WTOP Interview: Top 10 Money Mistakes Women Make

 Interview Transcript:

Shawn Anderson: Sometimes things happen to your money that are beyond your control, but in many cases we are the ones making mistakes that are sabotaging our financial plans?

Hillary Howard: Joining us to help learn from our mistakes is Nina Mitchell; she’s Senior Wealth Advisor and partner at Her Wealth from Bridgewater wealth in Bethesda, good to see you.

Nina Mitchell: Pleasure to be here thank you.

Hillary Howard: You recently read a book called ”nice girls don’t get rich” and it got you thinking about money mistakes. One of them is putting everyone ahead of you and your finances, if you don’t pay much attention to something, it doesn’t thrive.

Nina Mitchell: Well this is a big one, you know when we put our finances last, we miss out on opportunities to really grow our wealth and kind of secure our financial future. Time really is money and maybe by being too cautious or afraid of the stock market or not investing regularly, you’re going to miss out on compounding and just the opportunity to really grow your money continuously for the long-term. As we know having money gives you financial security and hopefully you can be financially independent.

Shawn Anderson: The term financial literacy gets talked about a lot, go in a little more of what that really means?

Nina Mitchell: That’s just really being knowledgeable and confident about your finances and there’s a lot of ways to do this. I mean every woman needs to have a basic finance 101 and you know it doesn’t take a lot of time commitments; read articles, listen to podcasts, attend seminars, talk to people, talk to your financial advisor if you have one. I know at our Her Wealth blog we write a lot of articles about investing and finance and so look at that.

Hillary Howard: Give us some more avoidable mistakes that we should be conscious of?

Shawn Anderson: One of the big mistakes is that women tend to be perfectionists, and so therefore they kind of overanalyze their decisions and they kind of get paralyzed.

Hillary Howard: I’ve done that.

Nina Mitchell: We want to get it right before we actually implement, and so we have to just understand there’s really no perfect investment strategy. And it’s more important to get into the game as I say. And you can do this by investing in a well-diversified portfolio with stocks, bonds, real estate, money strategy funds. And you just have to accept the market ups and downs and be in it for the long-term. You can’t fear every market downturn and in terms of just compounding is really your friend. And Einstein has a great quote; Einstein said ”compound and interest is the greatest mathematical discovery”. The more time you give your money, the more time it’s going grow and the reinvested earnings keep on growing.

Shawn Anderson: Very good thanks Nina.

Nina Mitchell: Thank you.

Shawn Anderson: Nina Mitchell with Bridgewater wealth in Bethesda, you can read more about the top 10 money mistakes women make at WTOP.com/search Her Wealth.