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Even though Lorna Kapusta is head of women investors and customer relations at Fidelity, she wasn’t always so confident talking about her own finances. But that started to change about seven years ago when she realized: she needed to be in the driver’s seat when it came to her money. This week, Lorna shares her own journey– and gives advice on how to start taking control.
On Having Tough Money Conversations
Lorna: So I think if you lay out the facts of what you have, what you owe and where you've been, you start to look at it and just the facts. How much you each make. Because oftentimes what we find when couples come together is they actually don't know one another's full compensation.... And so for us, we started very rationally and then started to get more comfortable talking about our desired and ideally common goals.
What I often find, knowing what we've done as well, is we sit down with a financial professional…and it helps because it is an independent third party who is able to kind of talk you through both with experience on what to do, but also has dealt with so many couples and also individuals and getting really kind of real and raw about your money and your money habits.
On Investing
Lorna: If you have a retirement plan, you are investing. And I think what we don't realize is that investing outside of retirement is really similar and it actually provides the same set of options of what you can get access to if you're saving and investing in a retirement plan. And so someone who is really ready to take that next step, one, I would think about the fact of what you're already doing and how do you apply that outside of retirement? The second thing, and we've seen so many people doing this, particularly young women, is starting small. Investing with purpose. So knowing what you want to be investing in…and the timeframe of when you need it and then learning your way into it.
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