Story Time! Valuable Lesson Learned 📝

06.12.2022 - By: Anastasia Barbuzzi

The content in this blog post was adapted from my weekly newsletter. Subscribe to receive the The #SundayScroll ☕, a thoughtfully curated newsletter that’s full of personal musings, every Sunday!

Last week I met with someone who works with a career-accelerating non-profit that supports women to discuss $HMONEY. After describing my mission, she stared silently at me through my computer screen behind her glasses.

Then she launched into sharing her own money story, seemingly disarmed by what I shared about $HMONEY's purpose: creating an open, inclusive, and judgment-free zone that promotes the idea of educating yourself to empower yourself. Here's what she told me:

She married at what most people would consider a very young age. She and her ex-husband grew up in poor areas of our city and never really had an opportunity to learn about money or how to handle your finances.

Unfortunately, her relationship became fraught with difficulty, as did her and her ex's financial situation— they shared everything, but technically, every penny they had was in his name. Things went south, and they lost their house and had to declare personal bankruptcy.

I'm not quite sure what came next— their divorce or their daughter being diagnosed with cancer at age 4. I was taken aback.

Leaving the relationship with next to no money and a young child to care for, this woman went from store to store to try and apply for a credit card. Zellers signed her up for one with a $1,800 limit.

Today, her daughter is cancer-free. She remarried and built up her near-perfect personal credit rating enough to be able to apply for a $100k loan.

A recent survey conducted by the government of Canada found that 66% of women are "struggling a lot" with their finances. Another recent study conducted by BMO found that only 26% of women have a financial plan.

And as recently as 2018, nearly 3-in-10 (or 28% of) Canadian women are dependent on a partner or someone else to make ends meet financially, according to a financial independence survey.

Stories similar to what I recounted above are not few and far between— they're common amongst women. But for some reason, a lack of research about women's financial independence persists, and why? One of the latest Canadian reports dates back to 2018 (4 years ago!), and could that be because we're not talking enough about how important financial independence is?…

Also, had I not talked about $HMONEY being a safe place to discuss money matters without guilt or shame, would this woman have opened up to me as she did? AND go on to have a productive conversation about how we can further $HMONEY's mission? I'll let you come to your conclusions.

The point is the number of women raising good humans on their own or in toxic relationships, working their asses off to make ends meet, and wishing they had a clue about how to handle their money is too many. Not to mention the number of women who swallow pride over how they battled and did well for themselves because of how people view talking about money.

After having this conversation, I sat in my office, staring at the mess I had to organize on my floor. In the pile of supplies, I saw the tote bag pictured above that reads, "GIRLS CAN DO ANYTHING," in large block letters. Inside there were file folders with the same message scrawled across them.

I bought the bag and the folders back in high school at Forever 21 and have kept them close since because I always knew I'd do something to empower women and enable our advancement in some aspect of life. I thought I might be able to use them for something.

Even when you're unsure of the direction life will take you in, things tend to come full circle, similar to how they did for the woman I spoke to last week and how they did for me when it comes to using $HMONEY as that tool for empowerment and advancement.

It seems like whenever you're willing to make space for others and be dedicated to creating positive change, anything is possible.

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Thoughts? Questions? Leave ‘em in the comments below 💚