What My Mom Taught Me About Women's Financial Empowerment

Recently, a friend turned me on to the memoirs of David Goggins, a retired Navy SEAL with an impossibly long list of superhuman athletic feats. 

But here's the thing that gets me. 

David Goggins, the "hardest man on earth" as he's often called, would never have existed, if he and his mother didn't escape brutal domestic violence by his father in 1983.

The escape would never have happened, if his mother didn't secure a credit card in her name. 

And she would never have gotten a credit card, if the Equal Credit Opportunity Act of 1974 didn't pass.

THINK ABOUT THAT. 

It's been less than 50 years since women got to have their own credit, and the means to financial independence, in the United States. 

Above is a photo of me, age 41, and my mom, 66. 

Within my mother's life time, women's economic empowerment took a dramatic upturn. 

In 1989, my mom immigrated to the US when she was 33 years old, with three daughters (I'm the monkey in the middle). 

She's also a domestic violence survivor. Back in South Korea, she was physically harassed by my father's family because she bore no sons in a patriarchal, patrilineal society. 

Now divorced, she still works as a nail technician speaking broken English in New Jersey. That's how she raised three daughters by herself. 

Who I am and what I do today would've been impossible, if my mother didn't earn her own money as a professional. 

This lights a FIRE in my soul to help women help themselves do and provide better. 

Because the impact of women's financial empowerment ripples out and enhances the lives of people generations out. 

The bitter truth is, we are still in the shadows of historical and structural economic disempowerment of women and minorities. 

There is SO MUCH MORE to be done to achieve true wealth equality. 

Women learning to advocate for themselves is HOW WE BEGIN TO RIGHT THE WRONG. 

A tidal wave of change happens one drop at a time. One woman at a time. One conversation at a time. 

This is how your self-advocacy can be an act of social justice. 

Let's get to work, 
Jamie