Los Gatos Weekly-Times

Photograph by George Sakkestad

Joan Perry believes that women should manage their own money

Knight Out

Joan Perry says women should stop depending on chivalrous men in suits of armor

By Mary Ann Cook

Women need to take responsibility for their own finances, their own spending and saving. They need to learn how to "grow their money" to have enough for their future. And they need to do it themselves. That's Joan Perry's message and the impetus of her book: A Girl Needs Cash: Banish the White Knight Myth and Take Charge of Your Financial Life.

Ninety percent of women in the U.S. will be widowed, divorced or single at some time in their lives. So relying on a male--husband, boyfriend or relative--just doesn't cut it. A woman needs to take charge of her own financial future. But even financially savvy women like Los Gatan Perry, who owns her own investment company, Take Charge Financial!, have a hard time doing so.

Perry worked on Wall Street and was the first woman to own a municipal investment banking firm. Even with that background, she allowed herself to became financially dependent on a man. When the relationship ended, she was left without her own nest egg, having invested in a real estate development he was part of that went into bankruptcy.

"Women get love and money mixed up. There's something crazy in their wiring," she says. And if it could happen to her, it could happen to anyone, Perry realized. This realization was the genesis of A Girl Needs Cash. "I was born to write this book," Perry says.

The book explores five myths in our society that women subscribe to that prevent them from taking charge of their own financial lives, and offers financial strategy plans to replace those myths. Leading the parade is the White Knight, that mythical male who will ostensibly sweep into a woman's life and take charge of all those pesky financial details.

That's a fairy tale without a fairy-tale ending, as nearly any divorced or widowed woman in the country can tell you, and the resulting financial ignorance can lead to dire calamity--a calamity that could have been averted if each had taken charge of her own financial decisions and managed her own money.

Entwined with the White-Knight myth is the notion that it is unfeminine to be concerned with money matters. "We used to not talk about sex, and look where it got us. That same prohibition applies to money. We need to start talking about it, raising our consciousness so we can shed some of this unrealistic thinking that permeates our society," Perry says. Women's relationship to money has changed dramatically over the past decades, and spending and saving strategies need to reflect those changes.

Other popular misconceptions about money management that need to be erased: that you need to know a lot about the stock market in order to invest wisely; that you need to have a bundle before you can start investing; and that you need to pay off your credit card debts before starting an investment strategy. Not.

What you do need is a plan--a plan that will make your money grow more money so that you will have enough for retirement, Perry asserts. A simple plan like "spend less than you make, and invest the rest." Doing this on a regular basis can help ensure a healthy financial future.

When she started her first company, Perry Investments, the Los Gatan was the first woman to own a municipal investment banking firm, developing large bond issues for such clients as the city of Chicago and the state of California. She was successfully dealing in millions of dollars, but she had no plan for her personal future. And when Perry began quizzing her colleagues, all of whom lived a high-speed, high-stress, high-salaried existence in New York, she found them to be in the same frame of mind.

They would invest in houses, cars and clothing, but would set nothing aside regularly as savings. If Wall Street financiers who helped other people accrue money didn't have a strategy lined up for their own financial future, then a book directed at women on the subject was sorely needed, Perry reasoned.

After eight years of running Perry Investments and dealing with government agencies, Perry decided it was time for a major change. She moved from Philadelphia to the Bay Area, and, after a few years in Saratoga, closed out Perry Investments and started Take Charge Financial! in Los Gatos.

Take Charge is an investment firm "with a mission to find the best solutions for people to grow their money," a company through which she deals with individuals rather than agencies. Take Charge sets up private pension plans for individuals and companies, and sells stocks and bonds and other financial vehicles.

Take Charge has a much more personal atmosphere than other financial institutions; it's user-friendly, says employee Pat Compton. More feminine, one could say.

"This is a place I can grow," says Saratogan Compton, who came on board to help out while Perry is on an eight-week book tour organized by Random House.

Compton was executive director for Villa Montalvo for three years and works for her husband's international family foundation.

"First I was [Perry's] client. After all my experience in nonprofit [organizations], it's exciting to be here," she says of her new job. "I'll be setting up the seminar work she'll be doing as the book gathers steam."

That steam is already rising: The host of a National Public Radio program saw Perry's book at the Dallas airport and was intrigued enough to line up the author for "All Things Considered," a show to air the end of January.

Though her strong suit had always been math, Perry originally thought she'd do something in health care. Her bachelor's degree in biology is from Denison University in Ohio. But she wanted to earn a master's, so she applied to several schools to be a medical technician or nurse, but only one business school.

That was Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, where she earned her MBA. She finds it ironic that the two scholarships she won to get her out of the kitchen were from Betty Crocker and Oscar Meyer. Now she regularly speaks before MBA students at Vanderbilt about the hazards women face in the financial field.

Since Perry was in the first wave of women going for an MBA and was one of only five women in her class, she terms it "the best of times and the worst of times." The pluses: The work was exciting and challenging, breaking new ground for women. The drawbacks: She ran smack into sexual harassment on the job, as well as the glass ceiling, before those phrases were even coined. "Now there are rules," she says. But not then.

Not only was harassment rampant, but if you stood up for yourself, there was continual backlash. One harassing employer kept securities that were hers when she quit the company. She sued and won. One, after a history of harassing her, asked her several years later to do a TV spot for him in his campaign for governor. She declined.

She proved that "women can be out there, take risks, compete along with men in numbers," she says. But the negatives kept cropping up, so she started her own company.

"I created a culture I could live in. What drives me is not the money but the fact that it's possible for people to think in new ways," she says about the creative way she runs her own company.

At Perry Investments she sold to state treasurers, and one of her jobs while earning her MBA was as an aide to the state treasurer of Tennessee, so the part-time job paid off twice. And health care wasn't entirely neglected: "I'm well known throughout the country for [financing] health-care projects."

"Women won't have power until they take charge of the money in their life. They have to accept that responsibility. You can't negotiate without money feet [having your own money]," Perry cautions. "Unless you stay skinny and sexy [as you age], you'll be hung out to dry. Financial well-being is the apex of everything, about feeling OK about yourself, permeating all aspects of life. I believe people who cut you off in traffic don't have enough in their checking account, and that's why they don't feel at peace with themselves."

"Wall Street advocates buying in greed, selling in fear, when just the opposite is needed to grow your money," Perry says.

Take Charge is on the ground floor of the historic red-brick Honeymoon House on University Avenue; on the second floor is her husband's data-processing company, Complete Service Bureau. He's Ron Lykins, and he's also active in Take Charge. The two met at a "magic meeting" of the Rotary Club. He is "the best of the white knights." He has a 15-year-old son who attends the Hyde School in Bath, Maine.

The book was written in collaboration with journalist Dolores Barclay of New York, and its title is thanks to Sophie Tucker: "From birth to 18, a girl needs a good family; from 18-35, good looks; from 35-55, a good personality; and from 55 on, a girl needs cash."

People in the U.S. save only 2 percent of what they earn, and women save even less--1 percent. Perry's out to change that pathetic percentage.

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