It takes more than a six-figure salary, a closet full of Calvin Klein suits or a high-stakes trader's job to make a Generation X woman savvy about personal finance.

Just ask Vanessa Summers, who spent her youth as a model and five years in increasingly well-paid securities-trader positions before running smack dab into a surprising fact: Despite buying and selling millions of dollars of equities every day, Summers hadn't saved a dime. Money was no issue, and the eye-popping bonuses she received were icing on the cake.

So why no savings? Today, Summers, 31, says she was busy doing what most people her age were doing-consuming. In Hong Kong, where she worked for Jardine Fleming, that included buying Gucci and Hermes, driving a Volvo and renting a choice address. It never occurred to her that retirement was a goal that required a financial plan or desirable money habits, she says. In fact, she left the Hong Kong brokerage house just months before she would have been vested for a pension, without so much as a second thought. "I didn't understand what a retirement plan was," she says.

Just another tale of yuppie money woes? Not quite. Summers' attitude is all too representative of the 23 million Generation-X women in the United States today. In fact, more than 50% of her contemporaries say they live paycheck to paycheck and think they're more likely to accumulate 30 pairs of shoes before they accumulate $30,000 in a retirement plan, according to a new study. That is so, even though 30% of female Gen Xers earn $50,000 or more per year.

Those statistics are just the tip of the iceberg, says a study on Gen-X women and men sponsored by OppenheimerFunds, New York. The report finds that while a majority of Gen-X women (69%) believe that saving for retirement is important, less than 35% have saved even $100 in a workplace retirement plan. And fewer than 27% have saved anything, despite the fact that more than 50% have been offered an opportunity to do so by an employer.

The good news is this group of women wants to pay down its debt and begin investing. And the older the women are, the more likely they are to have started. The bad news is that a majority of them are having a hard time translating their good intentions into financial reality. Making matters worse: high debt levels, including credit-card debt with double-digit interest rates. The report, conducted for Oppenheimer by Yankelovich Partners Inc., surveyed 803 women and 402 men.

With nearly 10 years of studying women's investment habits under her belt, OppenheimerFunds CEO and Chairman Bridget A. Macaskill says it's the debt burden the study uncovered that is most troubling to her. Forty-seven percent of Gen-X women have credit-card debt (compared with 38% of men the same age). And as many as 50% of women have balances exceeding $5,000 (compared with less than 40% of men). At 18% rates, the interest alone on a $5,000 card balance is more than $150 a month. Gen-X women looking in their budgets for money to invest can focus on their credit-card costs, which is why Macaskill thinks paying down debt needs to be their No. 1 priority.

"Enlightened self-interest aside, how can you tell a 21-year-old that a 10% return is crucial when they're paying 18% in credit-card interest? It might be foolish to believe you can interest all of them in retirement planning in their early 20s, but it's very realistic to say, 'Start paying off your debt now, then start investing.'"

Macaskill says this group of women has opportunities and challenges that earlier generations just haven't had. "We know that with longer life spans and declining Social Security, this is a generation at financial risk anyway, but women will bear the brunt," she adds.

The light at the end of the tunnel? "These women know how important paying off debt (65%) and saving for retirement is (69%), but we have to get them to take action," Macaskill says. "They have plenty of time to secure their futures, but tomorrow is not too soon to start."

To be fair, some Gen-X women can be decent clients, especially for newer or younger advisors or those willing to work on a commission basis. Older Gen Xers, especially those 30 and up, have started saving, and 30% of those who earn $50,000 or more per year have socked away $25,000 or more in their retirement plans.

In fact, some Gen Xers report they already are working with a broker or financial advisor. A total of 33% of male Gen Xers and 32% of women say they've worked with a financial professional. The most active Gen-X investors say they don't use the Internet to invest.

While female advisors might assume they have a lock on this group, women Gen Xers report that isn't so, at least not yet. Sixty nine percent of those working with a financial professional say they're working with a male broker or advisor, compared with 72% of men who are using a male professional.

"This is tomorrow's affluent and middle class," Macaskill says. "They increasingly are recognizing the need for financial assistance, and they're a lot more savvy than their predecessors. They're not going to wake up at age 40 and say: 'Where's a planner so I can bring my $200,000 in?'"

Macaskill also doesn't credit online brokers as being the savior of many of these women, since a significant number just don't have the impetus or know-how to do their own planning and investing. That could change with maturity. But for now, a whopping 63% of Gen-X women say they don't know how a mutual fund works. Only 38% know that stocks have outperformed bonds, and 19% say they understand the relationship between bonds and interest rates.

