by Tracee Sioux

I am math retarded, I heard myself say in the car with my three-year-old daughter and my husband.

We were quarrelling about my refusal to participate in our family finances.

When kids are born they don't really understand so you can get away with shouting the F word or hissing a satisfying little damn it. It's not till they start talking that you clean up the toilet talk.

Same thing with putting myself down about my appearance and my ability to do math. I read this little book called Growing a Girl: Seven Strategies for Raising a Strong, Spirited Daughter and realized the consequences of saying that I, her mother and her feminine role model, was math retard was going to effectively shut her out of math. If I shut her out of math then I shut her out of technology. If I shut her out of technology then I shut her out of possibilities for high paying science related jobs.

That's a big consequence for a seemingly minor comment about my loathing of math.

I realized I had always felt shut out of math myself. I realized the entire time I had to take math in school it was taught to me by men to whom math came easily. These men didn't feel much like waiting around for me to catch up. And when I would ask question like, Why should I know algebra? How is this ever going to be applicable to me? They would site my need to convert a recipe. Since I had already resolved not to spend my life cooking and cleaning I felt math was something I could do without. Not once did I challenge myself numbers- or science-wise. In fact in college I made the argument that I should not be required to attend math classes as they only confused me further. I hired a tutor to help me pass College Algebra 101. I took a 6 week crash course for Algebra 105 and baked the teacher cookies for my C-.

I was single and managed my own finances relatively well for 10 years, but the second I got married I felt relieved of the responsibility of financial matters. Why shouldn't he do it?

Finally, I could just go back to hating math and all things related to it.

Unfortunately he didn't care for math as a subject either. We had too much in common. Surely it would have been better had one of us been a numbers-lover.

For my daughter, more than my husband, I decided to stop loudly declaring that I was math retarded. Turns out that though math doesn't come as easily to me as it might to some, I can get pretty passionate about it. By reading Dave Ramsey's book Financial Peace Revisited I realized how math really applies to me. Reading Suze Orman's Women & Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Destiny showed me how to value and protect my own financial interests, and The Millionaire Next Door gave me insight into how other people have so much more stuff than I do, even though we have similar incomes.

How do I define myself now? I am extremely competent in areas of math. Which means my daughter will be too.

Did anyone see that crazy woman on Oprah who sabotaged her whole family by having the appetite of a billionaire rock star when her income was upper-middle class? Now that woman is math retarded.

I mean retarded in the literal context: my development in the area of math was slowed, hindered or stunted. I do not mean retarded in the context of slamming those with mental disabilities.

by Tracee Sioux

One of the points Suze Orman brings up in her book Women & Money is that money matters. Money, she says, makes a fundamental difference in our happiness and our lives and to pretend that it doesn't is a great big lie. In fact, she says it might might be the source of dysfunction in our relationship with money.

We've all heard a million cliches, both Christian and otherwise, about money being unimportant.

Money can't make you happy.
Money isn't the most important thing.
You can't buy happiness.
It's the free things in life that count.
No one ever said on their death bed, wish I had spent more time at work.
The root of all evil is the love of money.
The widow gave her last mite, that's how much she loved God.
You can't take it with you.
Don't be such a Scrooge.
Don't be so money-hungry or greedy.
You can't out-give God.
She'll give you the shirt off her back.
She was so selfless.

Orman takes a bold approach to this kind of logic - it's flat-out wrong and if we could get rid of these guilty feelings about money then we might be able to develop a healthy relationship with money and stop being so irresponsible about it.

Everyone who lives needs money, she says. To pretend otherwise, is dishonest. The relationship we have with our money is an extension of the relationship we have with ourselves. If we are irresponsible about taking care of our money, we are irresponsible about taking care of ourselves. If we don't take care of ourselves then someone, our adult children, will eventually have to take care of us.

When are constantly taking care of others' needs financially, at the cost of our own financial needs it's a poor financial decision, she says. There is no wiggle room about this for Orman.

She very matter-of-factly states, nothing more directly affects your happiness than money.

She has a great list of ways the money is unimportant theory is a lie: health, love, and respect - can't have any of them without money, she says.

Health - if you get sick you must have money. If your family gets sick you must have money. Can you be happy without health? Not as happy as you would be if you had health or could afford to obtain health. Insurance costs money, doctors costs money, prescriptions cost money - you must have money to maintain a healthy life.

