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Week of May 1
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Friday, May 5, 2006
Women Want Wine for a Song
Giving new
meaning to the term “controlling woman,” it’s well known in
marketing circles that women control 80 percent of the purchasing
decisions in America households. Now here’s a new twist on that
stat: A Time magazine article a few weeks ago titled “Of
Wine and Women” cites consumer surveys that prove that women make 55
percent of the wine purchases in this country. The article also
quotes a wine auctioneer who claims that women look for good value
when shopping for vino, as opposed to men, who read up on
best vintages and consult guides like the Wine Spectator
before plunking down big bucks to impress the ladies.
This shopping predilection comes as no surprise to
women, of course. A couple of years ago, this Web site published a
delightful memoir of one woman’s first experiences as a collector of
wine:
“It’s
a Very Good Year . . . to Start Your (Frugal) Wine Cellar: A
Connoisseur Shares Her Tips for Investing in Bottled Pleasure.”
And in the “Biz Whiz” column of our January/February 2005 issue, we
profiled a woman who started a winery catering to the female palate
(“We Heard It Through the Grapevine: Vintage Advice from a Savvy
Businesswoman Who Has Found Ways to Help Other Women”). Read about
Kathy Charlton and her Olympic Cellars winery in this
free download
of that vintage MAKING BREAD issue. It’s a great issue,
containing, among other articles, a piece on the best business for
stay-at-home moms (hint: it has something to do with children) and a
chronicle of a recent college graduate’s first year in the
workforce. In “Oh, My God, I Just Ate a Marc Jacobs Bag!” this
graduate tells readers “how to deal with touchy-feely bosses, spend
less, fight for fair pay and other money lessons learned during my
first year out of college.” It was written by Amber Fairweather, the
intern mentioned in Wednesday’s blog entry, who just got hired at
Time-Warner.
(To gain access to other “vintage” MAKING BREAD issues, purchase
a $2.95 three-day pass to our Issue Download Center.)
After you’ve enjoyed the issue, head on over to
www.olympiccellars.com to order a bottle of Charlton’s “Working
Girl” wines. With names like Go Girl Red and Rose the Riveter,
they’re sure to put a smile on your face.
Good value and
good taste can be found in $15 to $20 bottles from Italy, France
and Germany, according to New York Times wine critic Eric
Asimov. Check out his entertaining blog, “The Pour,” at
http://thepour.blogs.nytimes.com/.
Whatever you’re drinking, let’s all raise
a glass to a terrific weekend!
Prosper & enjoy,
Gail Harlow |
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Thursday, May 4, 2006
R.I.P-ed from the Headlines
R.I.P Louis Rukeyser, who died this week, at age 73. The Street-wise
host of PBS’s Wall Street Week, known for his witty financial
commentary, always delivered with an unmistakable twinkle in his
eye, provided the just plain folks of Middle America an
understandable and entertaining source of information about mutual
funds, junk bonds, blue chips, T-bills and other market mysteries.
Wall Street Week debuted in 1970 and ran for 32 years.
Women looking for savvy sources of information about the
stock market today can go to
www.chickslayingnesteggs.com or
www.wfn.com. The former site was founded by 10 self-proclaimed
“Chicks” who searched “high and low for a site that was only for
women, only about investing, and easy to understand. Oh, yeah, and
it had to be fun. We wanted to learn how to invest in the stock
market without it involving a lot of risk, or taking up too much of
our time. We've figured out that the best way to do all of this is
through an online investment club.” They’ve created “a place to
come, bring your girlfriends, hang out, and begin to learn about
investing” by forming your own online club. All sorts of tools are
provided free of charge.
The more sedate Women’s Financial Network (www.wfn.com)
was founded by Muriel Siebert, who made history in 1965 by becoming
the first female member of the New York Stock Exchange. You can’t
form an investment club here, but you’ll find a lot of advice and
information about investing, and you can open your own
investment account.
