An alarming number of local women looking to get out of deep debt prompted one organization to take action.

I'm Amber Renee Dixon, and this week on Nevada Week, we explore why several women struggle with money management and the dire consequences they can face as a result of financial illiteracy.

♪♪♪ Support for Nevada Week is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt and additional supporting sponsors.

(Amber Renee Dixon) Over the next two weeks Jewish Nevada, Nevada's Jewish Federation, will host screenings of the new documentary $avvy in both Las Vegas and Reno.

The documentary investigates "the historical, cultural and societal norms "around women and money."

Joining us to talk about the need for this documentary is its director and producer, Robin Hauser.

Robin, thank you so much for joining us.

You are the director and producer of cause-based documentary films at Finish Line Features.

How would you describe the cause that this documentary centers on?

(Robin Hauser) Hi, Amber.

Well, the cause that this centers on is the fact that women and millennials more than any other generation, which is really surprising, aren't taking an active role in personal finances.

They're abdicating major financial decisions to somebody else in their life, and usually that's the man in their life.

-What inspired you to pursue this particular topic?

-Well, about six years ago after being married for 25 years, I got divorced.

So for the first time in a long time, I was solely responsible for my financial well being, and despite the fact that I have my MBA, despite the fact that I grew up with a father who is an investment counselor, I was surprised at the reality of my financial situation and what I really hadn't paid attention to and how much I had to learn.

And I thought boy, if I'm in that situation, there must be many other women out there in similar or worse situations.

-I don't want to pry and make you uncomfortable, but what kind of financial situation did you find yourself in?

-Well, I just didn't know how much I had to save for my future, right?

I didn't have retirement set up.

I didn't really know how much it even cost me to live every month or if I was going to be able to make enough money to afford living and retirement.

So this was something that was concerning.

I mean, I think I'm fortunate in that I do have a job and I was able to find some help to manage it.

But what was really surprising to me-- and here's the reason this is so important.

So women earn 80 cents on the dollar to what men make, right?

So we earn less, we spend more time out of the workplace to care for children and elderly parents so we have less social security, and we live longer.

So we have less money to afford a longer life, and that is why women 65 and older are 80% more likely to live impoverished than men of the same age.

This is a real problem, and it made me realize that women need to take control of their personal finances.

-Some of those stats are really scary, and it does make me wonder about if that were to change, if women and men made the same amount of money, would this problem be significantly helped or what else remains to be done to fix this issue?

-Well, I think women earning the same amount of money is a start, and that would certainly help a lot of things.

I think in some cases when you think about the Me Too movement and how often women have to stay in situations whether they're jobs or relationships where they're not being well served, or whether they're actually at harm, if women had financial independence, we wouldn't need to stay in situations like that, right?

We could get out.

So I think that's important, but I also think that women, you know, having money, we need to build confidence.

So not just being paid the same amount, that's really important, but we also have to build confidence in our ability to invest and to manage money.

-You brought up about people being-- or women being manipulated because they don't have money so they're depending on their husbands and may stay in abusive relationships.

But even in your documentary, you had a woman who was being used by a man for her money, and that surprised me.

I didn't ever think of it going the other way around.

You have a lot of really unique personal stories and also personal stories that are very common.

-Yes.

I mean, this is true and by the way, these issues happen in same-sex relationships also, right?

But yes, financial abuse is something that happens often whether it's, you know, a woman being taken advantage of because she isn't financially aware.

She isn't able to-- you know, she doesn't know the difference between say assets or she doesn't actually have control of her money.

So if somebody then is siphoning off money from her investments or from her checking account or just from her ATM, you know, she might not even be aware of that if she's not actually checking statements and keeping an active role on her money.

-You did a really good job of having a mostly female cast with both the personal stories and the experts, but I wondered if on the expert side, was that difficult?

You did have a couple of guys.

Are there a lot of women in the financial sector that are employed in finance?

-Well, there aren't enough, right?

And anybody that's looking for a financial advisor will know there really aren't enough women in wealth management and private banking.

So I think this is a need that we have.

But I think because, you know, traditionally finance has been male territory so they're just-- we don't attract as many women through the pipeline to get into wealth management.

And that's not to say that a man can't be a good financial advisor to a woman, of course they can.

But there are certain things-- it's about being aware of the issues that women have with money, the fact that we tend to be somewhat intimidated or we hold shame around our lack of knowledge or our intimidation about the stock market.

The stock market was made by men for men not on purpose to exclude women, but just because that's who was doing money issues in those days, right?

So all of the acronyms and sort of warlike analogies tend to marginalize women.

It makes us not feel like we belong.

