Finerman’s Rules: Secrets I’d Only Tell My Daughters About Business and Life

Karen Finerman (pronounced like ‘Mighty Fine-rman’) likes to tell people she was raised Calvinist. Or as her mother used to say, ‘I buy my girls Calvin Klein clothes. Then when they graduate from college they have to pay for them themselves.’ In order to keep herself in Calvin, Karen went to work on Wall Street. As a woman working in an investment bank she noticed numerous ways that she and her female colleagues sabotaged themselves both professionally and personally. Why were her friends unable to bring the same logic they applied at work to personal decisions? Why did they often let personal baggage undermine them in the office in a way that her male colleagues never did? A classic illustration is that women tend to Poll (Do I look good in these shoes?) rather than Decide, often giving too much weight to the input from a random stranger rather than rely on their own gut. Divided into three sections (Career, Money, Love), Finerman’s Rules serves up unvarnished advice about how women can get ahead, how to get the dysfunction out of your personal life, and how to take control of your financial destiny. Or as Karen puts it, ‘You wouldn’t let a man tell you where to live, how to vote, or what to wear. Then tell me why 80 percent of women have a man in charge of their money?