Barbara Gulin has been in the financial industry long enough to know her way around the block. Practicing as a licensed financial advisor for almost 20 years, she has successfully guided men, women and couples into financial strategies and helped them establish healthy retirements time and time again.
As president and owner of BG Wealth Advisory, LLC. in Mission, Kansas, Gulin is ready and excited to help anyone seeking a better understanding of their financial situation. However, through the years, she has become especially passionate about helping women, not only navigate, but change the cultural norms surrounding financial topics.
“The money in your pocket has no gender and doesn’t care who is holding it,” she said. “You owe it to yourself to be equipped and to understand at least the basics of the financial world so that you're not taken advantage of.”
Today, that is where her heart lies–helping single and married women alike understand their money and establishing a trusted place to get started.
“It's important to me that even if a woman doesn't want to be an integral part of the planning process by her choice, that she at least understands the headlines and understands that if something critical happens–you call your pastor, you call the undertaker and then you call me,” she said. “The woman who chooses to have somebody else take control of things might find herself in a position where she has to do a lot of learning really quickly.”
As painful as it is to consider life’s “what if’s,” Gulin says that planning for a crisis is better than planning in a time of crisis. As someone who has experienced her fair share of personal tragedy, Gulin has incredible validity for advising her clients to be prepared.
“Realistically, if you live a normal life span, it’s not a matter of if, but when you're in a situation where your finances are not where you thought they were gonna be,” she said. “People need to understand why I'm making the recommendations that I'm making and they need to understand the thought process behind it so that they understand where the roots are of things.”
Education is crucial to the way Gulin conducts her business. That also applies to learning each woman’s financial personality, usually found in one of five profiles–the lioness, the eagle, the ant, the turtle and the butterfly. These profiles are designed to help a woman better understand her perspective of money, because for the majority, handling it is inevitable.
“Three quarters of us, even if we’re married, are going to end up managing the entire bucket of finances in our lives,” Gulin said. “They need some place to go where their perceptions aren't going to be minimized, where we are going to work with them and give them the respect that they deserve.”
The future seems to be bright for women who work in the financial world and for those who have taken the steps to educate themselves. Sharing from her trusted resources, Gulin anticipates a $30 trillion wealth transfer to women within the next 15 years through surviving spouses and going from one generation to the next. A transfer of that significance puts the emphasis on companies just like Gulin’s to come alongside these women.
“I think the financial services industry is going to need to learn how to connect with and relate to women, and I think that the financial services professionals who are willing to walk the path with women and respect the fact that they are knowledgeable are going to be the ones that end up having that degree of success and being well adjusted,” she said.
"...if something critical happens, you call your pastor, you call the undertaker and then, you call me.”