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I like that Stephanie Gale of Gale Investment Management named her business after the woman in charge. Think about it. In the grand scheme of things, you want a money manager with firm belief in herself.
I met Stephanie in my dance class. Soon after, I decided to call her. But not to talk about money. God no. The one time we did talk about money, or tried to, I had to keep myself from asking about other things.
Things like: Mind if we talk about something else?
So why did I call Stephanie?
To ask about the other Stephanie, the more-like-me Stephanie, the Stephanie who studied dance at Barnard and, after graduating, needed to pay her rent in Manhattan. But everyone knows most dancers
in New York wind up waiting on tables. But not Stephanie. Stephanie went straight into in financial investments.
Honestly, I don’t ever recall being that sensible after college. Nor do I recall going anywhere near Wall Street.
“I manage people’s deepest lives,” Stephanie said with certainty. Now, this is useful, I thought. Studying our innermost struggles, regrets, what ifs — I get it. It may be impossible for me to imagine choosing
the shifting flow of capital gains over the shifting flow of choreography, but I saw what she meant.
No, not really, having no access to that world.
All I knew about money after graduation was that every bone in my limber body knew if I wanted to dance as well as eat, I could not stay anywhere near New York. I headed for Seattle on a Greyhound bus
and never looked back.
But when Stephanie starts throwing out terms like management options, high-yield tax funds, advisory accounts, mutual funds, short-term risks vs. long-term gains, I shift from eager listener to woman-stifling-a-yawn.
Actually, I’m sedated, I’m sure of it.
No matter how hard I try to listen to Stephanie, my financial insecurities crumble me, remind me, every year around this time, just how fragile my fiscal nerves really are, and how much I detest enumerating
my spending habits. The habits that I, of course, do not detest.
Inside my head, my voice tries to marshal the kindest, most supportive defense: Of course you’re uneasy, this is not your world! How many books has she published, huh?
I’ve always found my reaction to investment management sort of natural to someone like me, someone “artsy” as people like to say (as I grimace), and therefore okay. But no more. Now, it strikes me as sniveling:
Stephanie, no. I have no idea what you are talking about. Pleeeease just do my taxes and send me the bill, okay?
Better yet, send my husband the bill.
“Who ever thought I’d need a Stephanie anyway?” I asked Larry (said husband). Until his dad died and left us with a “portfolio” to manage, just to complicate our lives, I never gave money
“management” a single consideration. Far as I know, my own dad blew my inheritance on a second wife, a second family, a second home on a first-rate beach, so why shouldn’t this money business be Larry’s problem?
It’s only fair. How many times has he scrubbed the toilet? Or grocery shopped, cleaned out the car, the closets, the fridge? Paid the bills? Planned a night out? It’s even me who shaves the back of his neck and snips away those little hairs that grow over his Adam’s apple. I mean really.
Besides, to me “portfolio” will always mean my green file folder that holds all the glossy photos of places I want to visit.
I am embarrassed to admit this—which doesn’t make it any less true—but I have a feeling I’ll duck the complexities of money management as long as my husband is alive. As long as I’m alive.
Oh, did I mention I’ve never, not once, balanced my check book? I honestly can’t think of one good reason to do so. (Larry sighed after reading this. Can a sigh have an edge to it?)
But you know what? There are many things to argue about when you’ve been married as long as we have, when you’ve lived on each other’s side, more or less, for decades, seen each other through the best and the worst, each of you bossing the other around appropriately. Money is only one of them.
So I say thank goodness for Stephanie!
And then there’s that other guy, Charlie, the CPA who sees to tax matters, whatever they are. It’s all “Charlie needs this” and “Charlie needs that” around our home right about now.
I figure, between him and Stephanie, they’ve got it covered: how inheritance works, how money produces more money (yeah!) if we’re smart about it, the shares we can count on, how to keep our future from slipping through our fingers.
Or becoming a year spent in Italy, say, if I get my hands on it. In the village my dad is from: Caramanico. There’s a picture of it in my portfolio.
Mary Lou Sanelli is the author of Every Little Thing, a collection of essays. Her newest title, In So Many Words, is forthcoming in September. She also works as a master dance teacher and a speaker, and will be giving a talkat the Fountain Head Gallery on Saturday, June 15th at 4 pm. For more information visit www.marylousanelli.com.