Love - Imagine staying in a relationship solely for love, because you have the money to stay or go. Imagine knowing that if you die those you love will be taken care of because you were responsible with money and didn't leave them with financial burdens.

Respect - You can't respect yourself if your financial life is out of control. You can't teach your children to respect you if you don't respect yourself enough to take care of yourself financially. You certainly can't teach your children to live within their means and live responsible disciplined lives if you don't do those things.

Reading this chapter in Women & Money was intense for me. I have a lot of money guilt, I think. I'm always deeply affected by all of those Christian cliches about money. At the same time I've discovered that what Orman is saying is true, money may not be able to buy health or happiness, but it sure would be a lot easier to pursue if an illness didn't bankrupt you.

It would be nice not to burden my children with my poor financial decisions. It would be great to send my children out into the world both able to make a living and able to wisely manage money. It would be great if I had older relatives who had paid more attention to their own money matters so I didn't have to spend so much of my energy worrying about them so much.

I would be delighted if when my daughter graduates from college she felt it within her grasp and within her rights to pursue money without guilt. After all, she's an American and we're all about the profit, right? Well, apparently some of us women, still need to work on that.

By Tracee Sioux

One of the things I wish I had inherited from my own mother was cleanliness and organization. My mother is very clean, neat, tidy, and organized.

At a recent visit to my mother's house I saw that she had kept the original little people that went with the Little People Bus. All of them in good condition.

I could never have pulled that off. After picking up the same $1 store toy about 5 times I simply rid myself of it by throwing it in the garbage.

Suze Orman, in Women & Money, says that we can never become wealthy if we are not clean and don't take care of our things.

Let me first state that my home is not filthy. It is simply too small and there is no where to put things away. We've simply outgrown the house. There are also two small children running around getting stuff out all day long.

It's a total fiction that your home is cleaner if you stay-at-home or work-from-home. It is, in reality, much messier. Think about it, if you picked up the house, then left the house all day long it would be clean when you got back. However, if you're trying to write and there are two children at home all day then the only thing that can result is a messier house. Yes,I know that picture at the top looks bad. But, as I said, I can't write, keep two children occupied AND keep the house clean. If you can do it - well, good for you. I, myself, have limitations.

My car looks like a freaking garbage dump half the time. Frankly, I didn't care enough about that hideous old Oldsmobile to clean it. Too, I'm always exhausted when we get home so lots of stuff gets left in the car. Not to mention all the crap my kids are constantly dragging home. Why can't the school throw away all the drawings and coloring book pages? Why does it have to end up in my car and my house - am I supposed to keep every single thing they ever draw, write, glue or color? I don't have the space for that.

But, putting away my Shame & Blame as Suze recommends I realize I've got to stop making excuses.

But, I admit my attitude about things is getting in the way of better things.

First, obviously this is a good problem to have - not enough room for my stuff means that we've got more than enough stuff. We've got a plethora of stuff that is ripping the house apart at the seams. That means we are prosperous and should be grateful about our prosperity rather than complaining about it.

Second, I think we've got left-over feeling of lack around here. We had to do without lots of stuff for a while. And that translated into accepting every hand-me-down and gift offered. It also translated into us buying stuff we didn't really love or enjoy because it was "better than nothing."

Third, we feel like we're being ungrateful by cleaning out and getting rid of stuff. For instance, there were some lovely people who made Zack some blankets. In fact, so many people made Zack blankets that he never used several of them. I finally got the courage up to take them to the shed to be sold at a garage sale. Obviously not the ones my mother or grandmother made, but the ones the secretary at my husband's old job. I just don't have room for it. Likewise, I need to banish my emotional attachment to cute baby clothes that don't fit the baby anymore.

Fourth, what if it comes back in style? I have clothes I love and have pulled them back out for the second time now. But, really could I live if I had to buy another belt or a another top in 20 years when it came back in style? Is it costing me wealth to keep it around? I certainly don't have room for new stuff if I'm keeping all that old stuff around. And while we're talking about clothes I keep my fat clothes around too - just in case fattness overtakes me again. Well, since he got that vasectomy I don't intend to get fat from pregnancy again. So, maybe I could just commit to not needing the fat clothes again? Besides, it will serve me right to have to go buy some if I end up in size 16 pants ever again.

