Pauline Paquin Be a Financially Independent Woman Would Change Your Life

Pauline Paquin is a financial expert and she has written on various concepts and ideas related to finance. Like many other women in this chapter, she also built herself up from the ground and now she is capable of handling her own finance. She exclaims;

“In my childhood, many times I saw my mother asked for some money from my uncle. As a normal mother who did not have any job, she definitely has not enough money for us to survive. Thus, every night, she would ask $20 to my uncle for buying the next day’s groceries. Even though my uncle was never saying no every time my mother asked for money, but for me, that was a quite uncomfortable moment in my life. I mean, can you imagine when you would need to ask permission every time you need to buy some personal things? That time, I said to myself that I do not want to experience as a life as my mother had.

That experience really has changed the way I want how my life would be. If I go for a date, then I would ask for 50-50 in sharing the bill. I also bought a property and built up a business 50-50 with my boyfriend. Every time I go for travel along with my partner, I would also apply this 50-50 sharing payment method. I never like it if I received any gift that might more expensive than the gift that I gave. I even have this uncomfortable feeling if I have to depend my expenses on a man.

I think that every single woman should be independent in their finance. We should never depend on any man for buying what we want or what we need. Being a financially independent woman would definitely change your life.

Whenever I am traveling with my partner, sometimes we prefer exchanging local currency and he seems to keep it. It actually means that whenever I have to buy something, I have to ask for money. Since he keeps the money, I have no other choice but to ask from him and it serves to annoy me a lot. Even when I am entitled to fifty percent of that money, I have to task for it and it aggravates me a lot. Think about it for a second, if you have to ask for money all the times when you need to purchase something, doesn’t it make you look like a kid who is reliant on an adult? I feel exactly the same and I cannot help but feel a little uncomfortable asking for money and looking like a child. I know that some might think I am going a little too overboard but that happens when you cannot control even a little money. I face a tough time receiving a gift which is more expensive than what I give as it seems to overwhelm me and even place a burden on me which doesn’t alleviate for a long time. I don’t think that I am different from other women because any logical woman would feel the same. Every woman wants a little bit of financial independence and if I don’t even have a little bit of my own money then I would not feel comfortable to be dependent on a man.

It is quite common to hear about couples distributing the bills when they settle down. Sometimes only one person pays the bills, it can be either a woman or a man. While the other times, couples distribute the bills among themselves to ensure that one doesn’t get overwhelmed carrying such a heavy burden by himself or herself. A very common case is having the one pay the largest part in the bill who earns more. This method of paying suggests that the percentage of bills can be distributed among two people on the basis of their salary. In my case, my partner was actually worth ten times more than what I was earning at that time. Can you really feel the difference? Did it mean that I should only pay ten percent while leaving the rest to be paid by my partner? It did not settle right with me at all. Just how could I be at ease knowing that most of the bills are paid by my partner while I am paying only ten percent of those bills and still living happily in the house?

At that time, my situation was quite funny because I didn’t know that my partner felt the same. After a little while, we broke up because we didn’t feel that we would be able to live together like couples for a longer time. Anyways, that was when I bought half of his house and he said that he didn’t like to sleep in the house when he knew that she was now the owner. He said that he was uncomfortable and this thought bugged him all the time and also made him feel down. We were indeed a unique financial match! This feeling was one of the few things which we shared with each other.

I can easily say that the only uneven relationship that I had was with a broke student. Compared to my other partner, I felt more secure in this relationship because we both paid for half of our daily expenses. It was quite nice and I have to admit that I enjoyed the freedom that I had while being in a relationship with him. For all of our normal expenses, we would easily pay for them by distributing them in half. I was quite happy because now I didn’t have to ask for money and I certainly didn’t have to be dependent on him for paying for anything I wanted. I didn’t like to pay for his part though. Indeed, there was a time when I had to pay his part and cover his contributions in the expenses as well. Again, it didn’t settle down with me.

Resentment is actually what I want to avoid at all costs in a relationship when I am paying for half of everything I need. If I only talk about the case of my uncle, he could have easily said to my aunt that he earns by working hard and she spends most of his salary on nothing but purchasing nail polish. What I am trying to say is that even some of the happiest relationships can shift and become sour quickly. I want to make sure that my relationship doesn’t turn like that no matter what. For six straight years, my sister was married. They lived happily but like a classic example, it fell apart before my own eyes. When she got divorced, a lot of questions related to money were made and I was certainly not happy after hearing them. For instance, her husband accused her or not working enough and contributing to the budget. I think that if they had decided to go 50-50 payment for expenses before then it would have already become difficult for my sister to continue living. After all, my sister didn’t have enough experience in finance management and thus, when they got separated, she faced a lot of difficulties. For instance, before she was living in a large house and on her own, she had to live in a smaller house.

I really don’t want to live in a bubble where I believe that I am entitled to more money than what I can earn at the moment. All those who think like this should be beware of the consequences which can fall on them if they don’t correct how they are thinking. I am emphasizing more on this point because almost the same thing happened to my own sister and I know exactly how she felt after she got divorced. My ex-boyfriend forced me a lot to purchase costly clothes and he would often complain about why I didn’t want to eat anything expensive. The reason was that I didn’t feel comfortable in claiming something that I could not have on my own. I didn’t to even purchase a thing which I could not afford on my own. Due to it, I never had to hear anything about wasting money.

Most of the women often rely on their partners for managing their budgets and it can be quite easy at first. However, with the passage of time, it starts to become difficult until the point reaches when women have to take a stand. When they don’t even know how to manage their finance, how can they stay firm? Whether women are in a relationship or they are married, they should make sure that they know how to manage their budget.

            Other than just managing the budget, women should be financially independent. It is not that difficult to be financially strong and independent.

            The very first thing that you should do to be financially strong is to gain financial information. I am not saying that you have to a financial master, you just need to have the intermediate understanding level. When you know enough about finance, you will be able to manage your own budget effectively. Even when you are learning more about finance, you should make sure that you are not completely reliant on someone else for your budget.