How to Grow Your Wealth While Still Making a Positive Impact

This week, Maggie is chatting with Emily Green, who is the Director of Private Wealth at Ellevest. In this episode, they discuss how you can build your wealth and prepare for your future, while still making sure that your money is making an impact on the issues you care most about. Plus, they dig into how you can keep your values top of mind when setting financial goals.

Related Links:

• https://www.ellevest.com/

• Connect with Emily on LinkedIn

• Follow Emily on Instagram

• Follow Ellevest on Instagram

• Follow Ellevest on Twitter

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Emily is the Director of Private Wealth at Ellevest. She’s worked in the financial services industry for over ten years, most recently at J.P. Morgan, and has a degree in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She grew up in Chicago with two financially fierce women: her mother and grandmother. Emily is on the board of Plan International USA, an organization dedicated to creating an equal world for girls. She is also a steering committee member of Alvin Ailey’s Young Patron Circle. Emily lives in New York City and currently spends her free time taking Ally Love’s classes on Peloton.

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To join the Money Circle Community, visit www.maggiegermano.com/moneycircle.

To learn more about Maggie and her coaching and speaking services, visit www.maggiegermano.com.

The theme music is called Escaping Light by Aaron Sprinkle. The podcast artwork design is by Maggie’s dear husband, Dan Rader.

TRANSCRIPTION

Maggie Germano 0:07
Thanks for listening to the money circle Podcast. I am your host, Maggie Germano and I’m a financial coach for women. I’m passionate about helping women improve their relationship with money so that they can take better control of their futures. Part of that journey is making personal finance education more accessible and less judgmental, which is why this podcast exists. Each week we’ll discuss a new financial topic to help you explore how you can make a difference in your own financial life or in society as a whole.

If you’re interested in diving deeper into issues like income inequality, debt or money, shame, check out my new money circle community. In this safe feminist space women gathered to talk about money without fear of being judged or shamed. We will break down shame and build community and safety for everyone so that you can find the support you need to gain control over your finances. Visit Maggiegermano.com/moneycircle to learn more and to join the community today. I can’t wait to see you there.

Hey there, and thanks for listening. I’m your host Maggie Germano. And this week, I’m chatting with Emily Green, who is the director of private wealth at Ellevest, which is a robo advisor that specifically focuses on the needs of women. In this episode, we discuss how you can build your wealth and prepare for your future while still making sure that your money is making an impact on the issues you care most about. Plus, we dig into how you can keep your values top of mind when setting your own financial goals. Enjoy.

Okay, welcome, Emily. Thanks so much for being here today.

Emily Green 1:51
Thanks for having me.

Maggie Germano 1:53
So why don’t we start off by having you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do? Great.

Emily Green 1:59
So I’m Emily Green, I work for a company called Ellevest. We are a company focused on closing all money gaps for women. And I can explain a little bit more about what that means. But I’m an I run their private wealth team. And so I run the high net worth business, which is women who have accumulated wealth, typically about a million dollars or more, helping them to invest achieve their goals, while all while helping them to support other women.

Maggie Germano 2:31
That’s great. And how did you kind of find yourself both in wealth management but also with Ellevest?

Emily Green 2:39
Yeah, so you know, wealth management, I had always wanted to work in finance. And I think it was one of those things that I didn’t know what exactly I wanted to do. And I look back now. And it’s interesting, because I came from a family that my grandmother, my grandparents were divorced my entire life. And my grandma was legally blind, she could see enough to like read a newspaper a little bit and such and she would she really spent her time day trading stocks. Would you think back in those days that it’s not something a lot of people did, let alone a woman in a Chicago suburb. Um, and then, you know, I look back as well. And growing up, my mom was really the one who ran all the finances in our household, she did the investing not and not just the budgeting, which I think a lot of people think that a man does the investing, the woman does the budgeting and you know, that type of thing. You know, she really took charge of all that. And so, you know, I think that did influence the way that when I was in finance, that I found my way to wealth management. I also really like the interactions with people. It’s fun to feel like you’re actually helping people and getting to know them develop those relationships. And, you know, I look back, I worked for a big bank for a long time. And it was fine. You know, I worked with very wealthy people helping them to invest. And I realized one day that I live in New York City, and a lot of these people were old white men, and most of them and they were kind of two things. One, you would always see these decks. And a lot of these old white men were married to a woman. And yet somehow, like the deck, always just had, like, John’s name, didn’t have Sarah’s name on it. And they never invited their wife to the meeting. And that just always bothered me. And then I realized as I worked with a lot of some of those high power attorneys in New York, you’d go meet with these women and they were sitting on tons of cash. And you realize like, why are all these women sitting on cash while these men are investing in the amount that it’s costing them over? Their life. And so I knew who our CEO Sallie Krawcheck was she was a very well known is a very well known woman in finance. And saw Ellevest and had followed them for a while. And so then when they wanted to start private wealth, I knew I had to come over. So I was actually the first person in their private wealth team.

