Episode 264: What’s Up With Women and Money with Author Alison Kosik

Even as a CNN business correspondent, Alison Kosik struggled with financial imposter syndrome—a reality many successful women face. In this episode, Melissa Joy and Kosik dive into how women can build financial confidence and take control of their money, drawing from Kosik’s new book, What’s Up With Women and Money: How to Do All the Financial Stuff You’ve Been Avoiding.

With Women’s Equal Pay Day upon us, this conversation is more timely than ever. Women still earn just 84 cents for every dollar men make, and while 70% of women now negotiate their salaries, the remaining 30% contribute to the persistent pay gap. It’s time for real talk about money, confidence, and financial independence—and this episode delivers exactly that.

Takeaways:
 💡 Why women hesitate to take financial control—and how to change that
💰 12 simple steps to start investing today (without the intimidation)
🚗 Car-buying traps to avoid & negotiation hacks
📊 The gender pay gap & why every woman MUST negotiate her salary
📈 How women outperform men as investors (and why we should embrace that confidence!)

💥 This Equal Pay Day, let’s change the conversation. Women deserve more money, more confidence, and more financial power. This episode will help you take the next step toward that.

📢 What’s one financial move you’re committing to today? Drop it in the comments and let’s empower each other!

📖 Follow Alison Kosik on Instagram @AlisonKosik & grab her book at major retailers today!

#WomensMoneyWisdom #EqualPayDay #CloseTheGap #KnowYourWorth #NegotiateYourWorth #WomenAndMoney #MelissaJoy #AllisonKosick

The previous presentation by PEARL PLANNING was intended for general information purposes only. No portion of the presentation serves as the receipt of, or as a substitute for, personalized investment advice from PEARL PLANNING or any other investment professional of your choosing. Different types of investments involve varying degrees of risk, and it should not be assumed that future performance of any specific investment or investment strategy, or any non-investment related or planning services, discussion or content, will be profitable, be suitable for your portfolio or individual situation, or prove successful. Neither PEARL PLANNING’s investment adviser registration status, nor any amount of prior experience or success, should be construed that a certain level of results or satisfaction will be achieved if PEARL PLANNING is engaged, or continues to be engaged, to provide investment advisory services. PEARL PLANNING is neither a law firm nor accounting firm, and no portion of its services should be construed as legal or accounting advice. No portion of the video content should be construed by a client or prospective client as a guarantee that he/she will experience a certain level of results if PEARL PLANNING is engaged, or continues to be engaged, to provide investment advisory services. A copy of PEARL PLANNING’s current written disclosure Brochure discussing our advisory services and fees is available upon request or at https:...

Transcript

Introduction to Women's Money Wisdom

Speaker 1 0:01

Welcome to the Women's Money Wisdom Podcast. I'm Melissa Joy, a certified financial planner and the founder of Pearl Planning. My goal is to help you streamline and organize your finances, navigate big money decisions with confidence and be strategic in order to grow your wealth. As a woman, you work hard for your money and I'm here to help you make the most of it. Now let's get into the show. Money, and I'm here to help you make the most of it. Now let's get into the show. Just a quick note before we dive in the information that we share is meant to educate and inspire, not serve as personalized financial advice. Everyone's situation is unique, so be sure to consult with your own financial professional for guidance that fits your life. And just so you know, the opinions shared in this podcast are my own and those of my guests, and they don't necessarily represent those of any organizations that I'm affiliated with. For more important disclosures, please go to our webpage at pearlplancom. Now let's get started.

Speaker 1 1:00

Welcome back to the Women's Money Wisdom Podcast. Today, we're going to talk about something that I think we all need to have more space for. We're talking about personal finance, but we're talking to a female author who's writing in the personal finance space, which I just think is so welcome. We've had other female authors come to the show, but we need more of those voices and today we have a financial journalist, allison Kosick, who just wrote her first book, what's Up With Women and Money how to do all the financial stuff you've been avoiding. It just got published March 4th.

Speaker 1 1:41

Allison, welcome to the podcast and congrats on the book. Well, thanks so much and thanks for having me on the show. Well, I'm so glad that you're here and I got a chance to get an advanced copy of the book and just congratulations. You have so many practical chapters about things that I know I'm talking to clients female and male, but especially women about, like how to do the things that really matter in life, and there's so many like here's how to invest. Here's the basics. But some of these practical things just aren't in one place to kind of grab and go and know how to do things.

