In the first episode of our Open Money podcast about women and their money stories, finance planning expert Shannon Lee Simmons, entrepreneur and co-owner of Edmonton-based Foxglove Wellness Jillian Rieckmann and clinical psychologist and neuroscientist Dr. Nasreen Khatri talk about their personal and professional experiences when it comes to money.

Our society in general has taboos when it comes to talking about money, something that many financial experts, educators and even the federal government are taking steps to change. Financial literacy is considered as important as other forms of literacy but it tends not to be something that is taught in schools or at home.

That’s certainly been the experience of the women at Servus Credit Union’s inaugural podcast of Open Money.

Jillian Rieckmann is a single mom from Edmonton with two girls, aged 15 and 8. Having had her first daughter as a teen, she set her sights on creating a stable financial situation but didn’t really have the tools.

“I feel like in my household, money wasn’t a huge topic of conversation,” Jillian says. She knew earning money was important and one had to work hard for it but she didn’t have further guidance growing up.

So Jillian embarked on her own journey and, in a community of other women, she found those tools she was missing and the confidence to chart her financial path.

Women find the support of a community

Jillian is a registered massage therapist and wellness expert who dreamed of owning her own practice. She started by seeing clients in her home and eventually she and her business partner took the leap and leased a space to expand their wellness business. Today her professional life is thriving — but she didn’t do it alone.

Her success journey began with a simple discussion.

“One of my clients and I had a conversation one day on the massage table about a blog we were both reading … and, at the end of that conversation, we mentioned to each other how it’s interesting how women especially … don’t talk about money.”

The two decided to start a women’s finance club. The idea was mentioned to more clients and soon they had a group of women together. With their various networks, they were able to get financial experts to come and speak to the club.

“They came in just because they wanted to share their knowledge.” Jillian says. “So it was this free thing to come to where we just got to learn and eat and drink wine, so it was perfect.”

There were sessions from mortgage brokers, insurance brokers and a lawyer talking about wills, all delivering advice on different finance topics. “We had people who invested in real estate coming in and talking about commercial real estate. We had people talking about residential real estate. We had bankers and all these amazing people come in and teach us.”

A curiosity to learn and a community of women who supported one another and shared their knowledge were key.

“The first thing we need to do is talk. The second one is to learn,” says Dr. Nasreen Khatri, who has studied women and their relationship with money in her work as a psychologist and neuroscientist. “It’s really important to avail yourself of free resources where you can learn about what investing is, you can learn about where you stand, and budgeting and retirement and any other goals you have.

“It’s important to start planning and strategizing.”

Women are the economic future

The great wealth transfer is looming – by the year 2030 millennials and Gen Z will inherit trillions of dollars from previous generations. By 2030, women are expected to inherit 70% of that wealth and about $3.8 trillion will be handled by women by 2028 in Canada, says Nasreen.

But they might not have as much experience and confidence as men handling money. Nasreen says 82% of women with children feel they are unprepared for retirement and the same percentage say they don’t have a retirement plan.

Women used to take more of a backseat in the family finances but that trend is starting to shift, says Shannon Lee Simmons, a finance planning expert.

When she started her career on Toronto’s Bay Street, before striking out on her own to create women-led financial planning firm New School of Finance, she worked with older, higher net worth couples in which the men took the reins of the planning while the women took a silent back seat.

“I don’t find that anymore. Ninety percent of our initial contact is from the women,” Shannon says.

Women are teaching financial literacy to the next generation

Another trend financial experts are seeing is that old taboos about talking about money are breaking down, and that parents are actively socializing children of all genders on how to interact with money.

For Shannon, who is a mother of two boys and an aunt to two girls, technology that makes money an increasingly abstract concept makes educating children about money a challenge.

“This generation has their work cut out for them because I see … my kid [who] thought my credit card was a magic card where I just buy stuff. They just see a tap, they don’t even see cash anymore. And I’m conscious about talking about money and making it not a taboo subject in our house and even my kid is so desensitized to seeing spending happen with a tap of card.

“I think all parents should have kids hold money even though I know that we’re headed towards a cashless economy,” she says. When children are taught from a young age to see money as something tangible, that helps to build budgeting skills early on. For instance, Shannon advises giving a child $5 in loonies and showing them that when they go to the store and spend $2, then they have $3 left.

As part of her financial journey, Jillian started a finance club in which women learned about money and shared their experiences.

It was at this finance club that Jillian learned how she wanted to start talking to her daughters about money. One day, an attendee told Jillian about a book called the Entitlement Trap: How to Rescue your Child with a New Family System of Choosing, Earning and Ownership by Linda and Richard Eyre. At the heart of the plan in the book is the family economy, which includes a family bank, chequebooks for kids and a system of initiative-building responsibilities that teaches children to earn money for things they want. Some are common chores like doing the dishes but others are about building self-reliance habits in kids, such as being in charge of getting themselves up in the morning. The idea is to teach kids a sense of initiative and motivations about the value of a dollar and saving it, but also how to harness money for the use of joy too.

“When [my daughter] was 10 I bought her an alarm clock and I got her a bank card and she had her list of morning responsibilities and evening responsibilities,” Jillian says. “She did her morning responsibility and her evening responsibility and each time she would get $2.50.

“But then she had to put 60% to spending, 25% to long-term saving and 15% to charity. She did that and I made her buy birthday presents to her friends’ parties so she chose which birthday parties she wanted to spend her money on. If we were to go out somewhere she would pay for it by herself. … And what really was great was when I actually did buy something for her, she was so appreciative that she didn’t have to spend her own money.”

It is these kinds of building blocks that will help raise a new generation of more money-savvy women (and men), giving them the skills to plan for the future, know how to live within their means but also have a financial life that brings joy.

If you want to know more about how you can gain confidence in making financial decisions and find solutions you can feel good about, talk to a Servus Credit Union advisor.

Illustration by Amanda Schutz, Curio Studio