Managing money often feels like navigating a maze, making financial freedom an ever-hard-to-get treasure. And since women face unique financial challenges, wealth building is a much harder task for them to accomplish than men. Joining Rosie Zilinskas is Sarah Webb, Founder of Webb CFO, to share valuable insights on how women can take control of their finances according to their needs and without the overwhelm. Sarah explains why you should start small with your investments and the importance of determining how much it costs to live until your retirement years. She also opens up about her transition from corporate to entrepreneurship, presenting the ideal way to start your own business and advance in your career.
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Wealth-Building For Women: Expert Financial Freedom Tips With Sarah Webb
Have you ever wondered why managing money feels like navigating a maze? Our guest has the roadmap to help you find your way through and come out on the other side. Welcome back to the show. I am so excited to have you with me here. This episode is packed with gems you don’t want to miss. We’re going to be talking about the unique financial challenges that women face, how to make your money work for you, especially if you’re starting to save late in life, and the powerful shifts you can make to build financial security no matter where you are in your career. My hope is that by the end of this episode, you’ll walk away with some solid tips to help you plan smarter and feel more confident about your financial future.
My guest is Sarah Webb. She is an absolute powerhouse regarding finances. She is a former CFO turned entrepreneur, and what makes her relatable is that she is a mom teaching her kids about financial literacy while building her own business. Sarah is here to share her insights on how we, as women, can take control of our finances in a way that works for us without the overwhelm. Stick around because we’re about to dive into some seriously eye-opening advice that could change the way you think about your financial future. Let’s get started.
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Sarah, thank you so much for being here. I know that you are a former CFO. Is that correct?
Yes. Controller CFO coming from corporate finance.
Financial Challenges And Retirement
You have had your own company for years. You are an expert about money, how to manage it, and what to do with it. The first thing I wanted to ask you is that women obviously have some unique financial challenges. We know that women live a lot longer than men, at least 10 or 12 years, according to the actuarial tables. Can you share your thoughts about what some of those unique challenges are between men and women? What can women do to address some of those challenges?
Yeah. Statistically, you’re right. We do live longer, which is great. I personally think it’s because we go to the doctor, and we’re just a little bit more aware of our bodies for a lot of different reasons. We’re living longer and making roughly $0.70 on the dollar of what our male counterparts are making. We’re behind on the income stream of what we’re able to earn currently.
We have to make that last longer, and so, especially as women in corporate finance or in the corporation, you want to look around at all the tools that you have available through your employer, be it stock options, 401(k)s, or healthcare spending accounts. I think the earlier, the younger you are, the more you can do to boost your income is going to help you fight some of those challenges. There are lots of great tools out there that can be offered through your employment to help you get started and ramp that up as quickly as possible.
We make $0.30 on the dollar less, and we live an average of 10 to 12 years longer. Obviously, like you said, starting to invest younger is great. I know several people who are in their mid-40s that are starting to save for their retirement. Are there maybe one or two things that you can think of that women should start doing if they’re, again, in their 40s and starting to save for retirement?
Yeah, I think take an inventory first of really what it takes for you to live. A lot of times, that’s a lot less than we’re currently making. I think we have these grandiose ideas that I’m going to need just as much money at age 40 as I’m going to need at age 65. I don’t see that playing out when I’m meeting with people. Maybe you’re not traveling as much as you think that you’re going to, or you’ve been working down, paying down your debt, or maybe you’re mortgage-free at that point. Try to forecast what is that age that you don’t want to work anymore.
What does it really take to fund your lifestyle? When I say not work anymore, I think there’s a lot of opportunities for encore careers. Maybe you’re not that corporate person working 40 to 70 hours a week, but you’re doing either consulting in your expertise for 15 to 20 hours a week, or maybe you just have a job that you never thought you would have. I always think like, “I would love to work at the florist. How cool would that job be?” It’s stimulating; I’m getting to meet people, and maybe I’m not making as much money, but if I’m making money for myself personally, I’m not out there spending money. I don’t think it has to be that the end of your corporate career means you’re never going to work again in any capacity.
