Women are learning how to take control of their finances — and their life

Shirley Solis, 44, and her husband had been married 15 years and ran a business together.

They spent about six months on the road from their Redland home – with their children in tow – attending homeschooling conventions to sell their homeschooling books and Solis did speaking engagements. Like what they promoted, Solis homeschooled her children, too.

“We were like a Barnes & Nobles on the road,” Solis said.

But all that came tumbling down when her husband cheated on her.

“We could no longer travel. We had to stay home and take care of ourselves,” Solis said. And that’s when she hit rock bottom financially.

While launching another business in October 2017, Hurricane Irma hit, dashing her dreams.

It was then that she received an email asking her if her business had been impacted by the hurricane.

If she answered yes, she could be entitled to a grant from United Way of Miami-Dade, which through Women United, is helping women establish financial stability. She qualified.

She took the money from the $1,000 grant and started an event for women called “Live Life,” akin to the motivational events put on by Tony Robbins.

United Way and Branches helped her with accounting, cleaning up her credit, and establishing a line of credit to fund Live Life.

United Way is made up of three pillars: education, health, and financial stability.

“You don’t actually need to be living on the streets – most of them are employed – but when you look deeper, you see they’re not OK,” said Karina Ron, director for the Center for Financial Stability at United Way.

United Way of Miami-Dade, with its sister organizations in 16 states, produced the ALICE Report, which takes into account factors such as financial resilience to determine how at risk people in Miami-Dade are. The ALICE Report “makes the invisible, visible,” Ron said.

According to Ron, more than 65% of their clients are women. Many tend not to have a cushion, so, if there’s an emergency, they get behind in their finances.

“When a hurricane comes, these families that are deemed ‘stable’ may not be resilient because they may not have the short-term savings to weather the storm,” Ron said.

Four female entrepreneurs gathered recently for a panel, Small Business United, so women could hear about their challenges and how they overcame them in their businesses.

Suzanne Perez Bernal, 37, who owns a PR agency, reminded the women that you only live once, so now’s the time to make the most of it.

“This life is not a dress rehearsal. This is the final act of the show,” she said.

Carol Greenberg Brooks, who owned and recently sold CREC, a real estate development company, shared that her key to success has been seeing herself as an equal to men.

“I just never saw that as an obstacle,” she said.

The panel was part of United Way’s effort to teach people about financial capability, stability, and resilience.

“Financial capability is different from financial literacy,” Ron said.

One is the way you understand the money, the other is how you act with the money. Their goal is get people to resilient, so if something happens, they can make it through.

Learn more

United Way of Miami-Dade Women United can be reached at womenunited@unitedwaymiami.org

To donate, go to https://unitedwaymiami.org/

This story was originally published October 25, 2019 at 7:11 PM.