Maggie Germano 5:23
That’s really great. And and I love how interesting your background is with your family and just seeing from a young age, that women are obviously capable to manage their own investments and not just manage the household budget, but also be thinking and planning and investing for the future. So that that must have had a really big impact on you.

Emily Green 5:43
Yeah, I mean, I think we look now of how much that impacts kids. So I think that was a huge part of it.

Maggie Germano 5:50
Yeah, absolutely. And so you started talking about Ellevest a little bit, but tell us a little bit more. I’ve been following them for a while as well. And I talk about them here and there when I’m talking about investing. But tell us more about Ellevest? Like, what, what do they do as a company and kind of what is? What is their mission?

Emily Green 6:10
Yeah. So again, our mission is to close the gender money gaps, what is a gender money gap? So when we first started, we’re actually focused on one part of the money gap, which is the gender investment gap. So the fact that women keep 70 cents of every dollar in cash, which for the average woman cost her hundreds of 1000s, if not over a million dollars over her lifetime. So huge amounts of money that we’re looking at here. And so when we first started, awe were thinking about how do we get women invested. And so we did years of research to understand why weren’t women investing as much, and it wasn’t what Wall Street would tell you, it wasn’t that women are risk averse, or they’re not interested in talking about money, or any of those things. It was, frankly, that wall street was built by men for men. And the way that investing was structured, was really focused on the way that men think. And when you dug deeper into it, it was know women actually are not risk averse. They’re risk aware, in the sense that they’re mostly goals based, they don’t really care if x stock does better than y stock, they care if they can buy their house, they can pay for their kids college, they can retire them they want, they can leave their job that they hate, you know, they can do all of these things. And this is perpetuated by the fact that women live 16 years longer than men, our salaries peak in our 40s versus men in their 50s. And we make less money over our lifetime overall. So we actually need more money than men. So it’s actually even more important to us to invest in. So we originally started solely focused as a digital firm, with no minimum to help women to get invested who are really not treated by wall street in general. And that quickly evolved to starting private wealth. A year later for we actually had a lot of women with accumulated wealth coming to us and saying, Hey, what about us, like, these traditional places don’t work for us either. We need we need this as well. And then this summer, we launched, we relaunched our what is our digital platform as a membership model. And really, that was to make this more accessible to all women. And so you know, thinking about not that you don’t even, you know, in our previous model, you could invest with the dollar, but not everyone has $1 to invest. And so thinking about how can we make sure that we’re helping women with all of the money gaps, that I’ll come back and explain, but the I’m looking at how I need to pay off debt, I need to career wise thinking about I need sessions and thinking about this, um, it debit card that helps you kind of save and so thinking about, I haven’t even built up my savings. So looking at all of these things. And so helping with banking, with the savings, career, financial planning, and that original business of are investing across that because when we looked at it, it was the money gap, that I’ll give you some really scary statistics here that we always talk about that women white women make 72 cents on a man’s dollar, it gets worse and worse for black and Latinx women. But the a white woman’s wealth on a white man’s is 32 cents on every dollar, a black and Latinx woman’s is one cent on a man’s dollar. And so you look at all of these things kind of perpetuated, not only investing but the gender pay gap. Women tend to pay higher interest rates, especially colored women. This you know, you look at all of this and so you look at The fact that this all perpetuates over their lifetime to one cent on a man’s dollar.

Maggie Germano 10:07
That is scary.

Emily Green 10:10
It is and we don’t talk about it.

Maggie Germano 10:11
No, we don’t talk about it that way. It’s like we talk about the wage gap. And obviously like that is really scary and upsetting and it perpetuates over the course of your life. But it’s hard to just automatically then understand the numbers of what that looks like for long term wealth and generational wealth and those sorts of things.

Emily Green 10:30
Yeah, and the wage gap is something that we can’t control ourselves so we can control our savings and getting money invested in things at least we can help to, you know, look ourselves to make that wealth gap smaller, which the, you know, wage gap seems to still be a long, long time away from from closing.