Speaker 2 2:15

Yeah. So I'd like to think of this book as like a one-stop shop for all things personal finance, you know, and yeah, you do have to. The internet's a big place and there's so much information, and so when I wrote the book, I kind of approached it through a journalist lens, a TV journalist lens, which means not only am I filtering out the stuff that's wrong, I'm putting in all the facts and I'm making it so it's written in a way that it's easily digestible and relatable and not putting too many details in, that you don't need just sort of getting to it quickly so you can actually take steps once you finish each chapter. So let's say the investing chapter I go through a series of steps I think I should know this 12 steps, and when you're done with the 12 steps, you literally will have invested in something. So I will get you in there.

Speaker 2 3:04

And so that was the point is that you know there are a lot of books out there that give the tips and tools about financial literacy and they're great. I'm not knocking them, but the one thing I feel like they don't do is actually get you started. And beyond that is I. I get into a lot in the book about the confidence piece, because I think with women it feels like investing and all the financial stuff is so man-oriented and sort of slanted toward men. It takes away our confidence, and so I spend a lot of time in the book building your confidence, so you're not just learning the tips and tools, you're actually feeling like you can have the confidence to take actionable steps, and I think that's important in the end, because that's something that I was lacking.

Speaker 1 3:48

Well, I totally agree with you.

Speaker 1 3:50

First of all, as a financial planner, I really work on both incrementalism like how do we actually get something done versus like how do I explain the whole entire book all at once. And then you're so overwhelmed with the information You're just like okay, thanks for the volumes of information, but I just really wanted to know what button to click first. And then also, I work with so many people who come to me and they are doing a great job in many aspects of their life, but they just have no way to measure how am I doing? And then, with that lack of a barometer, you have less confidence, more stress, decision fatigue or indecision, you know kind of mode, because you're just not sure if you're making the right choices, thinking about the right things, and so being practical, picking things up in a way that's very approachable and getting things done, versus like let me tell you all the. You know all the what's and how's and why's, and not having that list of here's where you get started is the way things should be done, in my opinion. Yeah.

Speaker 2 4:55

I'm with you on that.

Speaker 1 4:57

Well, tell me your personal story. So you are on TV talking about money, you are able to research and pull together stories that are consumed by us Americans, and yet you describe in, you know, kind of the intro to the book that you also on the personal side, didn't always feel like you had control or confidence in the money sphere. So give me a little bit of that background that prompted you to write the book.

Breaking Financial Silence Among Women

Speaker 2 5:25

Yeah, when I got the idea for the book, it was because of what was happening in my life, and the whole irony is is I was a business correspondent for CNN and I would do a lot of my reporting from the New York Stock Exchange, the biggest exchange in the world. But in my own life I did not have my personal finance game together at all, so I felt like a hypocrite. So, yeah, this is when I started at CNN. So I was married, but I was in a bad relationship. It was a bad marriage and I stayed in the relationship longer than I should have because I let my husband handle all things financial. I didn't think I had the knowledge or good judgment that comes with making all these financial decisions, and so I felt horribly stuck. I was thinking if I leave the marriage, how am I going to handle all these things? It's so overwhelming. Where do I start? And so I just didn't know where to start. I didn't have that confidence and once again, that's despite me having that day job of talking about, uh, the financial moves of the market, which, I have to say, it's very different, because what I was feeling was it is one thing to report on it, but it's another to actually, you know, be working with your own money and the fear of losing it and the implications of that. But I later found out that it just wasn't me.

Speaker 2 6:52

There were a lot of other women who were highly successful who felt the same way that they weren't involved in their household finances, their personal finances. So I thought, wow, this is something that we're just not talking about as women, because we have a fear of looking like we are unintelligent if we admit that we are not involved in our personal finances and we don't know how to invest, necessarily, or how to refinance the mortgage, how to take out a loan you on and on or how to buy a car. So it's not something that we readily want to talk about. We're worried about being judged by our peers. So I mean, the hope is that this changes the conversation, because, if you think about, for many women, the conversation around money is often shrouded in mystery and misunderstanding and oftentimes fear.

Speaker 2 7:43

So I'm looking to change the conversation and let's encourage women to openly ask questions and talk about what they don't know, because if we just sit in silence, like I did, we'll sit in bad marriages too long, or we'll sit without the information and then that thing meaning the world of finance becomes this huge mountain that we feel like we can't scale and we just stay quiet about it and it just it. We'll never be able to scale it. And so we have to not be afraid of being judged by others and really just speak up. And there has to be understanding that we aren't unintelligent just because we don't have the personal finance skills that we think we should have because I do work with people who have always taken control of their finances.

