ave you checked the price of purses lately? Dooney & Bourke, Prada,Coach . . . you could spend a fortune on a pocketbook, if you wanted to. Better to invest in the stuff you carry around in your wallet. Dimes (not diamonds) are a girl’s best friend. When you have the former, you can buy the latter. Your future is in the bag, so to speak, when you take control of your finances.

            In this issue, we focus on pocketbook issues: things that affect our bottom line—like rising interest rates, the wage gap, and the high cost of caregiving—and we offer strategies for improving it.

            “Aim high, and ask often,” is Harvard Business School professor Myra Hart’s advice in “Risky Business?”—our story on starting your own small business, by Sharon Sorokin James. “Women don’t ask” is a refrain I hear often from the experts who write for MAKING BREAD. Women tend to be reticent about asking for raises or promotions—even though, as another professor, Carnegie Mellon’s Linda Babcock, reported in her recent book, “Women Don’t Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide” (Princeton University Press), a woman can increase her lifetime earnings by almost half a million dollars by just asking for and getting a $5,000 increase on a $25,000 starting salary.

            The tide may be turning, as more and more of us find our voice and the courage to use it. In the workplace, women are beginning to ask the hard questions when it comes to sex discrimination and the wage gap. A few more settlements like the $54 million victory won by 340 women at Morgan Stanley this July, and the powers-that-be should start listening.

            In the meantime, another way some women react to inequities in the workplace is to simply opt out, walk away, and start their own businesses, where they are in charge. Every 60 seconds somewhere a woman is setting up shop. In “Risky Business?” we outline the questions you should ask yourself before you hang up your shingle.

Our pocketbooks take another huge hit when we assume caregiving responsibilities for our aging parents. More than 44 million people—60 percent of whom are women—are in that boat, reports Elizabeth Kaminsky, who acted as her mother’s and her aunt’s caregiver from the tender age of 16. She shares personal lessons learned about caregiving’s emotional and financial toll in “Theirs Is a Labor of Love . . . But Who Cares for the Caregivers?” We tie up this Care Package of advice and encouragement  with “I Was at a Loss,” by Phyllis Staff, Ph.D., who offers smart suggestions for coping with the high cost of eldercare.

            Rising interest rates are taking another big bite out of our pocketbooks. In “What It Was Was Interest,” Allison Acken, Ph.D., offers a tongue-in-cheek explanation of how that pesky number in front of the percent sign affects our daily lives. Then financial planner Elizabeth Lewin lays out some strategies for minimizing the damage when rates rise in “Learning to Like the Rate Hike: What to Do When Money Isn’t Cheap Anymore.”

            Nissa Simon’s household budget is literally “In the Red” after she spends loads of dough to grow her own prize-winning heirloom tomatoes. Her charming essay, in which she weighs the benefits of growing your own vegetables, makes great summer reading. As does Laurie M. Lesser’s light-hearted “How to Be a Tightwad,” in which she lays down three rules for keeping mo’ money in your purse. And don’t miss Jane Resnick’s “Funny Business” column, “A Bargain at Any Price: I Paid Someone to Teach Me How to Have Fun.”

            Like any bottomless woman’s pocketbook, this issue carries a myriad other useful tips and strategies for making the most of your dough, including “Best Beach Bargains for Under $20,” and “Real Deal: You CAN Save Money with Those Promotional Travel Offers That Sound Too Good to Be True.”

            We also include a sneak peek at an upcoming MAKING BREAD book, scheduled for publication by Running Press Book Publishers this spring, tentatively titled “MAKING BREAD: The Ultimate Guide for Women Who Need Dough.” Use the advice in this excerpt, “Every Woman’s Financial To-Do List: A Chronology of Strategies and Actions to Take for Every Stage of Your Life,” to keep your pocketbook—and your bank account—filled to the brim.

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Gail Harlow is the Founding Editor of MAKING BREAD. Send your comments, questions and suggestions to gail@makingbreadmagazine.com.

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