As I first wrote about back in January, the Principal Financial Group is hosting a series called the Five Secrets of Millionaire Business Owners.

Tomorrow, Mary Cantando, business growth advisor and author of The Woman’s Advantage: 20 Women Entrepreneurs Show You What it Takes to Grow Your Business, will lead a class in which she’ll share best practices you can implement into your business learned from multi-million dollar business owners.

You can register for the telecast (it’s free and conducted via telephone) and learn more about Mary Cantando on the Principal Women in Business Teleclass Series web page.

Tags: Mary Cantando, Principal Financial Group, women in business, businesswomen, women on business, female entrepreneurs, Principal Women in Business Teleclass

It’s well known that when Oprah Winfrey endorses something, sales go up. It’s also a known fact that when Oprah Winfrey adds a book to her book club, sales for that book increase by a million copies. On Friday, Oprah Winfrey put her seal of approval on Suze Orman’s book, Women & Money.

On Friday’s telecast of The Oprah Winfrey show, Oprah told her viewers that Suze Orman’s Women & Money, which was published a year ago, would be available for free download from Oprah’s website for 33 hours. During that time, 1.1 million copies were downloaded in English and another 19,000 copies were downloaded in Spanish. At the same time, Women and Money sat in 6th place on Amazon.

Suze Orman is very famous in her own right, and she certainly didn’t need Oprah Winfrey to promote her book in order to sell copies. However, Suze Orman was quoted in a statement released by Oprah Winfrey on Saturday saying, “I believe Women & Money is the most important book I’ve ever written,” Orman said in a statement released Saturday by Winfrey. “So this was not about getting people to buy the book, but getting them to read it, and that was the intention behind this offer.”

Sounds like this book is a must read not just for women in business but for all women. Have you read Women & Money yet? If so, leave a comment and let Women On Business’ readers know what you thought of it.

Tags: women in business, Suze Orman, Oprah Winfrey, Women and Money, women on business, businesswomen, women finances

The Principal Financial Group provides financial products to business and individuals, but the company also provides a section on its company website dedicated to women in business. As part of the Principal Financial Group’s dedication to helping women succeed as business owners, the company offers 10 free teleclasses each year called The Principal Women in Business Teleclass Series.

The teleclasses are held via telephone at 12:00 p.m. (Eastern time) on the dates scheduled and last one hour with speakers discussing topics of particular interest to women in business. Audio and notes of each teleclass can be found on The Principal Financial Group’s women in business website after each class. Typically, the speaker will be a well-known, successful businesswoman. Previous speakers have included Suzy Welch and Katrina Markoff of Vosges-Haut Chocolat. Continue reading »

I read a great article from WomenCorp today by Kent Irwin of eFinplan LLC that lists eight factors which typically leave businesswomen poorer during their retirement years than businessmen. It’s an unfortunate reality but one businesswomen need to be aware of and tackle in the short term.

Here’s a recap of the eight factors Kent lists in his article:

1. Women earn less money
2. Women’s health insurance may cost more
3. Women may take ‘time-outs’ from work
4. Social Security checks may be lower for women
5. Women live longer than men
6. Single mothers are the poorest in retirement
7. Women may make less on their investments
8. Women are not well represented in the financial planning industry

Kent provides great suggestions for what businesswomen should do to mitigate the effects of these factors that naturally work against them as they plan for their retirement years. Give his article a read or bookmark it for future use. As Kent suggests, you may even want to bring the article with you to your next meeting with your financial planner to make sure you have all your bases covered. Don’t sell your retirement short.

Do you have any other suggestions for how businesswomen can maximize their retirement savings? What has worked particularly well for you in relation to your retirement plan strategy?