I’ll never forget. I was probably in my early 20s. I started working at 23, something like that. I’ll never forget one of the women who was nearing retirement. She was single, and she was like, “I got to pay for my house.” I’m like, “What do you mean? You told me your house is paid off.” She’s like, “I got to pay for property taxes.” I was like, “What do you mean?” I think her property taxes at the time were like $700 a month. I was like, “You have to pay $700 a month just for taxes? That’s never going to go away. If anything, it’s going to increase.” I was just flabbergasted. I was like, “You have to pay?”
I just thought once your house was paid for, you never had to pay anything again. It didn’t turn out that way. A second thought came up while you were talking. I just had a luncheon with some women that I’m friends with. One of the women is retired. She said, “One of the things that you don’t think about during retirement is that you have to plan on spending at least $50 when you leave the house because you might get lunch or you might have to buy something.” The problem is that she said when she was working Monday through Friday, she hardly spent any money.
Corporate To Entrepreneurship
Now, every day is Saturday. Every time they go out, they leave the house. They’re like, “Let’s just get lunch here,” or “Let’s go do this.” She said she didn’t anticipate the extra expense of having all this leisure time during her retirement life. I think that’s really interesting. I know you were working in the corporate world for many years, and then again, you’re an entrepreneur. Can you talk a little bit about some of your insights from the initial change of going from the corporate world into entrepreneurship? What are some of those challenges that you faced, and how did you overcome them?
I think leaving the corporate world, I slept, but it felt like for six weeks, I was so exhausted, emotionally and mentally. Just really some rest and recovery of just the end of an era in a good way and restart. I think some things that surprised me about entrepreneurship, which is like people tell you this until you live it, doesn’t stick. There is a lot of variability in your income in that for six months to a year. To be able to plan for that, like as an entrepreneur, you’re like, “Yeah, I just had my biggest month ever.”
The next month, maybe it falls off a cliff for a variety of reasons, maybe not anything that you did, but really determining what you can live on and setting that aside. I wish I would have, instead of being like, “Yes, this was my greatest month ever. This is going to continue forever,” I really should have looked at, “What can I live on? Put this in my rainy day fund so that I can kind of ebb and flow some of those a little bit more.” That is one piece. I think the other piece is just looking at your insurances.
Obviously, we talk about health insurance. When you’re leaving the corporate world, that COBRA insurance might be valuable to you for eighteen months. There are lots of options in working with brokers and other providers to help find health insurance and liability insurance. I feel like sometimes I’m a little walking around insurance. I’ve got all these policies that I didn’t really have to think about before. I really had to educate myself in that area.
Especially with business insurance. Even if you’re a small entrepreneur, you should always have business insurance, regardless, so absolutely. What was the biggest challenge for you personally, going from a very scheduled 9:00 to 5:00 to it’s just you and you can do whatever with your time?
That wasn’t a big challenge for me, honestly. I’m a very rigid person. Any family or friends who are going to read this are like, “Yes, that’s true.” I tried to keep specific hours that I was working when looking at my income target. Let’s just say I wanted to make $1,000 a week at the beginning and I charge $100 an hour. That means I have to work ten hours. That means I have to work two chargeable hours a day. At the beginning, I really set those micro goals of like, “What is it that I have to do to meet my Friday goal?”
That expands and changes and it grows. That was my first target. I just was like, “Okay, what is it that I have to focus on?” I think that, as I moved from an unstructured environment to being an entrepreneur, I’ve seen other entrepreneurs struggle with the shiny penny of “I’m going to work on this. I’m going to work on this, and then I’m going to work on this.” All of that is important. I was dialed into, “I must make money. This is exactly how I can deliver my product if I do this. If I have extra time for all the other great ideas I have, then I’ll work on it.” I am dialed in on the profit first.
