Smart Mom, Rich Mom

6

PLAYING DEFENSE

When Barbara Stanny was growing up, her father, one of the founders of H&R Block, often told her not to worry about money. “My father was very old-school,” she recalls. “He believed making and managing money was a man’s job.” The only thing she remembers him telling her about money was, “Don’t worry.”

Later, after she got married and became a mom to three daughters, she found herself unprepared when her husband started gambling away their money. “Over the course of our fifteen-year marriage, he lost a fortune of my inheritance, and I continued to let him manage the money because of how intimidated I was by it,” she says. They eventually got divorced and Stanny was left with over $1 million in tax bills. She didn’t have the money ...