Speaker 1 8:35

But if you were to just generalize based on men versus women, men may communicate and come into conversations with overconfidence when it comes to money. Oftentimes I'll hear whether it's you know, my spouse knows all that stuff, so we don't need professional advice. I just don't have any information about it. Or my kid is super good with money and it's like A. There's probably some truth to that. But also there can be big, big blind spots when it comes to like maybe you have, you know, super solid investing knowledge or knowledge about how to make purchases or things like that. But then there are other parts that are missed, because you're like I got it all figured out, I don't need any help. And then women are the opposite in some cases.

Speaker 2 9:19

Actually I found in the interviews that I did that one of the interviews was a woman whose husband was in the financial space. He was making trades and he is in the hole big time and because she trusted him, thinking you know what he can handle it, it's his business. But that's the problem about not being involved. You don't know, there's no checks and there aren't any checks and balances. If you're just letting your, your husband, do it without you being even you know, without you being involved.

Speaker 1 9:49

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 9:50

It's, it's, it's, it's a dangerous, it's a dangerous um path just because there's that trust there and there's that ego there. And ironically, the research I found and I think you probably know about this is women are better investors than men. For one, we have the personality, meaning we don't have that ego, and strangely enough, our lack of confidence in it works in our favor because we're not going to be going after that next shiny object, meaning that next trendy stock to go after. We're going to be more I don't want to use the word conservative, but we're going to be more careful in how we invest our money. Also, there's data to prove that. I think Fidelity did a study showing that women come out ahead by 40 basis points in investing just because they're not day trading. And it doesn't sound like a lot, but if you're invested in the market and you add in compounding that, can end up being thousands if not mean, women should have more confidence than they think in this space.

Women vs. Men in Financial Confidence

Speaker 1 10:55

Well, we have a past episode with some PhD researchers that talks about professional investors as well, and and results where, when you look at who runs your mutual funds and ETFs, it's one to three percent women Very, very low single digit numbers. And yet studies show that professional investment managers who are women, too, have a competitive edge. So really interesting information and I would just say that you know books like this, working with a professional, having conversations and listening into our conversation like our loyal listeners do all of this is a source and resource for you to build that confidence and make better decisions with money over time, which is really our goal. I wanted to give people kind of a preview. The book has really great specific chapters that go over topics that I think are really relevant, and I mentioned to you, allison, as we were preparing for the conversation, that there were a couple that are kind of on my to-do list for episodes here on the podcast that I haven't gotten to yet. So I wanted to use those chapters as some examples where you just dive into a topic that's underreported, undercovered and, you know, kind of really open up the conversation.

Speaker 1 12:11

So one of them is how do I buy a car with? How to buy a car with confidence, and I was. I I related to you that I was just working with an exceptional client who's so smart with it, has an extraordinary career and has a lot of confidence in some aspects of money life, but is leaving a marriage and needed a new car. And when she reached out to me she said I've never bought a car before. How do I do this? And she's not alone. I know my. You know, the first couple of vehicles I bought were transactions that my dad, you know, kind of set up for me and was like write a check here and come and get the keys you know.

Speaker 1 12:47

So what did you learn in that chapter in terms of how to buy?

Speaker 2 12:52

a car. Yeah, this is actually one of my favorite chapters of the book and I wrote it because I experienced it like your client. So one of the first things I had to do out of my divorce was to turn in my leased car and either get a leased one or buy a new one. And I mean I screwed it up from the beginning. I mean, first of all, the cardinal sin by the way, which I put in this chapter make sure you get your financing before you walk into a car dealership, before you even start the process. Get your financing, get your interest rate during the process and don't rely on the dealership to provide the financing for you, on the dealership to provide the financing for you. But I walked in. What I did was I walked into the dealership and he's like, hey, how are you? And I'm like hey, he's like hey, what are you looking for? And I told him what I was looking for. You're not supposed to do that. It gives away a lot. And then here's the here's the big thing you shouldn't do how much do you want in a monthly payment? And I told him that is the cardinal sin. Don't do that, because what those car salesmen and women do. They take that number and then, when they figure out what kind of car you want, they play with the numbers and they make it work in their favor and what things you shouldn't give away, because you give away all leverage, and it is unfortunately not usually not the most pleasant process buying a car, especially if you're a woman. I don't know if you've walked into a dealership lately, but oftentimes you're ignored or all they talk about is the color of the interior you want or the color of the car, and they think that you don't know what's going on. So what I learned in this chapter is, if you up your knowledge and sort of get in the groove of what the car speak is, you'll earn more respect from the car salesmen and women.

