The conference also included many breakout sessions on a wide variety of topics, including impact investing, next-generation advisors, the financial impact of addiction, executive women, college planning, divorce, business building, minority women and many other issues. Pre- and post-conference workshops focused on succession planning and women in transition.
Ande Frazier, a CFP who heads vision and branding for myWorth, and Christine Palmer Hennigan of Divorce Wealth Strategies and 1847Financial, spoke at a well-attended session, “What Women Want.” MyWorth, which provides financial education to women, found in its research that women tend to seek financial advice when they face some kind of triggering life event, which could be anything from expecting a child to launching a business to the death of a spouse or a catastrophic illness.
Hennigan, whose practice deals mainly with divorce and women, pointed out that almost everyone who comes to her has some kind of crisis or urgent matter they are dealing with, and they come with a range of emotions.
“But what’s really tricky about that is you don’t have the time to work through what you normally would and you don’t necessarily have the time to establish long relationships with all the professionals involved,” she said.
The conference’s closing speaker was Carstensen, a co-founder of the Stanford Center on Longevity, who talked about a future with an abundance of centenarians. “Most of you will sail through your 80s and 90s, and lots of you will live to reach 100,” Carstensen said. The best predictor of long life, she added, is a person’s education level.
“Here we are where four and five generations routinely will be living at the same time. Education will change, financial planning will change, the nature of work will change. All of these things will change because of these numbers. Completely novel.”
The 6th Annual Invest in Women conference will be held April 27-29, 2020, in Atlanta.
Photo credits from top left, clockwise: Catherine Seeber, Andrea Thompson, David Smith, Danielle Burns, Andrea Thompson.