JACKSON, N.J., May 9, 2013 /PRNewswire/ — "I try to get women to wake up and smell the coffee – we live longer than men, and we need to pay attention to what's going on because you may not always have a partner to handle it for you," says Kathy Nolan, President and Founder of Family Focus Financial Group in Jackson, N.J. As one of the few women retirement planners in the industry, she has made it her mission to help families, especially women, to successfully manage, save, and protect their assets.
While significant leaps have been made by women in finance, reports show that only 30 percent of financial advisors are women1 – even though women control 67 percent of all the wealth in the United States. They're numbers that don't add up, according to Nolan, "We don't want financial advice that is male dominated. We have different priorities and interests. The process and the way we get there are different."
Her priorities differed when she traded her career on Wall Street for more flexibility in her family life after her son Sean was born. But she didn't leave her career entirely behind, finding instead a new direction and a purpose closer to her heart. She expanded her financial knowledge to include insurance and real estate, working for MetLife, with a focus on small businesses.
In 2007, she and Sean – by then grown up and graduated – formed Family Focus Financial Group. There, she's made it her mission to get women involved in planning their financial futures, whether they're married or single, young or retired. Nolan created the "Savvy Women's Club" seminars to give women a safe and accessible place to learn the basics of managing their finances.
The classes teach women to create savings and investment strategies around their individual values. They cover the basics of investing, budgeting, finance, and debt, how taxes affect purchasing power and investments, the different types of insurance, and the strategies and legal documents of estate planning.
Nolan says the most rewarding part of the process is "seeing women start to feel confident and have the light bulbs go off in their heads, and say 'hey, I can do this.' You have a future, you just have to plan for it and you can't keep your head in the sand."
(1) http://www.benefitspro.com/2013/03/11/need-for-female-financial-advisors-growing
Read more at
Kathleen A. Nolan is an Investment Advisor Representative. Investment Advisory Services offered through Global Financial Private Capital, LLC, an SEC Registered Investment Advisor. Neither Kathleen A. Nolan nor Global Financial Private Capital gives tax or legal advice.