Empowering Young Women Through Financial Literacy with Her Wealth Founder James Comblo

Are you aware of the gender gap in financial literacy? In this episode, James Comblo shares the impact of programs like Her Wealth, designed to empower girls aged 16-28 with the tools for financial independence. Through candid discussions, relatable anecdotes, and actionable strategies, we explore how parents and educators can foster environments that prioritize vital financial conversations. We aim to dismantle the stigma surrounding money discussions and encourage open dialogues about spending, saving, and budgeting. 

From practical tips for managing credit to insights on developing a healthy relationship with finances, this episode is packed with valuable information that every parent and young woman should hear. Join us as we advocate for a brighter financial future for young women by bridging the gaps that exist.  

We'll discuss:

• Overview of financial literacy statistics among young women
• Discussion of the importance of financial education for students
• Insightful perspectives on the gender gap in financial knowledge
• Analysis of real-world examples demonstrating the impact of education
• Practical strategies for parents to engage in financial discussions
• Resources available for teachers and parents to support financial literacy

If you know any young women between the ages of 16 and 28, connect them with the Her Wealth's free webinars.

Free financial literacy curriculum at the Council for Economic Education

Chapters

• 0:00 Not all financial challenges are equal
• 2:59 Tackling the gender gap in financial literacy
• 1:05:17 The importance of financial education for all
• 2:21:10 Insights into the financial literacy gender divide
• 2:25:16 Resources for educators and parents
• 9:48:01 Practical strategies for parents and guardians

Transcript

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 0:00

Not all financial challenges are equal. Today we're tackling the gender gap in financial literacy and sharing actionable ways to empower the next generation of women with the knowledge they need to thrive. Welcome to the brighter side of education, research, innovation and resources. I'm your host, dr Lisa Hassler, here to enlighten and brighten the classrooms in America through focused conversation on important topics in education. In each episode, I discuss problems we as teachers and parents are facing and what people are doing in their communities to fix it. What are the variables and how can we duplicate it to maximize student outcomes? In episode 40, guiding Children to Financial Fluency, I spoke with family financial advisor Anthony Delaney about the impact of early financial literacy education and shared how his Owning the Dash book series is being used as a valuable resource by teachers and parents. And today we narrow that discussion to the prevailing gender gap and offer solutions to increase female financial literacy.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 1:12

But let's take a moment and share these numbers. Allow them to soak in. Nearly half of Americans 40% have less than $300 in savings. Among millennials, only one in four demonstrates basic financial literacy. Perhaps the most alarming is that half of today's youth are projected to earn less than their parents. Now, for young women, these challenges are even more acute as they've been historically underserved by the financial world, making financial literacy education not just beneficial but essential for creating equal access to financial opportunity. There is hope, however. The Council for Economic Education's research shows that students who receive personal finance education make significantly different financial choices, demonstrating improved credit scores, reduced default rates, higher likelihood of having a credit file and lower rates of outstanding debt. Now these numbers have influenced 35 states to make financial literacy not only part of their high school curriculum, but as a required course for graduation, and the number of states grows yearly.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 2:21

Research from Lussardi and Mitchell, published in the Annual Review of Economics, alongside a longitudinal study by Chen and Volpe, reveals compelling evidence about the gender gap in financial literacy. Now, while the gap emerges as early as middle school, with young girls showing markedly less confidence in math and money-related topics despite equal academic performance, targeted interventions show promising results. Chen and Volpe's study found that schools implementing specific financial education programs saw a 40% increase in female students' financial confidence and a 35% improvement in practical financial decision-making skills. These findings underscore both the challenge and the opportunity before us To discuss female-targeted financial programs in depth. I'm thrilled to welcome James Comblo, president and CEO of FSC Wealth Advisors, james brings an insightful perspective to today's conversation, as both a financial planner and father of three girls. Through his program, her Wealth, he's empowering young women to take control of their financial futures by helping them create the lives they want, not the lives they're forced to live. Welcome to the podcast, james.