That’s amazing. I think you probably found the holy grail for your business by doing that first because you’re absolutely right. Everybody else, and so many entrepreneurs that I’ve talked to, they’re like, “We have all these great ideas, and we’re implementing them all.” You lose sight of the actual thing, which is to deliver your product and make money.
Establishing Presence And Impact
I think that’s fantastic. When it comes to going back to the women in the corporate world and their negotiating impact, they’re obviously trying to establish themselves in the corporate environment. What do you think women can do to make their presence known in the corporate world so they can obtain that financial stability and freedom?
I think each corporation has a different culture. What is it that your company values? Where are they compensating for those types of things? If you’re at a company that values long hours and visibility and some of those things, figure out how you’re going to do that. That doesn’t mean you have to be there all the time. What are the things you’re doing in your career track to give you the visibility you want?
In other organizations, their corporate culture may be more around production and certain delivered results. How does your role fit into that? What’s your plan to increase and make sure that your name is on that list? I think, first of all, it is just looking at the corporate culture of what they are paying for. What’s important to them? Where are you seeing other people succeed? Mapping out your own space, like, “Okay, I don’t have to do it like everybody else, but this is what they’re looking at.” What are the steps that I’m going to take to get there?
Cultural Shifts In Money
Got it. When it comes to cultural shifts in money, and obviously, we have the Gen Z folks coming in, their mindset on money is so different. In fact, I read an article several years ago. At that time, the article said that Gen Z-ers were interested in technology, shoes, footwear, and travel. They weren’t so much interested in saving for a house at that time. Obviously, there have been cultural shifts. There are Gen Z-ers who went to college and can’t afford to buy a home. What have you observed when it comes to those financial shifts and money management strategies in today’s day and age for people?
That’s a very complex question. I think who we are at 23 is not the same person we are at 43. Not all of us are able to look down twenty years and plan ahead. That’s not in everybody’s DNA. You do have to realize, as an adult human woman, that you’re on this path, and you’re not always going to be 23, either. Maybe you want to travel for a year or two. That’s fabulous. You’re going to have these amazing experiences.
Who we are at 23 in not the same person we are at 43. – Sarah Webb Share on X
There is going to be a day when you want a home, or you’re looking at maybe being in a long-term relationship, and maybe you’re deciding to have children or not. All of that is fine. To have a little bit of foresight into what could be and what doesn’t, it is hard to avoid the trip or maybe cut back in certain areas to be able to do that. I really see financial savings flexibility. It gives you the idea to do whatever you want. Maybe you decide, I never want to be a homeowner. That’s just not my plan.
What if you want to be an entrepreneur? What if you have a job that you really hate, hate your boss, and just don’t want to work there anymore? If you don’t have a base financial cushion, you’re trapped. Changing the mindset of like, it doesn’t have to be for a house, or it doesn’t necessarily have to be for your 401(k). There’s going to be something that happens in your life that you cannot predict, and you’re going to wish you had a few $25,000. There’s going to be something that you didn’t expect or didn’t plan for. That extra cash would have made a really big difference in your life at that point.
I followed Dave Ramsey for many years when I was much younger. He always said to have $1,000 as an emergency fund, at least to begin with, because if a car repair, water heater, washer, dryer, or whatever, at least you have the bulk of the money. He has a series of baby steps. That was baby step number one. Baby step number two was to pay off all your debt with gazelle intensity. Baby step number three was then to start to build your 6- to 12-month savings. I always respected him so much because you’re right. It’s like Murphy’s law that something’s going to happen.
Financial Education
It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when, whether it’s a tire, again, a car repair, or something that, even an illness, if you’re not prepared for, with medical insurance or whatever. You never know what’s going to happen. To your point, we definitely have to be prepared. When it comes to financial education, I believe you have a couple of younger children, and you’re having them open Roth IRAs because they’re going to start working.
What are some important things that parents can be doing for those younger kids and even college-age younger adults, as far as financial education? What can parents be doing, and what should they be doing to help these young people? People don’t reconcile checkbooks like the way we used to years and years ago anymore. Let’s talk about that.
