroughly self sufficient…until she willingly gave the job of handling their joint finances to her new husband. His decision to end the marriage, however, wasn’t what caused Perle’s financial problems, she realized. It was her “convoluted relationship” with money, which included feeling guilty about purchases (and hiding receipts), stowing away money in her dresser drawers and slipping twenties out of her husband’s wallet. (This, despite the fact that she had earned good money for years.) So, when she was left virtually penniless and on her own, the situation gave her a chance to really examine how she felt about money and what role it played (and should play) in her life.

it’s not easy being (in a relationship with) green
In some ways Perle’s story is similar to that of many women in Fairfield County. “It’s not that women aren’t capable of taking care of themselves, but there’s emotional [baggage] around money,” she said in a recent interview from her home in San Francisco. “For some, it manifests in being passive about their finances, while others think they will be taken care of,” she adds.

That’s not to say that these same women don’t have significant financial resources. Quite the contrary. They often do, but they may not know what to do with them…or choose to let others handle their finances for them. They may say, and truly believe, that money is not important to them. Or they may feel that it’s “wrong” in some way to value money. (Men, on the other hand, are encouraged to earn high wages and are often defined by their jobs and their salaries.)

Money is simply, for many women, and emotionally charged topic. Think of the number of times you’ve heard a friend claim she was going to step out for some “retail therapy.” It’s a classic example of how spending money can actually make a woman feel good and, later, guilty. Men don’t tend to have those kinds of feelings.