Financial Advice from Woman’s Day Magazine…from 1971!

My wife was recently helping her mother clean out some old boxes in preparation for a move.  Among the many useful things she found and saved, she found a Woman’s Day magazine.  Apart from wondering why this was kept for 48 years, I found myself slightly intrigued:  what interesting historical things might an old magazine hold?  So I checked.  I didn’t, though, expect to find financial advice from Woman’s Day.

Why am I looking at this???

It’s totally fair to ask me why in the world I, a fortysomething male, would be looking at a 48-year-old Woman’s Day.  But I believe I have two good reasons:  1) I like looking at things from that era of American culture;* and 2) I vaguely remember the Woman’s Day issues purchased by my mother a long time ago having pictures of food.**  Yes, as a child I enjoyed looking through the magazine, but I only read it for the pictures.  Or something like that.

And so I found myself leafing through the magazine.  There were not, unfortunately, many pictures of food (except in a Tupperware ad).  I did, though, find some other interesting things, such as an ad for 126 film (which no one remembers anymore), what I would swear is an early modeling shot of Christie Brinkley before she was “discovered”, a whole heck of a lot of cigarette ads (some of which didn’t even have the Surgeon General’s warning!), way too many uses of the word “douche”, an ad for oil of mink (good luck finding that now!), and the entirety of the “to be published” The Lorax.  There was also a letter under the heading “How One Family Is Weathering Its Financial Crisis”.

Financial advice from Woman’s Day?  Well, from a reader, at least.

Odds are pretty good that my mother bought this issue.

Woman’s Day Financial Advice

I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that, thanks to copyright law, I can’t reproduce the entire letter, but we can hit the high points.  To begin: apparently Woman’s Day had printed an article in the April 1971 issue entitled “How to Weather a Financial Crisis”.***  The letter writer, Helynn M. Carrier, had a husband who had been out of work for ten months.  Yikes.

From her experience, she believed she had a few more items to add to whatever their list was.  And are they still relevant in 2019?  Well, let’s see.

• Cheer up.  Then, as now, cheeriness doesn’t come naturally to some people, so this may not be the most helpful, or most welcome, advice for those in the middle of a crisis.  Having gone through unemployment myself, I know I generally did not care to hear “cheer up”, or, even worse, “get over it”.  It certainly didn’t do much to help my financial situation.
• “Let that be a lesson to you.”  Oh, that’s much better.  Suddenly I’m rolling in cash!  No, sorry, as Ms. Carrier continues, she’s actually talking about things that do help…to a point.  You know:  bank where you don’t get hit with service charges every month; pay your credit card off each month; go for “90 days same as cash” deals.  I was with her until that last one.  If it’s a big purchase, I’m more likely to wait.
• Plant something.  Between my inability to grow much of anything and the bunnies that live under my front porch and like to eat the things in our yard, that doesn’t seem to be the most helpful item for me.
• Seize the opportunity.  Ms. Carrier is talking about family time here.  Good advice, but there’s no need to have a financial crisis before you take it.
• If the wife must find a job…  Oh, yeah, we are still back in 1971 here, aren’t we?  Heck, it was still three years before the Equal Credit Opportunity Act made it much more simple for a woman to even get a credit card.  In any case, it just seems strange to me to think that less than 50 years ago, a woman getting a job was not commonplace.
• Help and support each other.  Evergreen advice.
• Be interested…  Here Ms. Carrier means, as far as I can tell, to distract yourself from your current lousy situation.  Good for a short while, I suppose, but at some point you have to take care of the crisis.

So, is this advice timely?

Well, some of this advice might be timeless, to a point.  Do I think that I will be starting a garden soon?  We’d probably be interested if we didn’t have a bunch of rabbits living right under our front porch.  And I’ve never cared for “90 days same as cash” deals.

The most worthwhile portions of Ms. Carrier’s advice might not, however, be financial in nature.  I think it will always be good advice to spend time with your family, plan for the worst and hope for the best, and support each other.  That’s what we’ve tried to do.

* Ask me about it, and I will probably talk your ear off.  Heck, I have an entire other blog related to forgotten music of that era.
** I vaguely remember Family Circle being better for food pics, but it’s been a long time since then.
*** My mother-in-law did not, sadly, keep the April issue.
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