012- Women’s Empowerment as Consumers, and What Are ETFs?

Financially Empowering Women

In today’s show we discuss two very disparate topics; Women’s empowerment as consumers, and What are ETFs?

Women’s Empowerment as consumers: Money is one of the major sources of power. Understanding, controlling, managing, spending and earning money provides status, power, freedom and control of everyone and everything that money can buy. As women, holding these abilities over money tips the scales and balances power, which is why I think the idea of financially empowering women is so very important.

This is why we produce this podcast and offer seminars - to inspire women to become empowered and that is why we support organizations (from the local chapters of NOW to various other groups) that support women. One such group is The Women’s Choice Award, which is dedicated to empowering women by supporting women’s decisions as consumers. The Women’s Choice Award for Financial Advisors was created by WomenCertified®, Inc in partnership with WIFE.org (Women’s Institute for Financial Education). Today we speak to the founder of the Women’s Choice Award and the CEO of WomenCertified®, Delia Passi, who is the leading female consumer advocate in the nation.

What are ETF’s: An ETF or Exchange-traded funds is an investment company which usually invests with the objective to achieve similar returns as a particular asset class or market index. ETFs have grown in popularity over the past decade because of their flexibility to trade like a stock and provide instant diversification in the form of an index fund. In this answer to a mailbag question, we discuss the advantages of an ETF over individual stocks, mutual funds and index funds but we also talk about the need to understand what you invest in. You don’t need to know about the plethora of investments that are out there, but you do need to know about the things that you own and if you decide to invest in ETF, make sure to do your research.

About Delia Passi

Women Certified®, a marketing and research firm and home to the Women’s Choice Awards is led by Delia Passi, the nation’s leading expert on marketing to women and consultant to numerous Fortune 500 companies. Delia is the leading speaker on the women’s market and a lifelong leader and advocate for the female consumer. Prior to founding WomenCertified, Delia was the Group Publisher of Working Woman and Working Mother Magazines. Passi is also the author of Winning the Toughest Customer: The Essential Guide to Selling to Women (Kaplan, 2006)