So finding a financial advisor that understands that and can help a woman understand investing and how to invest without shaming her or without making her feel like an idiot is really important.

So I think-- and you know, what studies have shown is when women do invest, we actually invest better than men.

I think we're almost a basis point better or something, so that is pretty encouraging.

It just shows that women are more risk aware.

Not necessarily risk adverse, but we're more risk aware, and that's not a bad thing when it comes to investing.

-And that's kind of a cultural thing.

We're raised to be more cautious, whereas sometimes guys are encouraged to take the risks that you're talking about.

Last thing really quickly, you've spoken at the White House and on Capitol Hill about diversity and inclusion, the importance of ethical artificial intelligence as well as gender equality.

On this topic, what would you be pitching to policymakers at the national level?

-Well, first of all, I think that a really important thing is pay equality.

I think that's absolutely essential and I can't believe it's, you know, 2022 and we're still talking about that, but that needs to happen.

So the gender wage gap, the racial wage gap, that also needs to be rectified.

I think that's important.

But then I'd also really be pushing the fact that we need to have stand-alone personal finance lessons, classes in high school.

I think it can start as early as grade school if it's relevant information for kids that age, but we need to have financial education in schools.

-Robin Hauser, thank you so much for your time.

-Thank you, Amber.

-Let's continue this discussion and add to it with more on what work is underway to help women take control of their financial futures.

Joining me now are Emily Stevens, director of community engagement at SCE Federal Credit Union; Shanta Patton, cofounder of Make Homes Possible, and Kelly Mizrachi, legacy and philanthropy manager at Jewish Nevada.

Kelly, I want to start with you.

Jewish Nevada has decided to pay something a bit expensive, to have the screening of the documentary we just talked about here in Nevada.

What led Jewish Nevada to want to do that?

(Kelly Mizrachi) Sure.

It's a worthy investment at the end of the day.

We want to run a program through Jewish Nevada called Hebrew Free Loan which provides the community, the Jewish community, with interest-free loans for a multitude of reasons.

And as we started analyzing the metadata that we saw coming in from these loans, we noticed a trend where we were seeing women are applying for more loans for debt consolidation from high-interest credit cards or, you know, payday loans, predatory lending practices, or just simply for like emergencies, you know, that spring up they're not prepared for, and it led us to wonder why this is.

So when we heard about this documentary being available to bring to Nevada, we absolutely knew that was something that we had to do for the community here.

-So if this was an issue within the Jewish community, perhaps it's part of a larger issue.

So Emily, is that what you are seeing when women are coming into your credit union, and what about payday loans and their relationship with women?

(Emily Stevens) Yes.

So we do see more women.

It seems to be the bigger issue is with women; in fact, they're saying that about 60% of payday loan customers are women, and it's even higher amongst single mothers.

So when they come in, a lot of times it's because they were already maybe not managing their money properly, maybe living paycheck to paycheck, an emergency situation would come up, and they didn't know where else to turn.

And because they're so busy, the most convenient thing they can think of, where they think they have the most access, so their local payday lender, and then they end up in more trouble than they anticipated.

-And that payday loan is meant to be paid when you get your next paycheck, but if you don't, it gets super expensive and people get in a lot of debt.

Debt applies to Americans across the country.

It doesn't discriminate; men and women are in it.

And Student Loan Hero, talking about student debt, Americans owe more than $1.6 trillion in student loan debt.

Shanta, I understand that this impacts the African American women community in particular.

Why is that, and what do you think the solution is?

(Shanta Patton) You know, when it comes to African American women, they have actually forgone getting married up front and have tried to focus on their education, so they have some of the highest numbers of student loan debt, and that affects everything that they do in their ability to take care of their family.

A lot of them are single mothers.

They are also typically the primary breadwinner, if not the sole breadwinner, in their household.

So pay gaps and discrepancies in pay and discrimination definitely make a difference in their community.

-So here they are trying to do something good, get a college education, and then they're already in so much debt once they're getting that degree.

Hard to own a home that way, hard to accumulate wealth, and you talked about that pay gap.

According to the White House, women make about 80 cents to every dollar that a man makes, and then women of color make even less.

Kelly, were you seeing this among your loan applicants, a disparity in pay?

-Sure.

You know, it was another point of interest.

When we were looking at the data from the applicants overall, we did notice that a woman in a comparable position in a comparable industry, there was definitely a difference when we were looking at it head to head with a male applicant.

So it's definitely there on paper.

We can see it.

-And that feeds into such a startling statistic about after a woman is divorced.

In the first year after a divorce, a woman's standard of living drops an average of 73%, and that's according to Rich Woman by Kim Kiyosaki.

