Surrender the Fairy Tale
Now that you've given some thought to how you view money, it's time to debunk some long-held myths and fairy tales about women and money. Even if you've been lucky enough to escape them, these underground beliefs are probably hiding in the dark corners of your mind. Their dusty tendrils can garble the truth and have more influence than you can imagine on how you — and others — think about women and money. These supposedly innocuous stories were whispered in your ears late at night, when you were nodding off to sleep, and they crept into your consciousness whether you liked it or not.
Like most American girls, you probably fell in love with fairy-tale princesses and the gallant white knights who rescued them. However, one drawback to believing in fairy tales and princesses is that many people interpret them literally. The real “gold” your dream princess acquires lies in the symbolic meanings.
The gold coin is not a gold coin. It's the shining quality within the princess: her talent, her wisdom, and her ability to act decisively. The prince is not literally a prince, but the internal masculine qualities that a princess must “marry” in order to become whole.
Cinderella, for example, the premier mythological fantasy princess, had to work to earn her golden slippers. Disney truncated the original fairy tale, turning those gold slippers into glass. Although the original included magical“birds” that helped Cinderella complete her tasks, there was no fairy godmother who showed up and bestowed riches.
In fact, in the original fairy tale, Cinderella had very important psychological tasks to perform: to reconnect with the spirit of her dead mother, discern the value in hard work, sort out good from bad, reorder her universe, and know her own personal worth — from within — before she was rewarded with golden slippers.
Cinderella had to consciously remove her feet from the wooden shoes of her past in order to purposefully don the golden slippers of her future. The prince was just icing on the cake. He also had to see Cinderella in her degraded state and value her inner beauty and inherent value before he could take her as his rightful bride.
Fact
Unfortunately, many wives tend to assign financial planning to their husbands. Even more unfortunately, as a result of their husband's poor planning, one out of every four widows depletes her husband's death benefits within two months. Approximately 80 percent of all widows living in poverty were not living that way when their husbands were alive.
Between these two interpretations of the same fairy tale, there are small — yet essential — differences. The prince was not the answer to all of Cinderella's problems; he was her reward and her future partner in life. “Happily ever after” did not mean that the heroine was going to live a passive life. Indeed, she was not going to fade into oblivion; she was entering into a fully empowered (self-empowered) partnership.
Cinderella's happiness came from knowing her own self-worth and acting decisively in her own best interests, and that is the potent lesson of the original story. Rather than waiting for a “prince” to make your dreams come true, take control your own future, sort out your finances, and learn to make money decisions that propel your life forward.