Maggie Germano 10:52
Right. Yeah, I think that’s something I always like to talk about, too, is like, obviously, it’s not just that women are not negotiating, that they’re not asking for more, because we know that they are, they’re just not necessarily getting what they’re asking for. And so pointing out where we don’t have the power to do something, but then also where we do have the power to do something, because it can feel it can feel really hopeless, if there’s like nowhere to actually focus energy to start making changes as individuals, when there’s so much kind of weighing down society, society.

Emily Green 11:28
Mm hmm. Yeah, you feel helpless.

Maggie Germano 11:31
Yeah. And so you said, so you were talking about how women, we’re not actually risk averse, we’re actually risk aware. And we’re very goal oriented and goal focused. And that’s something I’m hearing more and more about recently, which is really nice. So like, kind of trying to dispel some of those myths related to, you know, women just don’t want to invest, or they’re scared of investing or whatever. But you also mentioned earlier that women keep 70 cents of every dollar in cash. So what do you think kind of the disconnect is there or like the the reason for, I guess, holding on to that cash when we’re not actually risk averse?

Emily Green 12:11
I mean, so many things, I think that first just think about how money is talked about. I invite everyone to go watch CNBC, and then watch ESPN right after and you’ll be like, Oh, my God, these are modeled after each other. Like, there’s a reason that this is the way it is, and thinking about it. And so, you know, we always kind of joke that if White men got together 100 years ago, and said, how would we keep women and people of color down, they would have created Wall Street and private venture capital, the way it is today, because it’s so white and male. And so when you think about it, so the $69 trillion in the United States, 99% of that is managed by firms owned by white men. Money is one of the most personal things in your entire life, you know, you have your health, your kids your money. And so if you go into investment advisor, and the first thing they say to you is go read a book, or, you know, they’re like, Oh, it’s okay, honey, or they give you a 20 page deck that 19 pages is about, you know, PE ratios and things that you do not care they that not only women don’t know about the most men either that you’re kind of like just enfranchise from it, and you’re kind of like forget this, this is too hard, I might as well just sit in cash. And not do this. Also, media the way it talks to women about money in general. And so pick up a man’s magazine that goes through, you know, investment stock tips and these types of things. And then go look at Money Advice to women, that’s it’s always about budgeting, always, it’s never about investing, it’s always how to save money on not buying your coffee or how to use it in itself is shameful. You shouldn’t be spending money on clothes or shoes, but then society kind of tells you you have to buy spend money on clothes and shoes. So it’s the circle you know, within this and so it brings shame rather than you know, allowing you to feel good about yourself and powerful and that you can actually take advantage of this. And so I think that the way that money has been talked about in in general and that money has been made as like a male construct, frankly, and you look at it and you know, the symbol of Wall Street is a bowl like it is literally like a male symbol and then you know great that we have the fearless girl but the counter to that is like a little girl, um, even on that and so I think that’s even a message that doesn’t kind of get to the point that it actually true story they first try to make that a calf um, Like a baby cow, because that is so feminine or something.

Maggie Germano 15:05
Um, wow.

Emily Green 15:08
But you know, when looking at this, I think that that has really just shown women I’ve talked to so many women, they’re like, I talked to two guys, they totally talked down to me. So just like I just forgot it, I just didn’t want to do it anymore. Because he treated me terribly and it’s not. We were struggling not Meisner, like a mean guy, it’s just, you know, john, and that’s how the way that the industry has been taught to, to handle it.

Maggie Germano 15:33
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I hear that a lot to from folks who reach out to me for coaching or other services, and they’re just like, I just don’t want to work with some guy who’s gonna, like make me feel bad about my life choices, or who has no understanding of like, the things that I’m kind of juggling and doesn’t like, take into account like the wage gap, and, you know, having kids and living longer and all of those things that maybe they it’s just not occurring to them, they want someone who understands them.

Emily Green 16:06
Well, most of those, like projections that places us, you know, when you put in, you know, there’s a lot of especially, they have them all at the digital advisors now. But even in high net worth, you know, all the big banks use them, I used to use them when I worked in big bank world, and you project things, and they’re always supposed to be like gender neutral, but really, like they always, I remember, there was people die like 85. And like number one, like a lot of people live past 85. Now, and especially women. And so if you’re using a male salary curve, and a male’s life expectancy, and such, the woman is very likely that that scenario that you’re running is actually not going to work out for you. And that she will end up running out of money at some point in her life.

