I had to start a phone call with my college best friend, Kristin, this evening with “Are we just too smart, too well-educated, too organized, and too young for some of these financial workshops nowadays?”

Last week I took a little lunch-time seminar at work about 401(K) programs. It was *sssooooo* basic that I summed it up for my co-workers as 45 minutes to say (in a chippy excited voice): “You should invest! It’s good for you! And when you invest in a 401(k), you put your money in these little categories!” Ahem. Yes, dear, I know that. *sigh*

Today’s seminar I almost didn’t even sign up for, because the title slighly offended me: “What Every Woman Should Know” (about money or something). I thought there can’t possibly be something gender-specific about money that women need to know that men don’t need to know, or that men already know, or whatever. And I said as much to the instructors when I arrived. And after trying to have an open mind about the presentation, I still came to the conclusion at the end of the presentation that there was nothing gender-specific about the suggestions and instruction. This would be the financial advice I would give any friend.

Kristin helped me put in perspective. She and I are just, thankfully, from a new generation of women. We’ve both been through divorces, but neither of us went through the type of divorce where the woman has to suddenly be on her own for the first time, suddenly without income or retirement or savings, suddenly without her own personal credit, etc. Even the mom-figures in her life had it remarkably harder in their lives, because they’d all been married over twenty years, had nothing of their own, and struggled to be on their own right away.

So I suppose there still is a need for a seminar like this, but I’m not their target audience. And yet now that I think about it, there are some ways in which I had to buckle down and be *more* responsible than before, when I divorced, but not because my identity financially had been tied up with my husband, but just because I tossed off some of the laziness when I divorced, and I just started being responsible in the way I knew I should have been all along.

I very thankful to my Mom, for all those years she taught my sister and I how to be strong women. She rocks.

* * * * *
Recently Listened to: Tori Amos, “To Venus and Back” (Disc 1: Live and Orbiting)