Becoming the Wealthy Woman

Marcia Sweet, formerly head of the Douglas Library’s
Information/Reference Unit at Queen’s University, is currently an
Ottawa-based information consultant and freelance editor.

The success of David Chilton’s The Wealthy Barber would seem to
suggest that people prefer investment information to be conveyed as a
“story.” A financial “story” should be well written, focused,
relevant, and well organized; this book, unfortunately, does not fare
too well in any of these areas. Cimmer and Blanchard use the
“correct” phrases to attract a female audience, but their book is
irritatingly sexist. There is a lot of conversation about recipes, and
the woman characters sound like idiots (the narrator patronizingly
assures us that they are “smarter than they think”).

Although it bills itself as a book on “effective financial
planning,” Becoming a Wealthy Woman does not provide a practical
system for achieving regular savings, let alone wealth. Much of the
information provided here is of dubious value. For example, when
comparing the relative value of investing in RRSPs vs. paying off the
mortgage, the authors fail to mention that contributing to an RRSP
lowers one’s taxable income. One can only take bittersweet
satisfaction in the fact that women now earn enough money to constitute
a viable target market for financial writers.