Speaker 2 14:43

And the biggest takeaway from the chapter I will give you, though, the great thing about this is and I interviewed several people for this chapter to make sure 90% of the work you need to do when you buy a car, you don't even need to leave your house. You heard me right. Maybe the last part of of the process is when you actually walk into a car dealership, because you really don't want to walk into the car dealership, because think about it. When was the last time you bought a car? Oh, those people who sell them. They do it every day. They know exactly what turns the conversation is going to take. You don't do this every day. You're not an expert, so you have more control if you're sitting right there at your computer, and that is what I spell out, step by step, how to buy the car, and most of it is honestly from your house, which is amazing and just through email and some phone calls. But it's a lot of work.

Speaker 1 15:33

But it's worth it. I love that. I guess I would add a couple things. One would be so many cars have gotten so expensive.

Speaker 1 15:41

When you like, roll off the lot if you have kids or something like that and you need, you know, the third row and it's like, when you add it up, if you're buying those every four to five years, it can be equal to your house.

Speaker 1 15:53

When you add it up, if you're buying those every four to five years, it can be equal to your house. And so you really these are big big ticket items, that, and there is flexibility in what you pay. Now if, if you've got all the money figured out and you just walk in with a check ready to cash right, that's great. Not a lot of judgment on how you choose to do it, but it can be, you know, in some cases competing with the cost, like that cost of housing. So you really need to be careful and know that there is flexibility in terms of like thinking ahead about what you truly can afford. And then also, don't plan to have a new vehicle every two years, because the transaction costs of just the turnover if you can pay something off and own it and drive it for longer can be huge.

Speaker 2 16:35

Yeah, that's great advice. It's true, I'd like to just run my car into the ground, but when it dies, that's when I'm turning it in.

Speaker 1 16:43

Yeah, that's what I have done with my vehicles and now I drive less than I used to. So it used to be like in the sixth year and I'm like, well, how long is this going to last? And it it doesn't always happen, because I have had the situation I got in a bad car accident a year after I bought a car and had to replace it immediately, where you know there was a gap in terms of what the value was versus what I paid for it.

Speaker 1 17:05

But in most cases, if you do that over time, of kind of intend to own it for a very long period of time, it can really be additive in terms of your overall financial well-being.

Car Buying Strategies for Women

Speaker 2 17:14

Yeah, it's true, yeah.

Speaker 1 17:16

Well, another chapter that I think every woman needs to think about talk about, read books about, et cetera is negotiate like a man. What would he say? And I think so many times we think you know, whatever the price is, or the situation and perhaps it goes back to the car conversation as well of, like you know, don't walk in just looking for what your monthly payment is going to be. We need to think of more about negotiating, whether it's for your job or major purchases, et cetera. What did you learn in this chapter?

Speaker 2 17:44

So this goes along a lot with you know it's Women's History Month in March.

Speaker 2 17:50

And it's during the time where Women's Equal Pay Day falls as well. Women's Equal Pay Day this year is March 25th, which means on March 25th, women will have earned what men earned in the previous year, so what men earned in 2024, women have to spend an extra three months earning because women make 84 cents for every dollar that men earn for doing the same job. And so because of that that gender pay gap, as women we have to really just it's not just about a single paycheck we have to kind of really work harder to grow our money, and so that includes negotiating. And what I discovered and what I was shocked about, I was actually shocked that this many women actually negotiated. So I found out, about 70% of women negotiate for their pay or for higher salary. Excellent, great, that's excellent.

Speaker 2 18:48

Here's the problem 30% of women are not negotiating. And what I learned, based on what I just said it's just that little bit is that every woman should be negotiating, every woman. And the problem with it is is that we get we get sort of this label as being difficult or there's like a penalty put on us, unlike men. But there is a way to approach a negotiation and the mindset is super important and I walk through that in the book and I walk through steps on how to to navigate. That helps because it can be that extra money, whatever it is, can be more money that you invest. That invested money compounds over time and that grows your overall wealth. So it's part of the overall picture and you shouldn't just see it as a job Absolutely and research really matters.

Speaker 1 19:43

I mean, I've talked to well one great example, because some of the pay gaps some people say is because of breaks in work for caring for family members or children, other you know kind of situations with early career physicians and he was helping two physicians in the same health system, same exact degree, same position plan for their financial plan and he was like this is wild, like they have two different offers, completely different, and guess what? It was a woman who had less and they were being hired for the exact same job with the same education. How recent was that. That was like last year.

Speaker 2 20:33

Oh see, it's still going on. It drives me crazy.

Speaker 1 20:38

Yes, it's so frustrating. And then I think there's some hidden aspects too, because if you work, for example, in tech sector and working for a company that has equity compensation restricted stock units you're being paid both through a paycheck as well as equity comp. That's another place where it is often negotiable when you kind of walk in the door or can be over time for retention purposes, and there's data that shows that women are kind of getting the short shrift there too. So there's a lot to consider, because your human capital as we remind you on this podcast all the time for most of us is your biggest asset. It's your earning power, is what's going to build your net worth, your value, your wealth over time.