James Comblo: 3:38

Thank you, Lisa.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 3:39

Now you've written up that financial literacy doesn't happen by accident, yet we expect people to somehow master money management without direct education. As both a financial advisor and a father of three daughters, what do you see as the missing piece in how we approach financial education in America?

James Comblo: 3:58

Yeah, so I think historically we've kind of missed teaching our youth about money, right, it's always been taboo, nobody wants to talk about it. You're not supposed to talk about how much you have or don't have or any of these things and so I think that's historically been the missing piece. Now I do know they're starting to incorporate personal finances and economics into high school courses and that kind of stuff. But there's always the difference between the textbook, which is what I think you find in a lot of classroom settings, and real life, right, definitely. And I, you know, just being a financial planner, when I took my series seven I went through that where I'm reading the book, I'm studying and learning everything that they're trying to teach you, and then you get into the real world and 95% of that maybe doesn't actually apply, you know. And so I think that's been the biggest missing link is how do you take what you learn in today's world in the classroom and really apply it to real life?

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 4:52

I've even heard different therapists say not to burden your child with financial problems or woes or discussions to add anxiety onto them, and so maybe that makes them a little cautious about talking with money to their children.

James Comblo: 5:07

Yeah, and so I wrote a blog about this a couple of years back, where I think it has to be a part of the conversation. And I agree with you People do not feel comfortable sharing it, and a lot of my clients have come to me over the years and asked hey, can you speak to my child or my grandchild? They're working through this. I don't feel confident that I have the answer right. You're our person, you're the one who helps us. Can you help them? And that's really where this kind of thought process started. But in the blog I wrote about definitely talking about it with your kids the mistakes as well as the good things right. They will learn as fast from the mistakes as they will from the positives that you tell them, but I think including them in the conversation as a part of it will go a lot further than you know. I'm the expert, you're the student and I'm going to tell you what to do. Right, like this is what we've done here were the bad things, here were the good things right.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 5:58

Yeah.

James Comblo: 5:58

And making it real.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 6:06

I've noticed a difference, just as I've gotten older, that my financial knowledge has increased and so I'm able to give better financial advice to my youngest child, you know, versus my older child, who was in a different phase of my life. As a financial planner, you've sat across the table from hundreds of women in various life situations, from couples planning their future to those navigating widowhood or even divorce. What kind of patterns have you seen that have inspired you to create Her Wealth specifically for young women?

James Comblo: 6:36

Yeah. So there's a couple of things, the first being that women, historically, have not been included in the conversation, right, for some reason, men just think this is what we do. I think men enjoy it more than women do, quite honestly, and I've seen this where, even with new clients that are coming to meet me for the first time, the husband will say, hey, I do the money, so I'll come in. And I say, well, it's both of your plans, so let's make sure your wife is with us, and if she can't make it that day, we'll find a different day. But her opinion matters, and I think you know they just don't feel confident either speaking up, and I've seen many women look at the husband for the answer during the conversation we're having and I say, well, I heard his answer, I want to hear your answer. Right, and just letting them know that it's a safe space to voice any concerns, questions, thoughts that they have. There's no wrong answers, there's no stupid questions, right? It's all about education, and I think that's been the most glaring pattern.

James Comblo: 7:31

That stands out is just that the women aren't involved, and about a year and a half ago I had a lady come sit down with me. She had just lost her husband tragically, six months earlier, very unexpected, and they had millions of dollars, and she didn't know that they had any money at all, like she had no idea and then, and so that was, you know, obviously very difficult to help her through. But then I had another lady who her husband. She was very involved in everything, but her husband made the final decision on everything and she said to me if something happens to him, will you be there to take care of me? I said, of course, but I'm going to give you the tools to make sure that you can take care of yourself if I'm not here, because that's, you know, one of the main things that we have to make sure of.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 8:12

What a lot of the studies are showing is that confidence level of. I feel confident enough to be able to handle those finances and whatever it is investments, stocks, ira, retirement accounts they can get so complex if you don't have confidence in being able to manage in the interest. See where a lot of people are in those positions.