To end on a slightly macabre note, I also recommend
checking out the New York Times Obituary page, online at
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/obituaries/index.html, which I
stumbled upon while looking up Rukeyser’s obituary. What a roster of
accomplished dead women I found there (the page also lists Golden
Oldies from the Times’ archives)! You can read the obituaries
for Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford, Rita Hayworth, and Jacqueline
Kennedy Onassis. You’ll also find Jeannette Rankin, the first woman
to serve in Congress (and
the only Representative to vote against our country’s entry into
World Wars I and II), who died in 1973 at the age of 92; and Mrs. C.
J. Walker, the first Black woman millionaire, who died in 1919 at
the age of 51.
And let’s not forget Elma Gardner Farnsworth, who helped
her husband, Philo, develop television, though he gets the credit in
the history books. Elma died this Tuesday at the age of 98. Rukeyser,
who made his fortune as a star on that little black box, is probably
thanking her right now.
Prosper & enjoy,
Gail Harlow |
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Wednesday, May 3, 2006
Is That Your Best Offer?
Amber, one of MAKING BREAD’s interns from a couple of summers ago,
e-mailed me yesterday to tell me that she just got a job at
Time-Warner. I’m not surprised. She’s creative, sensitive, smart and
hard-working. Any publishing company would be lucky to have her on
its staff. She’d been looking for a job for a while and was thrilled
to finally land a position in her industry of choice. I hope that
she worked up the courage to ask for an increase on the compensation
package the company offered her. A simple “Is that your best offer?”
would serve to get the conversation started.
It
doesn’t hurt to ask, and, according to Linda Babcock, Carnegie
Mellon University economics professor and co-author of “Women Don’t
Ask,” men are four times more likely to ask for a raise on
their first job offer than men are. This reticence can end up
costing women half a million dollars over the course of their
careers. Just think about it: every subsequent raise and promotion
you receive is based on that first salary figure. Say you get a four
percent raise in your second year on the job. Four percent of
$40,000 is $200 more than four percent of $35,000. That may not
sound like a lot, but over time the difference widens. The more
money you make when you’re young the more you can afford to save,
and the earlier you start saving the more time your money will have
to earn compound interest and grow into a comfortable nest egg.
I
figure now is a good time to mention this statistic, with students
getting ready to graduate from college and look for their first jobs
this month. Pass it on, if you know someone who’s beginning to knock
on employers’ doors. Visit
www.salary.com to research competitive salaries in the
profession of your choice.
In
the “Burnt Toast” department: Jeers to CBS chairman Les Moonves’
sexist quote in a New York Times article about the new CW
television network yesterday. When asked what sort of innovative
programming viewers might expect to see on CW, he quipped: “At
CBS scheduling meetings, I always say: Don't fall in love with the
new girl; don't get carried away. With the CW, I might say: It's
O.K. to fall in love with the new girl, instead of the old wife."
Yes,
unfortunately, that kind of tired “old wives’ tale” (and other
subtle forms of sexism) are things this year’s crop of female job
seekers will also have to contend with in the halls and boardrooms
of corporate America. Moonves should have taken a cue from one of
the series likely to make it to the CW schedule:
"She Said, He Said," starring Jessica Simpson's soon-to-be “old husband,”
Nick Lachey.
Prosper & enjoy,
Gail Harlow |
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Tuesday, May 2, 2006
Listen to Your ‘Inner Angel’
Is anyone besides me turned off
by that irritating Capital One TV commercial featuring an
overweight, incompetent guardian angel who goofs off while the young
woman he’s supposed to be protecting gets bashed and battered by
various avoidable accidents? The only time he steps up to the plate
is when he whispers in her ear to use her Capital One card, instead
of some other, less rewarding piece of plastic. It’s one more
example of the recent trend in extreme advertising using physical
humor or slapstick to shock you, repulse you, or make you
laugh—anything but change the channel. Personally, I prefer a more
subtle, seductive approach. You’ve gotta woo me if you want my
money. I suspect most women are with me on that.
Most credit cards these days
are offering some sort of reward program or incentive to get
customers to charge more dough. The rewards they offer in exchange
for your dollars often have limits and can easily be eclipsed by the
interest rates and penalty fees that accrue if you pay only the
minimum or don’t pay on time.
