Women tend to collaborate, in my experience, more easily than gentlemen do.

If a woman is making $85,000 a year, putting aside 20% of her income, putting it in a bank, earning very little...Over the course of her life vs. investing, this can cost her $1.5 million, $2 million, $2.5 million. Life changing amounts.

If a woman waits 10 years to invest, "I'm busy", "I've got to do this", "I can put it off", "I gotta find the right financial..." It costs her $100 a day. $100 a day! And if we had money falling out of her pocketbook at the rate of $100 a day, we'd change our pocketbook; we'd fix our pocketbook.

What I saw a thousand times during the downturn was, 'We'd like to give her that opportunity, but we need to go with the sure thing - we can't afford diversity right now,'

The industry financial advisers, on average about 85% male, tends to be a more mature financial adviser - so I think in their 50s, really. For so many companies, in their 60s. In fact, there is one company that was telling me they had more financial advisers over the age of 80 than under the age of 30.

I was lucky. My children didn't have health issues, didn't have big school problems, etc. And as I watched some of my peers go through this, you can see how quickly a family can get derailed when they are not lucky.

I would say one of the reasons that women don't invest to the same extent that men do, is because we still think of it in some ways as a male pursuit.