James Comblo: 8:33

Yeah, and I'll say, like with my own personal situation, my wife. She's one of the smartest people that I've ever met, ever been around. She's super intelligent. She just doesn't really like talking about finances and figuring out the budget and all that stuff. Yeah, own family. It has every document you'll possibly need. It has a list of names of people to call different things. What do you do if something happens? In the first 30 days, 60 days? But I sit with her and we go through it at least once a year and I say here's all the documents, here's all the accounts we have. She knows these are our accounts, these are why we have them and at a very high level, she can at least ask intelligent questions of the next person that will take over managing our finances for her. And she has that baseline education. She just doesn't enjoy it so she doesn't want to do it every day.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 9:25

My husband really enjoys that and I don't, so I love the idea of a planner. They have access to seeing the accounts. Knowing the information, knowing who to reach out to, is really crucial for what you're experiencing with women that were going through different life situations and being able to have the confidence to say, oh, I know exactly where to go now because all the information is in this place and I know who to contact. I know how to handle it. That confidence really makes a difference. You have three daughters.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 9:53

I have a daughter as well, and I was telling you how I have different life advice that I've given her versus my oldest son, because of my various stages in life as well, and confidence to be able to talk with her, and I know that I've handled her financial knowledge very differently than I did my oldest. It had nothing to do with gender, but more of where I was in life and how confident I was as a mother. So how do you approach her wealth? What does a young woman experience when she joins your webinars and how does the program build that bridge between the financial knowledge and the confidence?

James Comblo: 10:31

So I have three daughters and a wife and one of the things that keeps me up at night is what will they do if something happens to me? And I have this saying it's a joke that I say it's not really a joke, but it's kind of a joke I say I'm raising Spartans. My girls are going to be tough, they're going to be fearless and they are going to not need anybody else's help. They'll probably take it and I hope they will, but I'm going to teach them everything I can. And that was kind of the thought process behind HerWell where we started. We wanted it to be a safe space for anybody. There's no baseline knowledge you have to have. You can know nothing and show up and hopefully learn something that you can implement tomorrow.

James Comblo: 11:07

So the first thing we do is, when you sign up, we solicit feedback. We want to know what questions are you thinking? Why did you sign up? What do you actually want to know? And that helps us build the presentation that we're going to do in any given setting.

James Comblo: 11:21

So one that we did a couple of months ago, I think.

James Comblo: 11:23

We had like 75 questions submitted and then we kind of break them down into groups and we say, okay, these three things are the topics we're going to talk about tonight, and we try to get deep enough where they can actually learn and apply, but it's high level enough where, if you're not at the point where you're going to start doing it tomorrow, you still have an understanding of what we spoke about and you're good for when you need it in the future.

James Comblo: 11:44

And I think that's really the main thing is being able to use their words to answer their questions for them, and then you're going to get the knowledge right. We're going to give you the real world experience. We're going to cut out all the fluff that you get in the classroom, and one of the things we heard over the last couple of months is that, hey, I'm learning about this in school, but we never heard somebody talk about it that way, and I give a lot of real world examples of why this is what you hear on TV, but this is what you actually need to be doing, and here's the disconnect between the two. So that's the whole goal is how do we make it a place where you feel confident to show up, ask your questions, be heard and then eventually get them answered?

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 12:22

And so they would go to your website to sign up for this. Where do you access it?

James Comblo: 12:27

Yeah, so they can sign up through our website. It's been a lot of word of mouth. Some Facebook groups that have mothers of different neighborhoods or areas they've said hey, there's this webinar happening tonight. It's at 6 pm. Sign up and you can get on and learn.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 12:42

What kinds of topics do you generally lean towards?