How is that drop possible, 73%, Emily?

-I think a lot of it has to do with financial awareness.

Many women because again, they're so busy, they would rather turn to their significant others to handle the finances, so they're not aware of their own financial situation or the family's financial situation.

So when the split happens, even if they get 50% of his, you know, paycheck or whatever it is that they get or don't get, they're not quite sure what to do with it and are oftentimes very surprised at what they don't know.

It changes things dramatically for these women; it's very hard.

-It's hard to imagine getting 50% of everything and then what happens, they lose it?

-It depends on the situation.

But let's say they were a stay-at-home mom, or you know, they were doing something that they loved in the community, volunteering, whatever, because he was making the money, and then now all of a sudden, that's not the case.

So now they have to figure out how to create a stable stream of income, and maybe they have this money that they should be putting aside for their future, for their own retirement if you would, but then it ends up getting spent on the day-to-day bills they aren't used to paying.

-Absolutely.

I see you nodding your head.

-Yes, absolutely.

I found myself in that exact situation, and I definitely experienced that 73% decline.

It does make a difference because as a mother, I was still handling 100% of the kids, and now I need to handle 100% of the finances as well.

And between children being picked up from school and plays and everything, you are spread so thin.

Also, if you have been used to sharing an income with someone else, now when it comes to credit card debt or any of those things, you're getting further and further into debt.

That's why we know the statistics show that divorce is so detrimental to your credit, and we know that credit has an impact on how much your car insurance is going to be and your ability to buy a home.

These are all based on those things.

So your credit is so important, but it's the first thing that takes a hit for a woman when those situations come.

-What are your ideas for getting this pay gap problem solved?

It's been more than 50 years since the Equal Pay Act and the Civil Rights Act were passed.

So if legislation is not working 100% effectively, what do you do?

-I think you have to work on changing legislation, because even though we have equal pay opportunities out there, the states do not focus enough on civil rights claims.

So even as a woman of color, if you understand that you're being discriminated against at work and you turn to civil rights agencies, if they are not prepared or properly funded to help you, then you still find yourself in a situation where you are left, you know, and when it comes to black women, they make 63% of what the white male makes, because white women make 83% of that number.

When it comes to education, one of the things that we know is a white male who only has a high school degree is 70% more likely to have more wealth than a black woman who has some college behind her.

So that number starts with financial literacy.

I think literacy should happen in an education standpoint from elementary.

If you teach them math, you should be teaching them literacy at the same time.

It doesn't matter how many apples Johnny had.

It really comes down to if you have this amount of money, how much can you purchase?

You know, if you have these things, then how much do you have left over?

They should be teaching real-life skills to kids as opposed to basic scenarios that are not real to real life.

-According to CNBC, only six states require a stand-alone financial education course in high school, and Nevada is not one of those states.

But Emily, you told me about something CCSD is undertaking that SCE Federal Credit Union is working with them, a pilot program?

-Well, not quite.

CCSD mandated a few years ago that financial literacy be taught in the schools, but there hasn't been any accountability and there also wasn't any resources provided.

So there's no curriculum, and even though the mandate is there, the teachers are trying to figure out ways to teach it, and a lot of them are not professionals in this area either.

So they turn to third parties oftentimes to come in.

Our credit union has a foundation that does financial literacy in high schools, so some of the schools here locally will let us come in.

I know some of the schools here locally will work with Junior Achievement, and there are some great organizations that work with the kids on financial literacy.

But it is a huge undertaking, and there are so many schools.

So many high schools, elementary and middle schools, they're not getting it.

There's so many that are not getting it because of resources.

There's a lack of resources and a lack of accountability, and it's creating this problem and that's just here in Nevada.

-And a lack of volunteers.

Junior Achievement, you know, focuses their whole program based on volunteers.

-As is ours, and that is challenging at times.

-In that documentary, it talked about how finances used to be a part of home economics, but that class kind of went by the wayside.

So now we are left with no education and it falls on the parents, and how prepared are our parents?

How prepared were your parents?

I know you grew up in a home of homeowners.

You were able to own your own home at 21.

When did they start teaching you about money?

-They did not, you know, because they were not taught about money, and that's the part of that generational curse.

So luckily when I was growing up, there was more access to the internet and those things.

So I definitely made some financial mistakes in the very beginning, and then I learned from those mistakes.

But I am very cognizant of teaching my children about financial literacy, managing their own bank accounts and the things they want to do at school.

I make sure they can manage their funds so I can actually break that generational curse.

-Back to the women who find themselves in debt and in tough financial situations.

Kelly, what were you doing with them?

What were the first steps to start getting out of that and getting financially independent?

