Blog | Personal development

Best Father's Day Gift

What is the best Father’s Day gift for your dad? To become self-sufficient and financially free

This coming weekend, the United State celebrates dads. When most women think of Father’s Day, they think of the celebration of a man in their life who was and/or is influential in helping to love and shape them into the person they are today.

After all, dads, even though they’re not perfect, form a special bond with their daughters that can be one of the strongest, most-nurturing relationships in life.

As Dr. Peggy Drexler writes for Huffington Post, “Despite the evolution of women's and men's social roles, the father-daughter bond — whether strong and nurturing or broken or non-existing — still holds an enormous sway over women. No matter how much their fathers may have disappointed or hurt them, all the women I met felt a measure of loyalty and gratitude to them, and expressed their eagerness to stay connected to the men who were among the first loves in their life.”

Reflecting on Father’s Day

Did you know that a woman named Sonora Dodd actually started the Father’s Day holiday in 1910? After being raised by her father after her mother’s death during childbirth, Sonora encouraged local churches in Spokane, Washington, to celebrate Father’s Day in June, the month her father was born. The idea spread, and it eventually became an official holiday when President Lyndon Johnson declared the third Sunday in June as Father's Day in 1966.

And according to U.S. Census Bureau statistics, there are about 72.2 million fathers in the U.S., so that means there will be a lot of celebrating going on this Father’s Day weekend. It’s a time to think about your father and thank him for everything he has done for you. But it’s also a time to reflect on how his lessons have changed your life

Did you take action on what he taught you?

My husband Robert learned from his Rich Dad about cash flow and obtaining wealth via a financial education. Robert listened to his Rich Dad, but he didn’t stop there. Rather than sit on this information, he took action on these lessons, continued learning and became even more wealthy and successful than his Rich Dad.

Your father probably wants you to be happy, healthy and enjoy the best life possible. With this in mind, it’s essential to take the knowledge he has given you, add to it every day, share information with others, and most important, take action on what you learn. After all, education is the key to transformation, and a necessity if you want to change your life for the better, experience financial freedom and see your dreams come true.

Now, maybe you don’t have a good relationship with your father like Dodd did, and the Father’s Day holiday just brings up feelings of aggravation, sorrow or anger. Instead of focusing on this negativity, why not use it as a driving force to be a better person and help others?

Now is not the time to depend on others to achieve your dreams or blame your father (or anyone else) for where you are today.

It’s up to you to get the education you need to change your life and inspire others to achieve great things too. While education is the key to transformation — and by education, I certainly don’t mean college — it’s essential for you to take action on what you learn. No one is going to do it for you.

Another kind of dad(dy)

In recent years, I’ve read articles about another kind of dad, the sugar daddy, and a special summit created to help women become more adept at experiencing the benefits of rich, old men who want to shower young girls with money in return for “companionship.” These women are known as Sugar Babies and clearly they’ve never heard my mantra: A man is not a financial plan.

In her article, “Where women learn how to shake down their sugar daddies,” Doree Lewark writes, “Welcome to the Sugar Baby Summit, where ladies like Sabine — who, as with most of the women in this story, asked that her last name not be used — learn how to get the most out of a benefactor. Or more specifically, his wallet.”

The article features interviews with a number of young women who share why they attended the summit.

One twenty-three-year-old girl, a student, attending a class called “Master Class Part 1: Upgrading,” shares her need to pay her rent and have financial security.

Another girl shares how she juggles multiple men, showing off “…$1,300 worth of clothes that a new sugar daddy bought her the previous week at a Las Vegas mall. ‘I feel like such a lady boss,’ she purrs.”

Yet another tries to distance herself from the crowd who will settle for anything. “If I see [a man’s] net worth isn’t $50 to $100 million, I don’t want to deal with them,” she boasts, sharing how she used to make a six-figure salary before entering the world of sugar daddies. “I’m not feeling desperate,” she says. “Some girls here are homeless.”

Repeat after me: A man is not a financial plan

Sugar Baby Summit is hosted by SeekingArrangments.com, which Lewark describes as matching “men of means with young, often financially struggling women who want to be spoiled by a ‘daddy.’”

And while your natural reaction is probably to sit back and judge these women, it’s worth stopping for a second and wondering: “As a woman, do I also rely on a man for my financial well-being?”

The statistics are compelling. I’ve shared them before. Far too many women think they are not capable of fending for themselves financially, let alone being financially free, without a husband (for example, “Women's Retirement Planning Woefully Inadequate, Study Finds”).

You don’t have to attend a conference and flaunt your Louis Vuitton bag to strange reporters in order to fall into the trap that a man is your financial plan.

An event like this summit, and the site that sponsors it, while shocking and distasteful, is really just an amplification of a problem that faces most women: a woeful lack of financial education and a fear that without a man a woman can’t be financially free.

Become a free woman by becoming a rich woman

I started Rich Woman precisely because this problem is so prevalent. Our mission is to help women become financially free, to be self-confident and self-supported, and to have healthy relationships that are based in mutual respect, not financial security.

As I write on our Rich Woman web page:

The bottom line is that money has tremendous power. It has the power to set us free, but it also has the power to enslave us.

Money enslaves us by keeping us in an unhealthy relationship, sending us to a job that we don't like every day for the paycheck, or causing us to deny ourselves things important to us because we lack the money to buy them.

A Rich Woman has a healthy attitude toward money. She doesn't make excuses if she doesn't have it. She doesn't vilify those who do have it.

When we talk about Rich Woman, we talk openly about money, investing, cash flow, and taking charge of your financial life.

Today, I encourage you to begin the adventure of learning how to make money work for you through financial education. I invite you to a different kind of summit — financial workshops meant to empower you, not behold you.

Continue learning and sharing new things each day and then use this knowledge to transform your life and the lives of others. Apply what you’ve learned and do something to make your dreams a reality. Not only will you make your father proud, but you’ll also help yourself, and others, in the process. Before you know it, you’ll see why a man is not a financial plan and learn to rely on yourself to make all your dreams come true.