My kids are 12 and 14, and I did not realize until I went to college that my family talked about money more than everyone else. I did not realize. My parents, my mother did the bills every Sunday. She sat at the kitchen table. She had a check register. She wrote out checks. When we went to the grocery store, our budget growing up was a hundred dollars a week. When she was like 110, she’d be like, “Next week we need to cut back a little bit, or maybe we need to eat at home one more night a week.”
I did not realize as a child that these conversations didn’t happen in other homes. That’s part of just growing up. You think everybody’s like you. I really digested that as a young adult; that helped me in a lot of ways. I’m being very conscientious about how I talk about money with my kids. A lot of it’s just verbalizing. When we’re young, kids tell us to read to them; that’s how they verbalize. They like how great reading is for you.
I’m doing that with money. I’m talking about why our family is not going on that trip because we’re going to spend our money this way. I don’t have to get into the dollars or cents, but I try to have my kids understand that everything’s a trade-off. “We’re not going to go out to eat for the tenth time this week.” It feels like in the summer especially, “We’re going to save it for this. You want to go do that activity at school next year. The trade-off is this.” I really try to verbalize a lot of what we are doing and why we’re making decisions.
Being in the accounting space, both my kids are learning QuickBooks this summer. I feel like that’s a life skill. One kid reconciles our credit card statements, our personal credit card statements. Her comment was, “We spend a lot of money at Amazon and Chick-fil-A.” I’m like, yes, and it just makes them more aware. I think they’re getting more tangibility because we don’t have cash anymore. They both have debit cards; it’s just that they don’t have that piece.
Before they went to camp this year, they each owed me a one-page paper on the difference between a Roth IRA and a regular IRA. I said, “I’ll work on helping you fund that for this year.” Those kids, once they figured out that it’s $7,000 annually and how much money that was, had no complaints about writing a paper.
One of them calculated, “If I do this every year and start at age 14 or even 20, I’m going to be a multimillionaire.” I’m like, you are. It doesn’t, I think, especially as we get older, we think it’s this insurmountable thing. If you really break it down, it’s probably $50 to $100 a day or less, especially as you start making adult money and not working at Chick-fil-A or Sonic.
Right, right, for sure. I love that. I love that you’re, first of all, educating them on money and that you’re actually having them be actively involved in the finances. As you said, you’re explaining to them why we can do this, but we can’t do that. I think a lot of times, parents are good at saying, “We can’t afford that.” That doesn’t really mean anything to the young kids when they’re not able to rationalize that.
If you say, “We can’t go to Chick-fil-A for the tenth time because we want to pay for hockey lessons next year,” or something like that, I think it’s a lot more understandable for them. They can internalize it a little bit more. I love that you’re opening the Roth IRAs at ages 12 and 14 because you’re right. Had we started saving at fourteen, our lives would be so completely different.
I saw a meme that was like, “I guess I should have been saving from when I was in my mom’s womb to purchase a house.” Yes, there are some things we can control and some things we can’t. I remember when they were toddlers, I was reading a parenting book, and it was like giving them a choice: Do you want peas or carrots? You’re going to eat a vegetable, but they feel that they have control over the decision. Do you want to go to Chick-fil-A, or do we want to save and go on that beach vacation?
It’s just the next level of that discussion. They feel like they’re contributing to your family discussion. They don’t have to know your net worth. They don’t need to know all of that, but they’re involved in the conversation with you, and they feel like contributing family members.
Advice For Millennials
What is your take on those millennials who are still at home and want to purchase their own home but still have student loans? They have a car payment, and they’re chomping at the bit to have their own space. What would you say to them as far as encouragement and ideas on how to actually do that, coming from you as the financial expert? I know there are a lot of young people in my life who are struggling to purchase a home because the prices of homes have gone up so much. Let’s talk a little bit about that.