-Sure.

I mean, we would offer them an interest-free loan.

Our basic requirements were a guarantor to help back the loan and also a proven ability to repay.

So those were kind of the first steps is like to stop the bleed, so to speak.

We do also have resources through the Jewish Family Service Agency, which is JFSA.

They can put individuals in contact with financial counseling through organizations like Opportunity Alliance Nevada and just making sure it's not just about, you know, giving somebody another loan to fix the problem, but really building in the education component so they can take ownership of their personal finances and make a difference going forward long term.

-Emily, anything you want to add to that about what the credit union will offer?

-Yes.

We provide one-on-one counseling for free.

We help people with their credit, getting out of debt.

You know, we really take them through the money management piece which is the budgeting piece and helping them understand what's coming in and what's going out so they are financially aware.

And then from there, it's a matter of-- to your point, it's not just about the resources or the education, they need both.

So if I'm going to take the time to give you that education and you take ownership of that, what resources now are available to get you through that?

So we have things like our credit builder program that helps people and is very safe.

And it's a great way to help build credit.

We have ways to help people get out of debt through consolidation using-- we have some really cool products to help people.

But we just want to be a resource.

-And the last thing, Shanta, from a historical perspective, women haven't been able to have their own mortgage starting until the '70s or their own bank account without a husband's permission until the '60s.

Being that far behind, how does that impact a woman?

-It has created a huge generational wealth gap.

And also back in those times, black people in general were only allowed to work in agriculture or farming and those types of jobs.

They weren't allowed to have corporate jobs.

We see that black women are 1% of engineering jobs, you know, and 3% of computing jobs.

So that gap means that black women have the highest rate of minimum wage pay, as we've seen-- and the issue with that is remember, they're 80% the primary breadwinner, so that definitely makes a big difference when it comes to that, and we have to be honest.

There's more payday loan companies in the black community than there are banks.

-Ladies, thank you so much.

We could go on and on about this.

While financial education as we talked about is not often taught in public schools, it can be found in outside programs like the Girl Scouts.

The Girl Scouts of Southern Nevada recently wrapped up cookie selling season, but their entrepreneurial skills are still in use as "Cookie CEOs."

-Let's start with a funny story, right?

My friend was selling cookies at a supermarket... As part of the Cookie CEO program, this group of Girl Scouts has spent a couple of hours every Monday for the past seven weeks preparing for this pitch.

It's donations like these that enabled Girl Scouts to give young women all around the world amazing opportunities.

To a local business for a Gift of Caring donation.

(Aimee Romero) The Gift of Caring is a program.

It's a way for people to donate to the Girl Scouts even if they don't want cookies.

-Opportunities like these are only possible because of generous donations like yours.

The Cookie CEO program caters to Girl Scouts in middle and high school.

This is a higher-level entrepreneurship program for girls that have already had an exposure to business but really want to level that up and learn that Shark Tank style of pitching.

These particular girls are at the Cadet level, meaning they're 6th to to 8th graders.

We want to give you a huge thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your support this year, and we are looking forward to your continuing partnership next year.

However, their level of knowledge about money surpasses that of some adults.

(Reagan) Through just this class, I learned about-- like I've heard IRAs mentioned, but this class, there was some bankers that came in to talk to us, and they were really knowledgeable.

And they were talking to me about 529.

They were answering all my questions.

Beyond that, like before that, selling cookies teaches you so much about money.

And Girl Scouts can start selling cookies as young as five years old, says Donna Namchek, COO of Girl Scouts of Southern Nevada.

Her daughters did, and are now 15 and 20 years old.

(Donna Namchek) They're very mindful of money.

They are very good at setting a goal and working towards it much better than I was at their age.

In addition to money management, Girl Scouts learn confidence.

(Aubree) Going through these years being with my sisters in my troop definitely is letting me know that I can be myself around people and know that they're not going to dislike me for who I am, and if they are, I shouldn't be hanging around them.

It's a trait the Cookie CEO program reinforces.

The entire purpose of this kind of pitch in a boardroom with executives is we wanted them to feel a little bit rattled.

That is really the essence of being an entrepreneur and having that confidence and knowing that if I can get through this to the end, I have accomplished so much.

And while CEO may or may not be the title these girls pursue professionally...

I'm not sure, but something with a lot of algebra.

-Drama and art production really interests me.

The skills they've acquired here will certainly serve them in whatever path they've been empowered to choose.

Thank you as always for joining us this week on Nevada Week.

For any of the resources discussed on this show including where you can watch the documentary $avvy and where you can find help to improve your financial literacy, please visit our website at vegaspbs.org/nevadaweek.

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