Women & Money

Web Editor Wendi Watts reviews the book Women & Money by Suze Orman. Review explains how book can aid HR with effective communication with employees about financial issues.

With her usual down-to-earth style, Suze Orman tackles the subject of women’s complicated relationship with money in her book Women & Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Destiny. At the beginning of the book, she confesses that she had never thought she would write a book geared specifically to women, but after seeing the same problems over and over again with women in many different social and economic situations, she wrote Women & Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Destiny.

The first half of the book gives Orman’s assessment of many women’s dysfunctional relationship with money, and the second half is a very fundamental plan to help women deal with their current financial situation and build a foundation for a better financial future. Something must has struck a serious chord because it has been a best seller in spite of the fact that it was be available for download free for one day and more than 1 million people took advantage of that opportunity.

So what insight can a business leader or HR pro get from book about personal finances directed at only half of the adult U.S. population? First, Orman has found a way to explain finances without any jargon. Without speaking down to her readers, she explains even the simplest things as savings and checking accounts and their many variations in a way that everyone can understand. If part of your job is explaining your company’s benefits plan to employees, adopting Orman’s way of communicating could help your employees better understand your plan and make better choices.

Second, Women & Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Destiny provides a frank discussion about issues few women talk about even with their closest friends. Orman doesn’t allow her readers to make excuses or say they can’t do anything about their situation. Instead, she makes them take responsibility for their actions and — and this is critical — she gives them the practical tools and information they need to change it. It’s applicable and accessible for people anywhere on the financial ladder, including the very bottom and very top. To borrow an overly used adage, instead of giving her readers a fish, Orman teaches them how to fish.

I give this book 4out of 5 stars.

Wendi Watts is the Web content specialist at M. Lee Smith Publishers and editor of HR Hero Line. Before moving to the online world at HRHero.com, Wendi worked as an editor for the state Employment Law Letters. She has worked as an editorial assistant for the IT Division at Middle Tennessee State University, was the school and community liaison for Rutherford County Schools in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and was a journalist at two Middle Tennessee newspapers.