One, just survival is hard. There are just a lot of things coming at you. We’ve had record inflation in the last 36 months, with prices increasing, and we have seen some wage increases, but not at the same point. I would first look at that car. Do you really need that car? I would get rid of a car payment, whether that’s driving something that’s not as nice as you have.
You definitely want something safe, but downgrade yourself in a car so that if having a house or a down payment is a bigger emotional attachment, then let go of the car in whatever way you can. I think looking at different types of housing, I know that when I was younger, I assumed that I would have the same lifestyle as my parents and just move on over, and I would have a house the same size. That was a very rude awakening for me.
Consider if you had a mortgage: what could you afford on your salary while working towards that 20%? It doesn’t have to look the same. I think there are also a lot of opportunities with townhouses and condos. It doesn’t have to be the quintessential American dream as a standalone. That first house is not your forever house. It’s just not. You’re going to be happy when you get in, and then you’re going to live there for a bit, and you’re going to be grateful for the time that you were there.
When you’re able to move up in house, I always had this mentality that any decision that I made was like the forever decision. I’ve broken myself of that. I can always go make more money. I can always go change my mind. This is not my final destination, especially with some of those first purchases, like that first car that you bought without your parents or that first house. I think that’s what I would be focused on. Maybe if I was single, I might see if there’s something that I could buy and then rent out a few rooms so that I’m not carrying the whole mortgage by myself.
Economy And Politics
Those are all really good ideas. I don’t know if you can speak to this, but what is your insight on the economy, and what can we expect in the next 2 to 5 years or so?
I think elections are interesting for the economy. I do think that interest rates will come down; I do not think that we will see interest rates in the 2s and 3s, potentially in my lifetime, at least not in the next 5 or 6 years. We sometimes forget that when our parents were purchasing houses, it was just astronomical rates that we couldn’t even think of. I think it’s going to continue to be a challenge. What I see with my set of clients is that people are pulling back a little bit on hiring, but they’re not firing. They’re not letting people go. This is the backbone, small business, the backbone of America. I think it’s a wait-and-see situation regarding what’s going to happen, but I don’t think there’s any reason to be pessimistic.
I think the positive is that you can go forward with planning your life. What’s happening on Wall Street and what’s happening in the White House? Yes, it’s important, and you need to be a voter and all of that, but it’s really not impacting your decision to pay off your loans or not, or your decision to buy a house or not. You need to move forward with those types of goals and plans if that’s what you want to do.
That’s great advice because you’re right. We can’t just sit still and not make any decisions or any financial changes to our situation based on the White House, like you said.
I didn’t realize how much control my county commissioner had until COVID. If you think about who is really impacting your politics, it is the people closest to you. I think there’s definitely the tone from the top and all of that, but it is a lot more local. That was a lesson that I definitely learned through the pandemic.
The people closest to you are the ones who are really impacting your politics. – Sarah Webb Share on X
Unfortunately, I think those are the elections that people pay the least attention to their local elections. I have no idea who my county clerk is and all that.
Those people have a lot more power than we ever dreamed of.
My husband is really good about trying to freeze our taxes or property taxes and try to decrease them. He does all his comparables and always laughs because we get so many letters from attorneys that want to do just that. He’s like, “I could do that myself.” There are things that we can do as citizens to try to keep our expenses as low as possible. You were talking about Amazon a little bit earlier, and it’s amazing how much you buy on Amazon that you don’t realize.
Becoming An Entrepreneur
The credit card bill comes and you’re like, “I didn’t realize,” but you’re right. Amazon is probably one of our biggest expenses as well. Very interesting. I’d like to shift the conversation a little bit about you and your story. Tell me how you managed to succeed and advance in your career. What made you decide to leave the corporate world and then start your own business?
I was a tax preparer at PricewaterhouseCoopers. I have an accounting degree, and I’m just not that great at taxes. There are so many people that do them better than me. I didn’t have this loving desire to be a tax preparer for the rest of my life. I worked in corporate finance at Alcon, which at the time was a division of Novartis. I was in the pharmaceutical space, and really that was before my husband and I had children. We both worked a lot at that time. It really laid out, like, what is it that this company values?
