Welcome to Untangle Money! We are SO glad you're here. We want to start by giving you a little insight on why we started Untangle Money, and what we stand for. We (Kristine Beese and Ria Savla) met at a women's weekend hackathon in 2019. It was a fun weekend and we realized we were both super passionate about finance, as well as making the world a better place, especially a better place for women.
We had so much in common that we decided to start a business together. Which brings us to -- Untangle Money!
The early stages of building Untangle Money involved a lot of introspection, research and connecting with potential customers. Our findings revolved around two main things:
1) Finance is harder than it needs to be.
Kristine has over 10 years of experience in the financial industry (in 3 different countries) and has always thought that personal finance was made unnecessarily difficult. There are so many different terms, options, and things to choose that it can get REALLY overwhelming. Ria studied finance, but still found it frustrating to figure out her money when she started working full time.
In fact, after speaking with hundreds of women, we learned so many others feel the same way. Complicated, anxiety-inducing, too much jargon, scary, and male-dominated were just some of the words we heard over and over again from the women we were talking to.
We realized how important it is to make finance accessible to women. We needed to create an environment where women feel safe, welcomed, and UNDERSTOOD when it comes to money.
This is especially true because...
2) Women are different!!!
Honestly, women have it pretty tough. Our research showed that women's financial lives are significantly different than men's. So different, in fact, that traditional financial products don't present an accurate picture of a woman's finances over her lifetime. This leads to THE WEALTH GAP! The Wealth Gap (not to be confused with the Wage Gap) is that for every $1 in wealth that a man has, a woman has only 32 cents. That is less than a third of the wealth. For Black and Latina women, it is even worse - they only have 1 penny in wealth. If you're anything like us, you're probably wondering how the heck this could have even happened.
Let's dig into some reasons why:
1) Women's financial lives include far more ups and downs.
Let's look at Sandra and Owen in the picture above
Compared to Owen, Sandra's income is more likely to fluctuate. Sandra is more likely to take sabbaticals for maternity leave and elder-care, switch to part-time work, and get paid less for the work she does than Owen will.
We're not saying that Owen won't do some of the things that Sandra does, but statistically Owen's financial life is more likely to be linear.
2) THE PAY GAP
Women are still paid less for equal work, and women tend to go into roles that pay less.
Women are more likely to take sabbaticals for maternity leave and elder-care responsibilities,
Women are more likely to work part-time at some point in their lives,
And, women's salaries peak at 40 versus men's who peak at 55 (e.g. a woman will make the most money she will ever make in her life at 40, but a man keeps making more money until 55).
3) THE PINK TAX
Women pay up to $2,135 more for stuff every year. This includes:
Products and services such as credit (higher mortgage rates and credit card rates)
Hair, dry-cleaning, menstrual products, birth control, auto repairs, long-term care
Untangle Money's mission is to help women understand and alleviate some of these issues in order to successfully set themselves up financially. We all love being strong, independent women, and financial independence is a HUGE part of that!
At Untangle Money we help women understand their (real!) financial picture, and obtain financial guidance from people that actually, really, get it. We would love to help you, too. Join the community of hundreds of other women looking to strengthen their financial well-being. Get in touch here for a free consultation.
Stay tuned for more!