Maggie Germano 16:50
Right, which is terrifying to think about. You’re like in your 90s. And probably single since you know, if you’re heterosexual and men, women live longer than men, then you’re like on your own, and you’ve run out of money, and you’re in your 90s. And your healthcare is as expensive as it’s ever been like that just something that’s really terrifying to even consider.

Emily Green 17:11
Yeah, I mean, 80% of women manage their money by themselves at some point in their life. And so it’s important to look at that now, not when you’re 90 and alone, and the plan was not made for you.

Maggie Germano 17:24
Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense to me. And when you were describing how even the projections, technically, they’re like gender neutral, but they’re probably being based on male standards, generally. And I’ve heard that a lot with like, health care, testing, and like all these other things that even the that like accident dummies, then they use, like they were built the size of men and in the shape of men. And so there’s just like, not enough research showing what happens to women’s bodies. And same with like medications and things. Like how is that an oversight?

Emily Green 18:00
I just don’t I know, we have a healthcare fund we use and they were like until, like 10 years ago, they did, like places didn’t test on women. I’m like, What? Like, like, we’re half the population.

Maggie Germano 18:12
That’s what I was just about to say do yeah, we’re 50% of the population like, and we’re typically I mean, obviously, everybody’s different, but like, different shapes, different sizes, our bodies react differently. We need different thing. Yeah, like I just it’s just so bizarre.

Emily Green 18:27
Yeah, it really isn’t. Same way with money. It’s, it needs to be different. I like if one more bank has an initiative for women, and like, No, just like build your business. There’s no way that this work, like it’s not supposed to be an initiative. Or don’t like make your book pink or hosts like, oh, oh, it’s always like the work life balance. Like let’s have a conversation about work life. But like, for some reason, work life balance is like all the woman thing. Like, let’s have a conversation with an economist, let’s talk about like, you know, that you need to balance like your kids. And this. It’s just so funny.

Maggie Germano 19:00
Yeah, of course, men don’t want to have more time with no kids.

Emily Green 19:03
No, apparently not. No.

Maggie Germano 19:07
So you mentioned earlier that women tend to be very goal oriented when it comes to investing and kind of wealth planning and things like that. And again, that’s something I’m hearing more and more about, about how women are really considering their goals and their values when it comes to investing and using their money in ways that really just show the things that they care about and help them achieve what they want. And something that a lot of people ask me about here and there is like, I want to be investing, I want to be growing my wealth, but I also want to make sure my money is not going towards issues that I don’t believe in or companies that I don’t want to be supporting and like counteracting my other efforts in, you know, philanthropy or something like that. So what kind of options do people have if they really want their values to be playing out with their investments? Yeah, what kind of options do they have? Where can they kind of turn for that?