James Comblo: 12:52

What aspects of financial literacy? Yeah, so a lot of the time, because the age group is basically 16 to 28. And the idea behind that was these young women are going to college, they're picking careers, they're entering the workforce, they're probably going to start making money at some point soon. But the other side of it is, once you reach age 35, the thoughts and things that are kind of ingrained in your mind usually don't change. After that. It's like a 10% chance that you adjust your approach, and so we want to get you in that window where it's really formative, right Before you get your first paycheck.

James Comblo: 13:22

We want you to understand how am I going to set my budget up? Where are my dollars going to go before we actually receive that money? And so that's why we targeted that group. But some of the topics have been like a lot of the girls asked what is a budget? How do you set up a budget? What's the best way to execute a budget? What is debt? What's college debt? What's a mortgage? Right? How do I buy a car? Like these types of things? And to answer that question, I think you got to start with a goal right. You have to set your goals. What are you trying to actually accomplish, and then we can back into answering all those those different things, and so that's a couple of the topics that we've talked about over the past.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 13:57

For my daughter when she started working. We sat her down and my husband said talk with your life coach about getting a budget. And then he sat down with her and said, okay, let's go through this whole thing together. And then a friend of ours who is a CPA. We asked him to sit down with her and talk about investments. She was 18 years old, talking about all right, you have this money. You should be thinking about retirement. If this is your budget when you have a home, how are you going to get a home? How are you going to save that money? Where can you invest it now to earn more money? Instead of sitting in a savings account, can you earn more money in a CD or something like that? So to have a financial advisor like yourself, be able to give some strategically different advice that really makes financial sense goes much further in their financial future and their confidence to be able to say my money's not just going to sit here, I'm going to make it work for me.

James Comblo: 14:54

Yeah, one of the baseline topics that we spoke about was just assets versus liabilities, right, like what is an actual asset? And the most simple way I could break it down was from the Rich Dad Poor Dad book, where he said an asset puts money in your pocket and a liability takes money out. And a lot of people think buying that nice car is an asset, but every day it loses value, right, and you're shelling money out to own that car. And so just kind of breaking down those fundamental things We've talked about investing and what an actual stock is and what debt is and bonds and all that stuff, and I tried to relate it to things like college debt, right.

James Comblo: 15:30

But yeah, it really starts with what are you trying to do? How do we break that down into smaller steps to then get there? And for the new year, we sent out an email blast to everybody who's attended in the past and we said, hey, great time to start looking at your goals. Here's five quick tips that we would do immediately, with real life examples, to get 2025 started off on the right path.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 15:50

What unexpected insights have you gained from working with young women through HerWealth?

James Comblo: 15:56

Quite honestly, I guess the lack of the grasp of the base knowledge that people need to have while entering their working years, the fact that nobody understands what taxes are and how they work, and all that. That's a fundamental piece of being successful and I always go back to if you make $50,000 a year for 40 years, you're going to earn somewhere between I don't know $3 and $5 million. But how much of that are you going to keep? That's the real question. And then taxes play a massive part in that. So just understanding how you're taxed and that we live in a progressive tax system and I think that was the biggest glaring thing was just that, again, these girls wanted to know about budgeting, which is so basic right in our minds, but they're actually thirsty for the knowledge. That was also pretty eye-opening to me.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 16:45

And you know what I was really surprised with is we were helping my daughter plan for buying a home, so she bought her first home just a few months ago. She's 21 years old. She had saved her money. She followed all the great advice that these financial advisors and myself and my husband had provided her, so really gave her a great base. But one thing I was not prepared for was the fact that she didn't have a credit history at such a young age. My whole stance on credit card was don't ever get a credit card because I don't want you to fall into some financial hole. And instead they were like she needs to have a credit card and I thought, oh my gosh, this is not where I thought this was going. So this was advice that someone like you could give a young woman to say these are things that you need to start thinking about to build a credit history in order to be able to get loans in the future and how to manage that.

