Wealth And Balance Health Conference Speakers Advise Women On Money And Life’s Meaning
Every woman has a money style.
It may be marked by a spare, Japanese simplicity. It may resemble a lavish, Victorian-style abundance.
Next week, two women with vastly different styles will join the lineup of speakers for The Women’s Health Conference ‘97, sponsored by Holy Family Hospital, to talk about women and money.
They are Evy McDonald, a former Seattle nurse who co-founded the New Road Map Foundation, which inspired the book “Your Money or Your Life” (Penguin Books, $11.95); and Tessa Warschaw, a psychotherapist with practices in both New York and Los Angeles, and the author of “Rich Is Better: How Women Can Bridge the Gap Between Wanting and Having It All” (T.W.G. Publishing, $13.95).
McDonald will talk about “The Art of Knowing How Much Is Enough.” She’ll address living a high-quality life on a low budget and the art of shaping Earth-friendly lifestyles.
Warschaw will talk about “Creating a Richness Mentality for the 21st Century” and encourage women to design lives that are rich financially, professionally, spiritually and emotionally.
And while their styles are quite different, their messages are often similar. Both believe in encouraging women to discover what brings them true joy in life, and helping women map out strategies for making their fondest hopes a reality.
Not surprisingly, these two women draw analogies from the clothes they wear. Warschaw starts with lingerie.
“What we’re talking about here is quality of life,” Warschaw says. “Anybody who thinks you can have a fabulous quality of life without having enough money to buy underwear is foolish.”
McDonald talks about shoes, specifically the 70 pairs she owned before she got her life into balance.
“No amount of rationalization could keep me from seeing the simple truth: I did not get value from having so many pairs of shoes,” she says.
They both developed a life view that helped them survive illness.
McDonald was diagnosed with a terminal illness, which she declines to name, in her 20s. She believed she only had a year to live and she decided to bring her life into balance.
“I wanted to die feeling whole and complete,” she says. “As I began to evaluate my life, I saw how out of balance it was. While I said I was a person who wanted to help people in need, I had almost 70 pairs of shoes, I had 50 blouses. I had so much more than I ever needed or could use in a lifetime.”
She discovered Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin, who wrote “Your Money or Your Life.” Dominguez, a Wall Street financial analyst, retired at 31 and discovered a way to live a modest lifestyle and create financial independence. McDonald took his seminar and applied his tactics to her life.
She discovered she could meet all her survival needs, budget for a number of comforts and a few luxuries, and cheerfully live without excess.
As she began to work with the New Road Map Foundation, helping others make similar choices, McDonald’s physical symptoms began to disappear. Her disease reversed itself.
That was in 1980.
“Since then,” she says, “I live very simply. I have more income than I need and the quality of my life has continued to increase ever since.”
Now, rather than rewarding herself after a bad day with a new pair of Italian shoes, she takes pride in the lives she impacts with her work.
One man, a veterinarian, was inspired to work at home as a free-lance writer. “He wrote to say, ‘I can’t thank you enough because I know my daughter. We take walks. We pick flowers.’
“It’s those things that touch us deeply at New Road Map Foundation,” McDonald says.
Warschaw’s tale also begins with illness.
She survived a number of serious childhood illnesses: rheumatic fever, asthma and lung disorders. But she came out with “an unambivalent commitment to life.”
Now Warschaw makes it her life’s work to move women away from what she calls “a poverty mentality,” marked by ambivalence, guilt and vacant hope. Instead she advocates “a richness mentality” which features resilience, authenticity, imagination, collaboration and hope.
“You can’t stay healthy if you can’t afford insurance, can’t afford to eat properly, if you stay in a job you hate,” Warschaw says. “I think it’s ridiculous to think we can’t have big jobs, big dreams and big goals.”
She works with high-profile clients, and finds that women with large incomes often live impoverished lives. They’re also likely to resist taking control of their finances.
“The woman earning six figures throwing her Merrill Lynch statements in the top drawer is no better off than the woman earning $40,000 who never looks at her bank statement,” she says.
Like McDonald, she believes the answer lies in helping women discover and live their dreams.
She asks, “What would you do if you knew you could not fail?” Then she helps them get started.
In the forward to her book, Warschaw quotes comedian Joe E. Louis. “I’ve been rich and I’ve been poor, and rich is better.” Still, she says, her viewpoint doesn’t conflict with McDonald’s, which features living within your means, a couple of pairs of comfortable Danish shoes and lots of saving.
Says McDonald, “It’s important to remember this is a personal issue. (Each person should ask) what’s enough for me? If people’s lives are happy and fulfilled, that should be enough.”
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Staff illustration by Charles Waltmire
MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: CONFERENCE DETAILS The Women’s Health Conference, called “Shoot For The Moon,” will be Feb. 11-12 at Cavanaugh’s Inn at the Park. In addition to Tessa Warschaw and Evy McDonald, other speakers will be Mimi Donaldson, co-author of “Negotiating for Dummies,” and Michele Lando, president of Skilset Communications. The cost is $100 if postmarked by Tuesday, $120 after that. For more information, call Holy Family Health Center at 482-2477.