Where can I get a tiny voice? After I got a voice, where can I pull my chair up? Where can I be included in these meetings? I had great experiences there. I was part of our women’s networking group. I helped launch that globally for the last few years of my career, and I traveled internationally. I was able to advance because I had great mentors and sponsors, but I was also like, what is this that they value? What can I bring to the table that’s unique to Sarah?
I don’t have to be a copycat of all of these other types of entities and great women too. Everybody has their own unique path, but my kids were 1 and 3 traveling the world. That’s when I decided I just needed to leave that type of environment. I went and became a controller at a small family-owned business. I actually launched, but I was just tired of accounting. I know not everybody loves it, but I just felt like I needed a break from this. I launched a women’s media company focusing on empowering women in that corporate space. Ultimately, I sold that in 2019.
With that sale, I was like, what am I going to do? People are like, “You do accounting.” I’m like, sure, I can help you. I started really helping some neighbors and just people in my local community. We have eight employees, and we serve clients across the United States. We focus on licensed professionals; we work with a lot of doctors and attorneys.
What I was really able to do was marry up my hardcore accounting experience, that corporate finance piece that I got from being with Novartis, forecasting, budgeting, and small business owners. You don’t go into business to become an accountant, except if you’re me. If you’re a physician, an attorney, or in marketing, PR, or creative, that’s your joy. That’s what you are meant to be doing. We really come beside them and partner with them on the business side.
“Okay, this is why this is important. This is what your finances are telling you. You’ve had this great marketing campaign, but it actually didn’t turn into sales. What are we going to do? That really worked. You increased, you did a sale on this, or you had some type of programming, you really rocketed your sales. Let’s do that again.” Working with the business owner to help record that, just on a day-to-day accounting basis, but also the growth piece of like, “Where are you going next? You’ve told me your goal is this. Are you on track, or are you not? If we’re not on track, what can we guide you and help you to get back on track?”
Women Innovating Now
Very good. You said that you were a founding member of, was it a women’s?
Sure. Yeah. Women’s, I think it’s Women Innovating Now. It was WIN.
You left that, and then you decided to start up an initiative for women in leadership. How did you decide to do that?
I just wanted to do something completely different. Even back to my grandmothers, every woman in my family has been all working women and we’ve worked outside the home. Being a homemaker is an incredible job, and there’s nothing to, that is so hard. My family came from people working outside the home. I feel like I grew up with parents and family members that said, “You can do anything you want to do.” It was a surprise to me when I got to the world that we weren’t 50/50. I can do anything that I like.
I have the same education as you do. I have the same background as you do. What is it in this space that’s preventing women from getting to the same levels? Sometimes, I just bring up the commiserating with women, like, “What’s happening in your department? What’s happening in your department?” Sally got the promotion. Let’s all cheer for her. Let’s figure out how she did it.
The rest of us can be advancing in the same way. It was really a collaborative discussion among women. It wasn’t a network. It was not a group that was like, “You need to behave like men. Here’s how the men do it.” It was a group of, “Here’s what’s working for us. Here’s what we see other people being successful at. What’s your personal magic that you can institute into that?”
How can you get to the same space? I had some very strong male partners, and that was critical to get funding. These programs do not happen without budget money. At the time, I was like, “This is critical; this is part of our retention. This is part of our talent pipeline,” and making the business case of why it’s important. I know it seems silly that I even have to claim the budget, but at the time, no one in our group had done that before. Giving the business case of how this type of networking group can work on our pipeline. The women’s group was the first one, and all types of represented groups exist at that corporation. It’s worldwide versus just starting here in Fort Worth, Texas.