James Comblo: 17:41

Yeah, some advice that I've always given, because you're 100% right, you do need a credit history. It's the way you get things done in life. I like to say but you don't want to get in trouble and I've helped a lot of people out of really bad debt situations. What I tell people is get the credit card, only buy things that you can pay for in cash today. And maybe you know, if you have like, like I have Con Edison right.

James Comblo: 18:08

So I put my Con Ed bill on my credit card. I put different things on the credit card because I know I'm going to pay them. I have to pay them either way, but at least I'm getting reward points and then I use those points effectively to help my family travel and do those kinds of things. So the things that have to be paid every single month they're coming like clockwork, or things that you're going to buy in cash I would say you can put it on the credit card. But outside of that, you don't want to make a big purchase on a credit card that you're going to be paying 25% or 30% interest over 10 years. I think that makes no sense and you got to kind of create those guardrails for anybody who's just starting.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 18:42

Yes, absolutely. And what kind of rewards am I going to get? How much are the fees going to be? How are you going to actually gain something from that relationship other than the credit history Things to consider? So those are great conversations. Could you share a specific success story, then, that stands out from one of your HerWealth participants.

James Comblo: 19:01

Yeah, there's one specific story that started a couple of years back with the daughter of a client of mine where she just entered the workforce. She's in her early twenties. She had this great title she's a rock star, she's at a really big company, she's getting promoted quickly and she's got all this money and all these goals but doesn't really know how to allocate them. And I took her through the process that we're implementing in all these HerWealth seminars and webinars and meetings that we're doing. She just bought her first house all by herself. She didn't need mom and dad's help.

James Comblo: 19:33

She's not married yet, so she didn't use her spouse's money and she implemented all the things that we've done to get her where she wants to be. By the way, she's also got a great retirement savings already started, so she's got longevity there and she'll continue to do that. And she did it all using the right process, the right thought process, which I always say. It's simple to become wealthy, but it's not easy and it requires consistency and she's kind of the shining star, I would say, in the whole thought process of what we're doing.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 20:27

That's great to hear Flipping confidence builder to say I can stand on my own two feet, this is what I've earned, I've saved it, I made these decisions and look at where it's gotten me. And so that really does build that confidence with being able to have trusted advice and following that trusted advice.

James Comblo: 20:46

Yeah, I mean, that's incredible Buying her own house by the time she's 21.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 20:51

Yeah.

James Comblo: 20:51

That's great, so kudos to you as mom and dad. My own personal story I was the first person in my family to buy a home and I did it six months before I was 30. I thought that was such an accomplishment. And now to help people and hear about people in their early 20s buying homes on their own, I mean that's incredible.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 21:09

Yeah, definitely. I think it's exciting because what you're doing helps build young women to have the confidence to be able to do things like that. What kind of transformations do you witness in financial confidence or decision making in participants overall?

James Comblo: 21:26

So one of the young women who was on one of the webinars we did in I think it was November she was in her mid to late twenties, making a lot of money, but had all of this bad debt, essentially and she just said I now know how I'm going to attack this. This was great. I can't wait for the next one, because she basically put together a high level plan of attacking her debt using something we went over. I call it the debt snowball. It's like, hey, here's the way to think about this, here's how you're going to attack it. One by one, you're going to build momentum, which is then going to make you more confident that you can actually pay it all down, and then, once you get that figured out now, you're going to start to accumulate retirement assets and all that kind of stuff. So watching that transformation happen within one hour conversation that we essentially had was great.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 22:15

Yeah, it really is. Your program is making a lot of impacts on individual young women, like you were talking about, with being able to attack that and save for homes and retirement. How do you envision HerWealth scaling to reach more schools or communities and what does that mean for closing the financial literacy gender gap?

James Comblo: 22:29

So going forward we just implemented that newsletter that we're going to send out it's and what does that mean for closing the financial literacy gender gap?

James Comblo: 22:34

So, going forward, we just implemented that newsletter that we're going to send out.

James Comblo: 22:36

It's going to be bi-monthly or quarterly.

