Excerpt from Women & Money: Owning the Power to Control Your Destiny

By Suze Orman
Imagine What's Possible

A book with the title Women & Money must begin with the story of how far women have come financially in the past three decades. It's not only a remarkable tale of social progress, it's a reminder for us that changes that take place on a personal level, every day, in small doses, add up to dramatic societal and cultural shifts over time.

Women today make up nearly half of the total workforce in this country. Over the past thirty years, women's income has soared a dramatic 63 percent. Forty-nine percent of all professional- and managerial-level workers are women. Women bring in half or more of the income in the majority of U.S. households—a growing trend that made the cover of Newsweek and was front-page news in many of the nation's newspapers. Women-owned businesses comprise 40 percent of all companies in the United States. There are more women than ever before who can count themselves among the country's millionaires, more women in upper management, and more women in positions of power in the government.

We have a right to be proud of our progress. I am so honored to witness this revolution in my lifetime. I only wish it told the whole truth.

Now, would you like to hear the other side of the story? Ninety percent of women who participated in a 2006 survey commissioned by Allianz Insurance rated themselves as feeling insecure when it came to their finances. Ninety percent! In the same survey, nearly half the respondents said that the prospect of ending up a bag lady has crossed their minds. A 2006 Prudential financial poll found that only 1 percent of the women surveyed gave themselves an A in rating their knowledge of financial products and services. Two-thirds of women have not talked with their husbands about such things as life insurance and preparing a will. Nearly 80 percent of women said they would depend on Social Security in their golden years. Did you know that women are nearly twice as likely as men to retire in poverty?