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In this week’s Ten Money Questions, we speak with Marci Alboher, the author of One Person/Multiple Careers: A New Model for Work/Life Success (reviewed previously here). Marci also writes the Shifting Careers column and blog for The New York Times. Since work and money go hand in hand, I asked for her thoughts on blending careers, managing finances and peppered with a few personal memories about money. Enjoy!
1. How does the “slash” sum up the way more people are working these days?
Few of us are putting all our career eggs into one basket. You demonstrated it perfectly when you signed your email inviting me to do this Q&A. You wrote software sales/international business traveler/real estate investor/landlord/blogger. Those are all parts of your professional identity, but that’s an awfully big mouthful for the answer to “what do you do” at the cocktail party. So many of us our trying out new identities, weaving together careers out of disparate or complementary interests. We choose some things for our soul, some for our pocketbook, and some to flex a new creative muscle. Then we get bored or burned out, so we tinker and tweak, emerging with a new slash or two while keeping the ones that work.
2. What is your most significant memory about money?
I have a strong memory of my mother -- a serious, possibly obsessive, shopper -- hiding the bags from my father when she’d return home from one of her weekly shopping sprees.
3. What is your worst habit around finances?
When I sign up for something and put it on autopay, I tend to forget about it. The forgetting is pretty much the same whether it’s $18.00 a month or $1,800. I need to keep an eye on that!
4. What advice do you give women that want to shift careers?
The same advice I give to men, which is to be prepared for a process. Career change takes a lot of work, and it takes time and planning. First, you need to figure out what it is you might want to do. That means doing some experiments, trying things out, perhaps taking a class, or crafting what I call an “adult internship.” Once you figure out what it is you want to do, you need to come up with a plan to get there. That also involves several steps. You need to build skills, create a network, and follow up on opportunities, all of which takes more time. And of course, you can’t forget about the financial piece. Few people have the luxury to quite earning money while doing the work of reinvention, so you need to decide how to keep the income flowing while you take all these steps. This is where having a few different income streams or skills to rely on can come in quite handy.
5. Many BlogHer members have slash careers and hope to make the “blogger” part of their work more lucrative. Is there truth to the saying do what you love and the money will follow?
In one way or another I believe that’s true, with one caveat. You also need to be good at it. That saying seems to imply that everyone who has passion also has some talent, and unfortunately that is not the case.
6. Did your parents ever disagree about money? Are there any similarities with how you handle and negotiate finances with your husband?
Other than that little flash I shared above, I don’t really recall my parents fighting much about money. For most of their marriage, my father just gave my mother money, in a very old-fashioned, paternalistic way. My father passed away when he was quite young, and when he did, my mother took over a successful family business. In a very short time, she became quite a savvy businesswoman (with no one to answer to about her shopping habits!)
I’m not married, but I live with my boyfriend, Jay. We certainly have our own money issues, but they don’t seem to have any parallels to what I saw growing up. Jay and I came together as fully formed, independent adults, with our own money hangups and habits. My parents came together when they were quite young; in some ways, their values around money were more similar.
7. What experience taught you the value of a dollar?
My mother is a ruthless discount shopper, who is able to find the jewels amid a rack of garbage. After shopping with her and seeing how much a few hundred