But I don’t want
to focus on reward cards today. I’m really more interested in
guardian angels. We all have one, you know. Call it a “sixth sense”
or “women’s intuition.” There is a voice inside our heads that knows
what we should be doing with our lives at any given moment. We just
need to teach ourselves to tune in to it. Minutes before I broke my
leg 20 years ago (a multiple fracture that left me in a cast for six
months), my inner angel told me that I was getting tired, running
with my dogs in the yard, and that I should call it quits. Listening
to my “inner child,” instead, I decided
to take one more run, ended up slipping and falling on the wet
November grass, and I regret my stubbornness to this day. But that
mishap taught me to pay attention to my inner angel.
She’s telling me things now, as I pursue the next steps in my
career, and I make a point of listening for her voice, though sometimes I
have to strain to hear her whispers over the noise in my mind.
There’s nothing mystical about it; it’s really the better, smarter,
part of me cutting through the clutter and doubts, to guide me. As I
get older, my inner angel seems to get wiser.
We all have other
voices in our heads, too: there’s our inner critic—that uber-
perfectionist “mean girl” who makes us feel like we’re worthless
sometimes. I’ve taught myself to drown her out with my inner
cheerleader, complete with pom-poms, who tells me not to be so hard
on myself and to focus on my successes.
Sometimes I have to play referee and stop the girl fight in my head
before the blood flows. Now that might make for a funny commercial!
Prosper & enjoy,
Gail Harlow |
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Monday, May 1, 2006
The Clout of Money
Are you planning to frolic around a May Pole today? Or
will you march for immigrants’ rights? Either activity would be
appropriate, given the dual history of May Day, known, from pagan
times, as a celebration of the rites of spring and, from the 1800’s,
as a celebration of workers’ rights and contributions.
On this day, I’m wallowing in the beauty of nature
outside my door. It’s lilac time here in Pennsylvania, and the scent
from those heavy blossoms is so complexly, intoxicatingly sweet that
not even Coco Chanel could bottle it. As I contemplate the various
political rallies and marches in support of immigrants’ rights
planned for this “Day Without Immigrants,” as well as various other
headlines in the news, one thought penetrates the haze: Money is
power. No matter how much or how little money you have, you wield
power in how you choose to spend—and not spend—it. When
enough people withhold their money, it sends a powerful message. The
shopping boycott immigrants protesting their threatened status plan
for today is the most effective tool they have going for them.
Here’s another example of money clout: Thousands rallied
in Washington yesterday in support of international action against
the genocide taking place in the Darfur region of Sudan. George
Clooney, who has put his money behind this cause, urges people to
write the White House and Congress, demanding that our Government
take action to save the people of Darfur. (Visit
www.savedarfur.org for a quick, easy e-mail link to voice your
concern, as well as information about the crisis.) But a national
student-led group called the Sudan Divestment Task Force is taking
even more effective action, lobbying universities and municipalities
across the country to divest their
pension funds of
investments in companies doing business with the Sudanese
government. Hit them in the pocketbook, where it hurts.
On another front, closer to home, some
have called for gas boycotts around the country, which may work to
lower prices by lowering demand. A more practical grassroots
solution to soaring gas prices might be to organize car pools for
school and after-school activities, as well as work commutes. (My
husband has been car-pooling to work for almost a year now.) Or
travel via mass transit, as I do. Stopped at a traffic light of a
major intersection this weekend, I was struck by how many cars
passing in front of me contained only one driver—all traveling in
the same direction.
On this May Day, when many of us are
crying “mayday”—the international distress call—over current
economic and political developments, it’s good to remember that
money is power, every dollar like a vote in this capitalist
democracy. We speak volumes when we spend our money consciously,
thoughtfully. Use it to send a message wherever, whenever you can.
Prosper & enjoy,
Gail Harlow |
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If you like the blog, you’ll love the book.
For more savvy
finance advice, buy
“Making Bread: The
Ultimate Financial Guide for Women Who Need Dough,”
by Gail Harlow and Elizabeth Lewin, available on
Amazon.com and at your local bookstore |
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