Emily Green 20:04
Yeah, I think this is so important. And money is so powerful. And I always think about what if we as women, all, you know, 50% of us of the United States or more really came together and said, we’re not going to invest in companies that don’t support us the cost of capital, so that these companies would have to raise money or do anything like this, you know, they would all fail, if we decided that we weren’t going to support them. So I think this is most important. I think that there’s been, there’s a couple of things to kind of remember in here, there’s been a journey with, you know, investing along with your values, there was 20 years ago, when it was really endowments from universities thinking about fossil fuels, and that was really the only issue. And then, you know, over the past decade or so a lot of it’s been focused on, like, I would say, gender equity, but in a very, very basic way of like, Is there a woman on the board type of thing, and apparently, that’s diversity. Um, but I think that actually, really, even through the pandemic, this has become a more and more important issue. And more and more people are focused on on how to think about it and making sure that they’re not putting their money in places that don’t, that don’t go against their values. And so, and you don’t need to be super rich to do this. And I think that’s always important to think about, because a lot of times, people think, oh, I don’t have enough money to be doing things like that. And so for, you know, when I look at our member, ship, right, there’s, again, there’s no minimum, people can invest $1, what are called funds, so they’re pulling together all sorts of companies within them, and using certain criteria to look at that. And so when we look at it, it’s not only thinking about that woman on the board for gender, but how are women disproportionately affected by basically everything, from climate change to human rights, guns, all these things? So how are we thinking about all those things in the portfolio. And I think it’s really important here that you, there’s a lot of it’s called, like, ESG, investing is kind of the like, flavor of what everyone talks about with this, and it’s become like a super hot thing lately. And everyone’s created funds with it. But it’s important that you talk to someone who actually dives deeper into these funds, because a lot of times these funds, um, they may by name seem like the most impact oriented thing that exists, but there’s, they’re really not or these types of things. So this is there’s a lot of ambiguity in it. So I’m talking to someone or using someone like all of us that can help you to do that. And moving everybody into that weigh in that. And then for women who have accumulated wealth, like, we spent a lot of time in 2018, and then we redid it in 2019. Or, we spent a lot of time we were doing 2022, like, What year is this? How can I forget, it’s 2020, um, that looking at how all companies disproportionately affect women, so not only looking at those very basic things, but looking at the fact that, um, you know, the the human rights violations of companies, because human rights disproportionately affect women, looking at the climate change. And this is something that we even took to another degree this summer, as we looked at the racial disparities in our country. And so climate change disproportionately affects women, and especially women of color. And so we looked at this, it was thinking about you know, how can we make sure that we’re not investing in those companies that are supporting that we actually for our private wealth clients do something pretty cool that we do this like health check thing that you can look at your current account and see how much they aligned to your values, which I think is always an interesting scenario. I’ll tell you the most efficient I always tell people make Don’t feel bad if you think you’re not invested in fact, because like, the family office of the world, like these people who are like name brands and have websites dedicated to be philanthropic and they’re doing all these things, I run these for them and they’re always like, oh, wow, like Yeah, yes, you have not gotten there. And so don’t worry, it’s not if you’re not rich, you’re not doing it correctly. But us especially is just behind on this and so but I think that thinking about that and moving your money in those ways because it is available to everyone is very Really important and important for us to do now,

Maggie Germano 25:03
I totally agree. And I’m really happy to hear that it’s becoming more popular and more of a focus for a lot of people and companies and philanthropists, because that’s the thing, like, I spoke to someone a few weeks ago who would talk about, you know, like, if you’re anti, you know, you’re pro gun control, and you’re like, constantly working and volunteering and donating your money to, you know, influence gun control policies in the United States, but then you find out that a bunch of your investments are going towards, you know, gun manufacturers and things like that, that can be like, really frustrating. And yeah, am I, you know, am I totally going against what I’m working towards, because I’m making money off of these companies and off of these issues that I feel so passionately about. And something that I think that people worry about a little bit Sometimes, though, is that if they are investing aligned with their values, there’s less money to be made, and more that their money will not be growing over time. And so then there can be this like, Okay, I guess I just won’t have as much money as I would otherwise because it to live aligned with my values.

So can you talk a little bit more on that and and either debunk me or tell me that that’s right, you know, what does that look like?

Emily Green 26:22
Yeah, that’s not true. It was true. 25 years ago, for sure, when thinking about this, but it is not true today. I am convinced this is a story that old white financial advisors tell because they don’t want to learn something new, to be honest. Just something that continues to be told. And actually, there’s been, I mean, you’ve probably seen there’s tons of studies out there, like McKinsey did a study that diverse boards actually do better. And so you think about just thinking about Wall Street in 2008? Do we think if those board rooms were not all white men who had a group think type of thing going on that the same thing would have happened if there were two people in there at least to raise their I mean, my boss is one of the people who got fired for raising her hand. But if you had a couple of people who raised their hands in these rooms and said, Maybe this is not what we should all be doing, what it had been. But, I mean, maybe it would have been bad, it definitely would have been worse if you had diversity in there. And so there’s all these studies that actually diverse companies do better over time. So I always think is Wall Street is one of the most data driven industries that exists. Yet, there’s so much data out there that diversity outperforms it just a generic team of the same people on it with group thing. So why don’t we use that? Within here, and actually, throughout the pandemic, the these values based investments have outperformed what the normal traditional type of investments have. And so it’s definitely something that we’re moving towards. And people need to get to that I think the we have a roadblock or that most financial advisors, I think don’t have the knowledge or don’t want to learn about it. And so this is a story that kids being told to do people over time, and I hope that, you know, this is one of my passion points within this, I think that, again, a lot of women think like, well, what is my little money going to do, but again, if we all did it, it is so powerful, even if you did it, and then you got your 10 friends who also care about, you know, gun control to do it, it is powerful to do it together. And so, um, I think, you know, doing it yourself, learning that you’re not going to give up richer, and actually, you actually might do better. I may say, sometimes you’ve seen in the pandemic, they’ve actually done better. And then being able to debunk that for the other people around you in your life, I think is really important.