That’s wonderful. I’m so glad that you did that because, as much as there are so many women out there like us who are trying to advocate for, whether it’s financial knowledge and education or career advancement like I do, there are so many women that are out there advocating, talking about a variety of things. I feel that for the first time in history, women are all collectively pushing together, and a few good men, too. The conversation has to keep happening over and over and over until we don’t need it anymore. It could be maybe 1, 2, or 3 generations. Who knows? I do believe that the day will come when we will be equal and we won’t be making ¢30 less on the dollar than our counterparts. That will be the day.
That will be the day. We have to have advocates of all types to get there. I think there’s no room for women to bring each other down. That’s sometimes what you see in other groups. I haven’t experienced it. That was our goal. I went off and developed a nonprofit for young girls, but we said no mean girls. We’re just not going to, like we’re here to build each other up. I always describe it as I would rather be a fountain than a drain. When other women do great things, I want to cheer them on and celebrate them. I want them to lift us all up. I think there’s so much to be celebrated.
There is no room for women to bring each other down. – Sarah Webb Share on X
401(k) percentages
Sarah, this has been such a great conversation. I know you’ve already shared a lot of wisdom, but is there one actionable tip you can leave the readers with from our conversation?
Think about your corporate readers. If you are in a corporation, review your 401(k) percentages annually. I want you to think about when your bonus cycle happens. If you are on track, I think it’s $26,100 if you max out your 401(k) and get a 3% match. Basically, you probably have 24 or 26 paychecks, and you’re dividing it evenly so that you get that 3.5% match or whatever your company has. If you get a bonus in April and you do not unselect that amount to either be part of your 401(k) or make it additional, you could max out your $26,100 pretty quickly, depending on the size of the bonus, but then you’re missing that portion of the match that latter half of the year. Just really sit down with someone from your HR department.
I know that when I was in corporate, I actually selected for my bonuses not to be included in my 401(k) calculations because I’m very rigid and planned. I knew what it should be, but if you max it out too quickly, you’re potentially losing some match. I think match is free money, so we do not need to lose out on any free money.
Episode Wrap-up
That makes perfect sense. That is a fantastic tip. Sarah, again, thank you so much for sharing with us. I appreciate the time and energy that you put into educating us on financial planning because we know it is very important. I also have heard, and I don’t know if you’ve seen this in your business or in your stratosphere, but women are opting more and more to marry less and less. There are going to be a lot more women who are unmarried going into their retirement age. We need to make sure that they are well-educated about their finances so that they can live well and be able to support themselves into that long age.
Absolutely.
Thank you so much, Sarah. I appreciate your time.
Thanks for having me.
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Another episode that is packed with amazing insights. Let me take a minute to just give a few highlights from my conversation with Sarah. Sarah reminded us that it is important to know what it costs to live. You might need to do some homework and figure out what it costs you to live because you may need less than what you think, especially as you get older.
Second, she talked about the power of starting small with investments, whether you’re in your 20s or in your 40s, and that it’s never too late to plan. Finally, she says, don’t forget to use all of the financial tools available at your job, such as 401(k), stock options, health care accounts, and many more. Sarah leaves us with one big takeaway. She says to check your 401(k) match. Don’t max out too early in the year and then miss out on the free money that your company would be investing into your account. That is definitely an easy fix.
Before you go, don’t forget to take the promotion readiness quiz to see how promotion-ready you are when that next opportunity shows up. If you’re ready to step it up, check out the Unlock the Leader Within membership. It is a place to build confidence and connect with incredible women like you. Remember that both the links to the quiz and the membership, as well as Sarah’s contact information, will all be listed on the episode website. After this episode, you should feel more confident about tackling your finances and making your money work for you. With that, remember to be brave, be bold, and take action.
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About Sarah Webb
Sarah founded Webb CFO to provide accounting assistance and long-term financial planning guidance to business owners and their small businesses.
Though Sarah and her team are happy to address the fundamental aspects of day-to-day accounting, such as cash flow management and budgeting, they take client financials a step further by adopting a strategic approach: leveraging numerical data for forecasting and planning, and offering a broader management-oriented perspective.