I know it's stressful. We see our accounts fluctuate like the temperature in New Hampshire in October. After a dozen years in the world of high finance, I could start to wax poetic on why, on looking at the cycles, at finding opportunity in the mess. But, ugh, I turn on the news, or I read the financial papers and I can't help but be reminded of how "bad" everything is. At every moment we are reminded that the economy is in tatters, that our children won't be able to find jobs, that retirement is a retiring phenomenon, and that we should all be living in a perpetual state of panic.

I'm turning it off, and I'm a "financial expert." Care to join me?

Here's the thing: investing in the markets as a means to wealth is as bad as waiting for a man to rescue us. Anytime that we rely on something outside of ourselves to thrive or to prosper, we are giving away our power. And you are powerful, woman!!

The fundamentals of investing in the markets have not changed. If you have a proper asset allocation based on your time horizon based on what the function of the money invested is, what is happening today just doesn't matter.

What does matter today is about the decisions that you are making to invest in yourself in something far more sustainable and lucrative. I've talked in the past about why, but today I want to put it in very black and white terms for you. As in - show you the money.

In its best years, the market returns between 25-30%. Let's say you have $10,000 invested in an aggressive portfolio in the very best years of the market. You earn about $3000. Best case scenario.

By Kiva Leatherman

We know we want to have investments that maintain and appreciate in their VALUE, but today I want to talk about something a little different. I want to talk about putting our VALUES into our investments.

Before I tell you about the ROI (Return on Investment) potential of investing with your values, let’s have a quick discussion about spending vs. investing.

Spending is the term we use at the Wise Women Network on the acquisition of stuff that does not grow. The best way I’ve found to define this is to think of a “soul-purchase” versus an “ego-purchase.” Let’s use food as an example. Buying high-quality nutritious food for your family is good for your soul. You feel great about the food in your home and it serves your body. This is a soul-purchase. There are times when sharing an ice cream sundae is definitely a soul purchase – everybody has fun, is laughing, delighting in sharing an experience together!

When food does not serve the soul – it’s processed, does not provide nutrition, but feeds an addiction to sugar, or convenience – it’s an ego purchase.

By Amethyst Wyldfyre

When we are born, we come to the world with a soul that is carrying lifetimes of experiences.  We choose to incarnate in order to fulfill some purpose – everyone and everything in creation has a purpose!  Sometimes we find ourselves feeling like we’ve been “born into the wrong family” (or culture, or social system) and we feel at odds with everything around us.  We may experience lots of hardships, traumas, dramas or just all around hellish experiences that leave IMPRINTS on our soul. These imprints can cause us, later on in our life time, to suffer greatly, to question our value and to suppress our natural born ability to create the life we are dreaming of living.  These IMPRINTS can be tracked in the anatomy of the soul and healed with appropriate guidance and medicine.  The soul or Luminous Energy Field contains all the imprinting from your present life as well as your previous or parallel lifetimes – so sometimes even if you were “born into the RIGHT family” you may discover that you are facing challenges that just don’t even make sense given the circumstances – in this case it’s probably a karmic or even ancestral, cultural or archetypal imprint that you are challenged with.

Imagine the soul is like play dough – every time a trauma or heavy experience occurs an impression is made on or in one of your major energy centers – the Chakras or it may even pervade your entire luminous field (sometimes called the aura).  Here are 7 distinct fears or imprints created by wound/traumas that will absolutely eat up your self-worth and the energy centers where these “monsters” live:

By Kiva Leatherman

Currency valuation is big business. There are lots of very smart people in the world running calculations, hypotheticals, and analyses every day to determine the value of the dollar, the yen, the euro etc. But what we are talking about today is very different. I want to talk to you about your personal currency.

We live in a society that constantly disconnects us from our source and our strength. As women, we are barraged from such a young age with the idea that we are not good enough, not skinny enough, not smart enough and that we never ARE enough to succeed in the way we want in our lives.

Not true.

When I tell people that I teach women about personal finance, investing and wealth the first thing I often here is “oh, like Suze Orman!” “Nope,” I say, “not like Suze Orman at all.”

The truth is that when I worked in the investment management industry, I learned to teach just like her. What I am coming to believe is that the model of investing that we’ve been taught and that is available in any number of books on the topic is a very masculine take on the subject.  We’ve all been taught to pay ourselves first, to establish emergency funds for the rainy day that’s right around the corner, to tighten our belts, to clip coupons and to chase the stocks, bonds and mutual funds with the highest returns so that some day, in some uncertain future, we can put our feet in the sand in Florida.

It’s all about rules, setting us up to feel inadequate and uninterested. Rules are boring.  Think about going on a diet – RULES. No carbs, no wine, no CHOCOLATE??? Boring. And unsustainable, because we are human beings who want delicious things in our life.

Same goes for money… we are human beings who want delicious EXPERIENCES in our life, and that takes money. That may bristle some of you. But it is truth.

by Kiva Leatherman

There’s a movement happening. Have you felt it? It’s a shift in the way we live our lives – and as a culture are taking back our power in small ways individually, that are creating huge impact globally. It’s an awakening…  a recognizing… and it is so empowering. It’s a decentralization of power in our lives – to questioning the spoon-fed beliefs, needs and wants that have been created by a corporate-driven culture that feed our egos - to needs and wants that are driven from our individual needs and feed our souls.
Have you felt it?

Why? Community. Connection. Intimacy. Because we’ve learned that not knowing about where are money is, where our food comes from, and that we don’t know the people that are making decisions for us about our lives in government hasn’t worked.

by Julie Southworth
Each new New Year’s eve, much of the world sings this tune at midnight to ring in the New Year.  “We’ll take a cup of kindness yet for times gone by”.  Ah…speaking of times gone by, I remember midnight. Staying awake long enough to see the clock strike midnight and the ball drop is in also something from times gone by in my own life.   This year, making our way to our local fireworks display, I was smugly grinning from ear to ear.

I’ve heard this expression often – and I fully recognize that it’s true, but I learned this last weekend that it is true for me in a way I never expected.  Wise is all about ensuring that you understand and strive to live up to your own worth, financially – emotionally –physically. It is our mission that every woman we serve know about her money, feel good about her health and thrive.