Maggie Germano 29:04
Yeah, I totally agree. And I and I love what you were saying about like, recognizing that even if you are not super wealthy, you can still make an impact in that way. And especially the more and more of us that do that. I mean, I talk about voting with your dollar just like on a day to day like spending basis but like in terms of you know, being in the stock market and and thinking about being thoughtful about where your money is going like that makes a big deal if there’s millions or billions of people doing all that at one yeah.

Emily Green 29:35
Yeah, it’s really powerful.

Maggie Germano 29:38
So you mentioned that if this is something that someone wants to start doing or learning more about that like you know, if they have an account with Ella vest or they plan to get an account with Ella vest, you know, talking to folks over there about that. If they maybe are already working with a different financial advisor, how do you recommend kind of broaching those conversations to start kind of moving them Money around.

Emily Green 30:01
So I think there’s a couple of things, you know, if you’re just starting off, um, the great thing about Ellevest is you can start a membership. So say you’re in, you know, you’re just paying off debt or accumulating money or in different phases, you’re like, there’s a membership model that you can have for one, five, or $9, you can kind of start going into that with different investments, there’s a month, sorry, one, five or $9 a month, so that it’s accessible to everyone. And so to get that advice that you need in in thinking about that, if you have a full fledged financial planner today, I think a couple things just to think about in this, I always encourage people to at least once you reflect on not only their financial advisor, but any kind of financial professional in their life, their accountants or attorneys, whatever it may be. And I always, my colleagues think I’m crazy, but I always say that, you know, women always say their financial advisor is fine. Whenever you ask, how is your financial advisor fine is like the word they use that I joke with women that like that’s where your money goes to die, because you’re never going to call them. If you don’t like them, you’re never going to tell them things that are going on in your life. Like you have to tell your financial advisor, more personal things, and you’re going to tell your best friend, um, to be honest. And so you need to be comfortable with this person. And so I think there’s nothing wrong with having a conversation with someone else. And just thinking about is what I’m doing today. What’s best for me, and you don’t maybe it is, maybe it is and all you got was a peace of mind to know, I like what I’m doing today. But I think that having those conversations, running those type of health checks of is my money aligned to my values today, or what I’m actually investing in and thinking about how, if you’re working with an advisor today, are they actually serving me and I actually encourage everyone to think about as well, not only, you know, a lot of people work with great frame. Iser firms support women. So looking at the team that you work with and thinking about, is the only woman in the room, the junior woman on the team. Does that bank, is it a bank? And do they do forced arbitration because most of them do for sexual harassment lawsuits, and so taking a step back, and actually maybe asking them even, like, these types of you can find them on Ellevest. I like wrote a bunch of these questions out for people. Um, but looking at these questions and thinking about, you know, are, are my advisors actually supportive of me and who I am as a person? Um, and then again, just having those conversations and seeing, you know, it, Nothing hurts, it doesn’t hurt to talk to someone else ever.

Maggie Germano 32:45
Yeah, I totally agree. And I love what you were saying about, like, if you don’t necessarily trust your financial professional, or you just think they’re fine, like, yeah, you’re probably not going to be reaching out to them very often. So how useful is that, really?

Emily Green 33:01
So like, my best clients are the people that text me every day, like in like stupid things. When my clients tell me she was pregnant before she told anyone else in her life. And I was she called me last week. I was like, Oh, okay.

Maggie Germano 33:14
That’s really sweet. She probably wanted to start doing financial planning. Yes, yes. Anyway. Um, so I know that it so it sounds like in the last few years, Ella vest has really started kind of expanding what they’re covering. So it went from just being about investing and getting your foot in the door with investing. And now it’s talking more about, you know, saving and goals and things like that. So how does Ellevest kind of focus on helping women keep their values and their goals top of mind when they have, you know, a membership and they’re working on these different accounts?