Speaker 2 21:21

Yeah, I can't believe that.

Speaker 2 21:22

That was.

Negotiating Like a Man: Equal Pay

Speaker 2 21:23

You know, and I have a couple examples in the book as well of women who you know, a couple of examples in the book as well of of women who you know had different salaries for the same for the same job. It's, it's so frustrating and you mentioned that motherhood penalty where if you take some time off to care for a child or someone and then you come back, oftentimes women are forced to take a lower paying job and and and you sort of start from the lower ground again. It's, it's very frustrating also a lesson actually that if you get married and let's say your husband has enough money to pay the bills and you're good to stay home, I suggest go ahead and keep your toe in the water, no matter how busy you are. Toe in the water as far as having some sort of career or some sort of work, because you know life turns on a dime. You know everything is sweet and nice now, but you don't know what tomorrow brings and you have to stay current, especially as a woman and with all the forces against us.

Speaker 1 22:23

Absolutely. When you started writing the book, I don't know if you had any expectations of kind of where this would take you, but as as it's kind of being birthed into the world, people are reading it now it's it's um a part of the conversation. What were your lessons learned as you did all this research as a journalist but also had your personal perspective?

Speaker 2 22:46

Um yeah, I, I, you know. One thing that I wanted to do with this book is storytell, because I'm a journalist, I like to tell stories and I figured let me find examples, cautionary tales to bring it to life, of why women need to do the things that I say in the book to invest, to negotiate to make sure your credit rating is good, and on and on. Invest to negotiate to make sure your credit rating is good, you know, and on and on, because if you don't there could be bad outcomes and I didn't want to be a Debbie Downer in the book. But there are cautionary tales, and there are from real women, many who remained anonymous because they were afraid of being judged by their peers, of really successful women who weren't involved in the life insurance or the investing, or you know just Unexpected tax bills that you had no idea.

Speaker 1 23:36

You know like you didn't know about because you just signed the return and never saw the other pages Exactly.

Speaker 2 23:41

And so there's a lot that you know. It's, I think, a lesson. It was a lesson for me even after my divorce, so this was shocking to me as I wrote the book that I need to have complete visibility over all my household expenses. And I think that you know we're busy in our lives. I get it. Women are really, really busy. We've got careers, we've got families. You got to get the kids to software practice. I totally get it. I was there. My kids were young when I was, you know. But you've got to find time to be fully involved, you know. Do you know how much life insurance your household is carrying? Do you know the passwords? Do you who are the beneficiaries in your account? When was the last time you looked at those and made sure that they are who they should be Like? These are things that we all should remember to do, and we're probably not because we lead busy lives, I get that.

Speaker 1 24:31

Well, when you talk at the beginning of the book about where you were when you started writing this book, tell me about where you are today, like how you feel about money, how you make your decisions, and has there been a change?

Speaker 2 24:46

I'm definitely involved because I am the lady of the household. I'm not married, so I it is all me, which is which I actually don't mind, you know, because I have control over it and my failures are my failures I definitely have. I'm not an expert in any stretch of the imagination, but I definitely feel confident investing. I've done a lot of research on it, I've interviewed a lot of people. I feel definitely feel more confident if I had needed to take out a loan or to get financing. I'm also feeling more confident about, hey, going to buy a car. That's going to be interesting.

Lessons Learned and Book Takeaways

Speaker 1 25:25

Well, I love that. I'm so glad this book is out there. The personal finance shelves are littered with how to invest from a male point of view and I always like think at the end of the year when you're looking at the book list, like when the Wall Street Journal the books you've got to read. I'm like it's the book. The guys which I love many of their books, but I really feel like we need the space for female voices when it comes to personal finance and investing. So, allison, congratulations on the book. Can you share with everyone where they can find, follow you and find the book?

Speaker 2 26:02

Oh, sure you can follow me on Instagram at Allison Kosick A-L-I-S-O-N-K-O-S-I-K. And you can buy the book at Barnes and Noble at Targetcom. A-l-i-s-o-n-k-o-s-i-k. And you can buy the book at Barnes, noble, at Targetcom, at Amazoncom and several other books bookstores and there's a link in my bio on my IG.

Speaker 1 26:20

I love it. Well, keep up the amazing work Congratulations on the book and keep getting the word out and being a voice. Thank you, alison, thank you. Thank you for listening to the Women's Money Wisdom Podcast. If you found value in this episode, the best way you can support the podcast is to forward an episode to a friend or leave a review. Go to pearlplancom and the podcast link to get all the resources and links mentioned.