James Comblo: 22:37

The idea is to get people to share it, get more people involved and hopefully, I mean my grand vision is to have chapters across the country where, if you want to see somebody in person and have other young women involved in teaching, I also think it's going to make a lot of sense to bring mothers into the conversation, because we want to approach the younger group, but I've also found that they're not as confident to ask the question they want to ask in the moment, and so I think having a mother or an older female figure who's confident enough to ask the question or at least regurgitate what they were just asked on the side will go a long way to making more impact.

James Comblo: 23:13

And I think that's it. How do we get that knowledge base into a generation where they're not out of that growth stage, like I talked about, right after the age of 35? How do we get that knowledge into them today and set them up for that longer term future so that 40 years from now, when I'm looking back on my career, I can say, hey, we've helped a lot of young women actually figure this out, and the country's better off for it.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 23:37

Yeah, I think that's exciting. I hope that happens. I'm 100% behind that one. So let's end with some practical advice for our listeners. As a financial advisor who's also raising daughters, what are your top strategies for parents to build financial confidence at home?

James Comblo: 23:55

Yeah. So it's funny I have a five-year-old she's almost six and we don't talk about money. We talk about money, but what I talk about with her is creating value. How do you create value in our household? And we'll give you rewards, which is often money, right? She'll say, like she saw me leaving this morning. She said, oh, you're going to the office, you're going to get the money, because she thinks like I'm working to get money, right.

James Comblo: 24:22

But I also tell her that money is useless. We don't want the money, we want what the money can do for us. And so once she does something in the house and we give her a reward of, say, a dollar, we then ask her okay, do you want to share it, save it or spend it? And we give her those choices to also create that tangibility of the money. Here's the actual value of it.

James Comblo: 24:44

And then I bring them to Costco and we talk about different reasons we can or we can't buy things, how much it costs, and she's really into math, and so we kind of go through all that stuff together, which is interesting to see, and I just think having those conversations now right, if you're 15, 16 years old or you have a kid who's 15, 16, talk to them about credit card debt, right? Hey, here's our credit card statement. Here's what happens if we don't pay it. Here's what happens when we do pay it. Here's the points we get as a reward. Just to use that example again and just going through those real world experiences of what you're doing, the decisions you're making and why you're making them, and then allowing them to just ask questions.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 25:31

Yeah, Sometimes sharing what went wrong. This is what I learned from it. Just being able to have those open conversations like nothing is off the table.

James Comblo: 25:36

Yeah, I could not agree more, and I I think more than just money like this is going to impact their lives and and make them understand that you're somebody who will be there as a trusted support system, not somebody who's going to scold them and hopefully make them more open to talking to you about things later on in life if they ever need your help. So I think these conversations, although we're talking about money, they filter or factor into the rest of your life as well, and so I think they're super important to have.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 26:06

Yeah, absolutely Well. Thank you so much, James, for not only sharing your insights today, but for turning your observations into action. Through Her Wealth, You're helping young women write their own financial stories rather than inherit someone else's.

James Comblo: 26:20

Thank you for having me, lisa, it was great.

Dr. Lisa Hassler: 26:23

Here are some ways that you can take action. Educators, you can access free financial literacy curriculum at the Council for Economic Education's website. Parents, start those dinner table money conversations tonight using James' strategies. And if you know any young women between the ages of 16 and 28, connect them with the Her Wealth's free webinars at fscwealthadvisorscom. And links to all these resources are in our show notes. If you have a story about what's working in your schools that you'd like to share, you can email me at lisa at drlisahasslercom, or visit my website at wwwdrlisahasslercom and send me a message. If you like this podcast, subscribe and tell a friend. The more people that know, the bigger impact it will have. And if you find value to the content in this podcast, consider becoming a supporter by clicking on the supporter link in the show notes. It is the mission of this podcast to shine light on the good in education so that it spreads, affecting positive change. So let's keep working together to find solutions that focus on our children's success.