That said, serious financial habits and an interest in investing might just be part of maturing. It doesn't appear to be very different for Generation-X men. Yes, they have a bit less debt, but only 15% of them have accumulated $25,000 for retirement so far, outpacing Generation-X women on this score by just two percentage points.

If aging makes women more serious about investing, Summers is again a case in point. Summers got her wake-up call in 1999 when she signed on as head of sales and marketing for the Women's Equity Mutual Fund in New York. "I would go to investing seminars for women and talk about the fact that 50% of women wind up living on $1,000 a month after age 65," Summers says. "Then it hit me: I could be one of them."

At age 27, she began investing, scaling back her lifestyle and eliminating debt. The experience was so empowering, she says, she began to wonder why no one had ever told her how important good money habits are.

To ensure her peers get that wake-up call early, Summers founded the Sutra Foundation in San Francisco in April 2000. The organization seeks to motivate and educate young women about getting started on saving and investing for retirement.

The Sutra Foundation co-sponsored the OppenheimerFunds study on Gen-X women, as did Third Millennium, an advocacy group for young Americans. But Summers' efforts at empowering her contemporaries didn't stop there. Her first book, "Get In The Game: The Girl's Survival Guide to Money & Investing," is due from Bloomberg Publishing this summer.

"This generation really underparticipates in employer-sponsored retirement plans, so it's critical to engage them on this front," says Third Millennium founder Richard Thau, another Gen Xer.

Macaskill maintains that advisors can assist, both in the 401(k) arena, when they work with small-business owners to set up plans, and in their individual practices. "They can help shape the message when putting 401(k) plans in place by educating clients and employees. In everyday practice, I hope they're also asking if clients have any adult children that need assistance."

Some advisors do just that. Louis Llanes, president of Blythe Lane Investment in Englewood, Colo., routinely sees the Gen Xers whom existing clients refer. He'll even help them for free. So far, nonreferrals haven't fared as well, since the 2% asset-based fee he charges wouldn't compensate his firm-especially if the client has few or no assets. But Llanes is warming to the idea of charging a flat fee to help younger investors, as he puts it, figure out a "blocking-and-tackling strategy" to get started.

Younger advisors, those just getting started and those who want to put a succession plan in place for their junior partners are also figuring out ways to work with Gen-X women.

Cliff Robison, a Gen Xer himself and financial consultant with Charter One Bank's brokerage affiliate, Charter One Securities, in Dearborn, Mich., admits many of his clients are in their sixties, but says he works with anyone from his peer group who wants to start investing. "I never turn anyone away or tell them their investment is too small," says Robison, a commission-based planner who gets referrals from the bank. "They're my future referrals and my clients, potentially for the rest of my life."

Clients In The Making

The majority of the 23 million Generation-X women in the United States today think investing, especially for retirement, is a priority. Some are even doing something about it and say they're using an advisor to help them. More than 30% already earn $50,000 or more annually, and almost 30% of this group of Gen Xers has socked away $25,000 or more for retirement (13% for Gen-X women overall). That leaves about 21 million waiting in the wings.

Tips for working with these women?

"Don't wait until they've accumulated $100,000 because it will be too late," warns Rob Densen, a senior vice president and director of corporate affairs at OppenheimerFunds in New York. Densen, who helped steer the study on Gen-X women, has been involved for almost a decade in the firm's research on women's investing habits.

"This is not a wasteland," Densen says of the demographic group that has earned the ignoble nickname "slacker." "This is virtually an untapped market with real opportunity."

Still doubtful? Then you might be surprised OppenheimerFunds is finding that the attitudes of Gen-X women, ages 18 to 34 years old, run parallel to those of female baby boomers when they were in that age range, so there appear to be some very profitable sectors shaping up. And it was only a decade ago when many advisors had little interest in boomers because they had few assets outside their 401(k) plans.

Another tip? Don't treat female clients like they're dummies. The survey found that Gen Xers have already formed some fairly strong views about advisors' and brokers' potential to treat female clients with less respect. Fifty-two percent of women and 46% of men think women won't get the same treatment as male customers when visiting a broker or advisor.

Cliff Robison, a financial consultant with Charter One Securities in Dearborn, Mich., and a Gen Xer himself, says he treats all clients alike. He notes, though, that peers for whom he does planning tend to fall into two camps: those who already are investing in their 401(k) plans and those who aren't. "Those who are tend to be more serious, but I do plans for both," Robison says. "My feeling is that if I build these relationships right from the start, these people will come back, and it will mean more future business."

Actually, Robison has an even more persuasive reason for working with Gen Xers: "At some point, all the baby-boomer money is going to pass down to this generation. That's trillions of dollars. By building relationships now, I'll see some part of those future assets."