Emily Green 33:54
Yeah, so we do a lot of, there’s a lot of different things. And so we have with the membership or with private wealth, you know, you have private wealth, you have access to an advisor who always worked through this with you. But with membership, you also have access to online and an app, an app on your phone that can go through all these different things, and you have access to articles that are published. Okay, so Ellevest has on membership as well, that I think has some interesting email courses even that I think about and so we always use the term intentional. So being intentional about your money no matter what you’re thinking about, and so intentional around your values. And so taking time to sit down and actually write down what your values are and what you’re trying to achieve. And looking at that not only in terms of how you’re investing, but also how you’re spending and so like we always work with people to go through even like your budget, and aligning what your values are to your budget, and you can actually sit there and think wow, like 70% of my budget is to things that don’t matter to me, really and kind of just looking at those types of things and going through exercises. We do a lot of webinars and and things like that, that that help on that you can join and things like that. And also, you know, looking at our investment platform in terms of, we always focus on goals. And so when I look at my accounts, and all of us it’s focused on not did I get 12 or 15%? returns this year it is, am I on track for my retirement goal that I want to retire in 30 years and spend X amount of dollars per year or not? And if not, what do I need to do to get to that, and so helping you actually solve to that, because I think that’s the hardest part a lot of the time is thinking about great, I figured out my goals. But now how do I actually get there, um, and how much we need to be investing your time into saving all those things. And so actually solving that for you to take that like work out of this.

Maggie Germano 35:50
That’s huge, too, especially for retirement. Because if you’re like in your 20s, or 30s retirements, a long way off, and we see lots of these scary articles all the time of like, Millennials have like no money for retirement, or if you don’t have this much by the time you’re 30. Like you’re screwed. And it can be really disorienting and discouraging for people. And so I think, yeah, like, especially for that one. But I mean, for all goals, of course, but especially for that one that’s so huge, and so long. It just having understanding that you’re doing the right things, and investing the right amount, the right amounts, and everything can be they really can give that peace of mind and and keep people from giving up, honestly.

Emily Green 36:32
Yeah, it’s a very powerful way to look at it. And I, you know, I always think that money is power, and we live in a democratic society. So yes, literally, but also, it is the thing that allows you to give choices like if you know, you’re on track for retirement, or maybe you’re ahead of your track for retirement, you have that ability to leave the job, you hate to leave your husband to do this, it like he gives you these opportunities to start a business, it gives these opportunities to look at, if I look at these, what I’ve done, it allows you to decide, do I want to do this or that rather than feeling like you’re on one path for the rest of your life.

Maggie Germano 37:07
Right, and, and that’s something that I think is so important that people should recognize it’s not just about how much money’s in the bank. It’s not just about, you know, following along a certain formula, because that’s what’s more responsible, it’s about allowing yourself to have the freedom and the power to make your own life decisions. And like you said, it might be leaving a relationship or leaving a job. But it might be something really exciting, like starting a business or,

Emily Green 37:33
I don’t know, selling your house and moving to an island somewhere and just like living out your life and leisure. Never know what that might look like. So I love that. It’s so many times I’ve so many, and women always think they’re going to be the cat lady with no money no matter how rich they are. And so being able to show women like you’re going to be okay, like you can make these choices, you don’t have to feel like you’re just a cog in the wheel, you actually have the power to do this same thing.

Maggie Germano 38:02
So is there anything else you want to make sure listeners know, either related to investing generally, or impact investing? or keeping those values kind of Top of Mind anything? You haven’t touched on that? You want to make sure folks now?

Emily Green 38:17
Yeah, I just want to I think one of the most important things is women have a lot of power with their money. And whether that’s spending investing again, you know, the way that we’re giving money to political candidates at this point, there’s a lot of ways that we do have power. And so thinking about the ways that you want to execute that on that, I think that there’s a couple of helpful things. I think that sitting down and actually thinking about what your personal values are is a very good exercise. Because a lot of times we actually never think about it. And we’re like, yeah, like I kind of care about that. And then you kind of look at, you know, all the different things in the world, like, Yes, I cared about climate change, but I care about climate change is disproportionately affecting, you know, this community. And so how can I help think about these things and so not only helping align your investments, but I you spend your time, and if you’re giving anything to charity, and things like that. So always thinking about that. And and then finally, I’d always say that women do not talk about money, and we need to it is very important. And so, you know, sharing salaries, it’s uncomfortable, but understanding men will tell people there’s salaries, they talk about it, you know, talk about their money, you go to a dinner party, talking about investments, sharing these types of things, whether it be telling your friends you invested in doing that, and that, that is one step that you’ll have, you know, those five friends you told me like, Oh, I should invest. And so just talking about this is so powerful. And so just encourage all women to just, you know, once a month, once a week, just take time to make sure that you’re talking to your friends about something that you’re comfortable with around money because that’s how we’re really gonna change the game here?

Maggie Germano 40:02
Totally agree, the more we do it, the easier it’ll get.

Emily Green 40:05
Yep. Great.

