I'm a 20 year old girl, and I want to invest.

In 30 years I (hopefully) will be echoing the wise words of Cher — "Mom, I am a rich man."

The vision.

The Realisation

Growing up, reading and writing were always my natural strengths. But numbers… not so much.

I firmly believe that any math beyond what was needed for basic budgeting was useless. What was the point of charting parabolas when you had a school of emotionally immature teenagers who didn’t have a clue on how to navigate life beyond the four walls of a classroom? That’s what they should be teaching, but I digress.

My family would praise me saying, “Good thing you’re really good in English, because your math…” or, “Oh, how we (my parents) wish one of you three (my siblings and I) would know how to invest,” but would silently skip over me as a running candidate.

It didn’t help that during my high school accounting classes, my teacher (a quintessentially white Australian man, balding and all) would be slightly patronising when correcting my work, but became a chatterbox on the ASX for the gaggle of boys in the front. They were a group of eight who tried to fit on a table of six, and it was like their version of the popular lunch table in the movies. Granted, I think half of them had dollar signs in their eyes with “Wolf of Wall Street” running through their heads.

But in short, investing had always been presented to me as a boy’s game, and my trying would just be a ridiculous idea.

For decades, media and pop culture have decided to make investing synonymous with a male’s strength. Without knowing it, I was indoctrinated to believe that I couldn’t even comprehend investing, because I wasn’t a man.

Wolf of Wall Street (2013)

And we all know a guy who gate keeps investing by talking in endless jargon (don’t be fooled, it’s to make up for his fragile ego). And oh, if it was even possible that you understood a single word, he would bombard you with questions to see if you “really” knew it.

It was only when I read Noel and James Whittaker’s explanation of self-concept that I had this epiphany. It reads:

We develop our self-concept mainly by what we tell ourselves, by what others say to us and from situations we observe and take in… The input from the world around you programs your brain and you start to act in accordance with those programs. (5th edition of ‘The Beginner’s Guide of Wealth’)

And my epiphany was this; through subtle, unconscious programming, a part of my self-concept had developed into a deep-rooted belief that I couldn’t invest.

Many of my female friends shared the same awkwardness surrounding the topic of investing. It seemed like the only relationships with money that was reserved for young women were to (1) earn through a basic stream of income ie. a job, and (2) to spend.

I was having a chat with another girlfriend of mine, and when I pitched this story to her to see if it resonated, she agreed and replied:

“I feel like with stock and stuff, guys are on top of that, but what about me? I make money too.”

The Realisation II

So I’ve acknowledged the psychological hardwiring and my desire to invest. Now, with fresh eyes, I start my journey towards financial freedom by hopping on my phone and search ‘investment for girls’.

Pause.

You can’t truly say you haven’t typed this into your search engines, or even thought of it.

I can speak on behalf of my circle, that we have found confidence in business and investing through such female-founded platforms. Some of many include Girls that Invest, She’s On The Money and Clever Womens Co. And it’s these creators that are pushing the wheel to undoing decades of brainwashing, yet again, from the patriarchal society we live in.

But with this boom of gender quality comes even more content that are being circulated across social media, where if you so much as put “for the girls” in the title, the post’s performance will boom along with it. Almost like greenwashing.

And the problem with the rampant increase of such clickbait is that young, impressionable women may believe that they can only understand by watching “investing for girls” or finance for the 💅🏼. This can limit them from a whole chunk of a very broad, and ever changing, conversation.

As long as we continue to create content that is inherently segregated by gender, at least for young adults, it will always be young women seeking out knowledge told from a “girl’s” lens, before feeling ready enough to even listen to the content consumed by their male counterpart.

But wouldn’t it be better if we cut that middle part and went straight to learning from sources designed, not marketed to be ‘only for the girls’, but to empower just young people in general?

Overall, what I’m suggesting is for more gender neutral sources of information, so more young women are even better equipped to tear down the mindset that they can’t be at par with their male peers in obtaining financial freedom.

The Recommendation

In this light I’ve been listening to ‘Equity Mates Investing’, and have been loving it.

Before, I was always preemptively intimidated whenever I heard discussions surrounding financial news. I would go into it already thinking, “I have no idea what they’re talking about”, when in reality the concepts were quite simple, just muddled with economic jargon.

This podcast has been great exposure for me to really listen to the conversation without feeling the burden of being judged for my inexperience. And I can do what I can’t do in conversation, which is to pause and search whenever I encounter some new lingo. They chat about current affairs in relation to finance, frequently used terms and general thoughts about investing, growth, portfolios etc.

They also have a podcast called ‘Get Started Investing’, and I highly recommend the first few episodes where they talk about the most basic terms you need to know on how to get started. And they really break it down to the most simplest terms.

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As with everything, the hardest part is getting started. So besides the resources you consume, surround yourself with people who have the same goals as you, and reach your potential together.