This is, I think, hanging onto old baggage and old issues. To change the way we feel about money we have to change the way we feel about the things money can buy. Hanging onto things we don't need anymore is just telling ourselves that we don't have enough. If we get rid of it, we will miss it. That's true in some cases, believe me I've rid myself of everything I owned several times and I DO miss some stuff.

But, most of the stuff - never thought about it again. Since the 8 qualities of a wealthy woman chapter the Suze Orman book I've hauled out 4 giant garbage bags of stuff to the shed to be sold at a garage sale. Money for a down payment on a bigger house.

By Tracee Sioux

I found Chapter 1 in Women & Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Destinyboth validating and empowering. For me it was great to have my feeling of bluffing as a professional validated in a historical sense. Orman brings home the point that women have not, historically, filled the role of workers or the role of people who have their own money. When speaking of a collective conscience as females 25 years is like 5 minutes and the result is that our “new money” is still something we don’t really know how to handle yet.

This could not be more true. It’s also incredibly relevant when trying to empower a daughter. Since I am learning this for the first time I think it will be most empowering to my daughter to work out the kinks out loud. (Rather than whispering about money as previous generations have.)

Our girls need to understand that the world is still full of “firsts” for women. First woman Speaker of the House, Thanks Nancy Pelosi, first woman running for President, Thanks Hillary Clinton, etc. I think it would be a mistake not to give our daughters the historical perspective that we don’t have very much experience at incorporating work into our family lives and it’s frankly, difficult and full of sacrifices and unforeseen pitfalls.

Unrealistic expectations of perfection can be enormous burdens for women. We need to be careful not to pass our judgment about each others’ work vs. stay-at-home choices to our daughters. The most empowering thing to pass on to girls today is the awareness that they will have choices. Ideally, we can send them off into the world empowered to make either choice, whichever they feel most comfortable with or with whatever combination they can make work.

Either way, we need to send them into the world expecting to be valued whether they make money or not. Orman beings out the point that women are undervaluing themselves if they stay-at-home and don’t make money AND they are undervaluing themselves if they go out and work.

In Chapter 1 she also says this is only to be expected considering how new access to money is for women. Why would they know what to do with it or how to handle it? It’s not as if these lessons were ingrained in our collective consciousness for millennia as they were for men. It’s a great point.

Yet, for our daughters surely we can teach them better and give them sound words about money. I know the classic psychology of say Dr. Phil would have us believe that children shouldn’t be burdened with adult things like the family finances.

I would argue that such “protection” doesn’t empower our girls to go out into the world and make good financial choices. I think we should be working out the kinks “out loud” with our kids, daughters especially. How can we help them avoid financial pitfalls if we continue our bluff or never admit to mistakes?

On my mother's side I'm the first generation career woman. On my father's I'm the third. Either way, that's not much experience. But, my daughter will have me telling her what to watch for, what to think about, what to avoid and what to do. Hopefully, she won't feel so much like she's faking it.

For more on Chapter 1 and how we can get on the same side as women, check out BlogFabulous. By the way, this is the first time I’ve ever led a virtual book club (or any book club for that matter) so I am still working out the kinks of how to have an online conversation between two websites (maybe I should’ve just picked one, but it’s an important issue). Please cut me some slack.

By Tracee Sioux

I run a women's book club, Between the Covers, and this month (and probably August) we're doing Suze Orman's Women & Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Destiny.

I confess I was financially illiterate until I took Dave Ramsey's course Financial Peace University. It was a fantastic course that put a lot of financial issues into perspective for us.

I want to read Orman's book because I think there are issues that deal with money that are specific to women and girls. She looks at our emotional issues and how that translates into how we handle money and whether we use it to take care of ourselves.

She also tells women how to safe-guard themselves in cases where the prince does not show up, or perhaps the prince turned into a jerk and left or whatever. It's called reality, with a 50% divorce rate in this country. No one likes the reality, but it's rather silly not to acknowledge that it's there.

I'm inviting all my readers of So Sioux Me and BlogFabulous to participate in the book club selection. I think there are tons of issues to discuss. You can order the book right here and it helps me out, or get it from your local bookstore. Either way, I can't wait to hear what you have to say about women and money.

Let's face it it's terribly hard to feel empowered if you're broke or don't have enough information to make good financial decisions.