Maggie Germano 40:08
So is there anything going on with your work or you know, at Ellevest, generally, that you want to promote right now.

Emily Green 40:17
So I’d say the only a couple of only a couple of things, a couple of things I would say is, our membership launch that we did in June, I think is really exciting, that really gave access. And one of the cool things that I think for women, we’re just starting off especially is we created a debit card that allows for roundup of purchases, to start you’re saving. So if you started, if you have a coffee that costs $3.50, you can choose it, it automatically runs up to $4, and saves that 50 cents for you. So if you’re kind of thinking about how can I start the savings plan, just doing it with your kind of like everyday purchases within that and kind of getting to that place. And then on our credit, wealth side, we worked on something really exciting, I think, this summer that we realized in our gender focused portfolios, that if you’re not also focusing on racial justice, we’re only focusing on white women. And so we sat and spent a lot of time thinking about how we could support all women through this. And so in not just looking at, you know, we looked at all different issues that I could mention climate change, and there’s a lot of like, environmental racism, and all these things that that really exist today. But also private prisons and thinking about this. And not only there’s two private prison fighters in the country, not only looking at, okay, I’m not going to invest in these two things, two places, but also thinking about the, the food provider to private prisons, because they’re part of this, these communications company, because they’re the ones charging all this money. They don’t allow these prisoners to talk to the outside world that are creating, it’s so hard that when they are back in society that they can’t integrate again. So thinking about all these things, and so just encourage everyone, you know, to think about that, and, and how as we look at the racial justice crisis that we’re going through in our country, how your money is not only supporting women, but all women, when we’re looking at this. And so really thinking about that. And that’s, that’s what we’ve really spent a lot of time giving our clients to at all of us, which I’m very proud of the work we did this summer on them.

Maggie Germano 42:24
I’m really glad to hear that too. Because Yeah, like you said, it’s so important. And if we’re only focusing on white women, we’re not helping women. Overall, there’s a lot more women outside of white women, and there’s a big disparity between white women and others. So I am really glad you’re doing that. And I think reminding people of that, and how, how everything kind of ties together the prisons, like you said, the prisons, the food, the telecoms, like all that it just ties into so much. And it trickles down to these communities and in negative ways. So if we’re really being thoughtful, and focusing on where we’re not investing that can make a huge impact, I think overall,

Emily Green 43:07
yeah, unless someone do it for you. I’m not telling people to like go research every single company in the s&p 500. You could definitely go on that path. But there’s, there’s easier ways to do it.

Maggie Germano 43:18
Yeah, yeah. I think reminding people not to get scared away that someone else can help them with that. So How can folks follow along with the work that all of us is doing?

Emily Green 43:29
Generally, yes, so we have a very vibrant, social following. So you can always follow us whether it’s on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and I encourage our Instagram is just @ellevest. And you can follow us there, you’ll see a lot we do a lot of like, Instagram lives and things there as well. So if you’re ever, you know, trying to see you know, what the collection and things like that, we do those there, as well as on LinkedIn, as well as following our CEO Sally Krawcheck, who posts a lot about the the gender money gaps, and how we can we can do that. And then you know, you can always reach out to us and we’d be happy to do help. And so you’ll see you can go to our website, ellevest.com. And we have a couple different ways you can reach out to [email protected] or [email protected]. And we’d always be able to to help you get to the right place.

Maggie Germano 44:25
Fantastic. And I will share all of that in the show notes as well. So people have easy access to that.

Emily Green 44:31
Great. Well, thank you.

Maggie Germano 44:33
Thank you so much for taking the time to chat today. This was a really fun conversation for me, and I know that a lot of the listeners who really do put their values first, they’ll appreciate it as well.

Emily Green 44:45
No, thanks for having me. It was a lot of fun.

Maggie Germano 44:50
Thank you so much for listening to the money circle podcast this week. If you like the conversations we’re having here and you’d like to go even deeper. Join the new money circle community in this Safe intersectional feminist space we will break down money shame and build community and safety for everyone so that you can find the support you need to gain control over your finances. Visit Maggiegermano.com/moneycircle to learn more and to join. If you’d like to get more connected with me, subscribe to my weekly newsletter at Maggiegermano.com/subscribe. to learn more about my financial coaching services, my speaking and workshop offerings or just to read my blog visit Maggiegermano.com. You can also follow me on instagram and twitter @MaggieGermano. I look forward to hearing from you. Bye bye