Helping Latinos Take Stock of Their Financial Futures
A few weeks after 14-year-old Julie Stav arrived in Los Angeles from Cuba, she sat down to take an IQ test at Hollywood High, but the English might as well have been hieroglyphics--Stav spoke only Spanish. In the days to follow, the school administrators did not reveal her test score, but they evaluated her intelligence as “retarded.” It was the first of many hurdles for Stav, who is now a perfectly bilingual 47-year-old millionaire, a certified stockbroker, an author and the president of her own company.
Her rags-to-riches story includes a 1986 divorce from which she emerged as a single mother with a mountain of debt and a checking account with 33 cents.
As part of this week’s pledge drive by KCET-TV, Stav will host two 60-minute financial-advice specials--one in Spanish and one in English. Both aim to reach women with no formal business training who need to squeeze the most out of a small household budget.
Cautious Investments With Limited Capital
Shows aimed at Latinos have proven to be particularly successful pledge programs for KCET. During the station’s 1998 fall fund-raiser, Vikki Carr’s bilingual performance of classic Mexican songs from the 1930s to 1950s drew $50,000 in pledges.
“We are looking for these kinds of opportunities,” said station spokeswoman Barbara Goen, suggesting that Stav might be able to strike a chord with Spanish-speaking or bilingual viewers.
At last month’s Spanish-language taping of “Obtenga Su Porcion” (Get Your Share), Stav stood next to a white dresser with three drawers and told the small studio audience that the amount of money they should invest is directly related to one question. “Which drawer do you put your underwear in?” she asked, looking at the dresser.
Stav opened the top drawer as most members of the audience snickered. See, she said, we put our everyday items there because they’re easy to get to--just like the small change in your wallet that you need every day to pay for food or transportation.
“And what is in the bottom drawer?”
She opened the drawer and pulled out a heavy blanket. The bottom drawer is like a savings account where untouchable money is stored for safekeeping, she said.
But the second drawer is what Stav’s show is all about. It holds the equivalent of investment money, which, if managed well, can fill up until it “spills over” into the top and bottom drawers--as she puts it, enriching both the quality of daily life as well as long-term stability.
Stav’s style and her history are testament to the power of cautious investments with small capital. With a 1974 credential to teach elementary school, Stav found her sister-in-law’s life as a tax shelter annuity salesperson easier to manage with children. In 1979, she studied to sell tax shelter annuities, and by the time she was separated from her husband in 1986, she had learned enough about finances to know the only way to keep her head above water was to play the stock market. After she tucked her son into bed, she studied at the kitchen table to get licenses to sell mutual funds and stocks.
She always lacked the confidence to walk into a brokerage house and cold-call potential clients. Instead, she held free seminars in public libraries and handed out her card afterward.
“It got to the point where I couldn’t meet with anyone,” Stav said, referring to the influx of calls from seminar audience members who sought advice. In an effort to be more efficient, she asked her own broker-dealer what he thought of her forming an investment club.
“He said, ‘It’s a lot of women, a lot of work and not much money.’ So, I said, ‘I’m going to do this,’ ” she said.
Investment Clubs Mushroom in Months
For the first meeting, which was held at Platt Library near Canoga Park, 64 women came with their $10 contributions to form Mutual Friend$. The second meeting had to be moved to the Fallbrook Mall to accommodate the 117 women who attended.
“Then I realized it was illegal,” said Stav, a trim platinum blond. “The highest number allowed [by federal law] is 99.” She continued to splinter the group so each club stayed under 99 people, and within a few months she was holding 12 investment clubs, charging each person $60 a year.
But she hadn’t yet reached out to the women she understood best, Latinas who kept a household budget running while preserving the man’s role as breadwinner and chief economist in the family. During Stav’s first Spanish-language investment club, held in Lena’s Beauty Salon in Burbank, she urged the Latinas to play things cool with their often tradition-bound husbands, men raised within a culture that defines their role within the family as the dominant one, and who might not feel comfortable about having their wife make financial decisions. As soon as they began to make money, Stav told them to keep quiet.
“Just casually leave your statement on the table,” she told them.
KCET will promote the Spanish-language show during the morning block of kids shows, a time when KCET draws a larger crowd of Spanish-surnamed viewers.
Station Seeks Out Spanish Speakers
“Our goal is to reach out to our Spanish-speaking audience with a fully Spanish show,” said Goen. “We know that a Spanish-language show will not work in some markets in the PBS network, [but] the big promotional challenge for us is reaching the Spanish-speaking audience.”
Linda De Jesus, senior vice president of Bravo Group, one of the leading Spanish-language advertising firms in the country, said Latinos are savvy about money, but they do not receive much financial information on bank programs and investments. De Jesus oversaw advertising for “Dinero Seguro,” the U.S. Postal Service’s money transfer campaign that targeted recent immigrants who send money back to their country of origin.
‘Gaining Their Trust’
“There is a great percentage of Hispanics that don’t have the financial services such as stocks,” she said. “We need to start off with educating them, gaining their trust. A lot of financial institutions exist out there, but they haven’t taken a very aggressive approach in reaching the Hispanic market.”
According to Zogby’s Culture Polls, only about 31% of Latinos said they owned stocks, the lowest percentage of any minority group in the 4,000-person poll. (In comparison, nearly 39% of African Americans said they owned stock and 56% of Asian Americans reported owning stocks.)
Stav uses everyday analogies to cut through the intimidating aura of the stock market. At the taping, she told a quick story about two men, Dow and Jones, who thought investors might need a daily update on the stock market--like a tablespoon of soup from the pot on the stove. The Dow, she said slowly, using shorthand for the audience, changes every day, because every day another spoon is dipped into the pot for tasting.
Stav insists her success is not due to any secret. As the founder of Retirement Benefit Systems, a financial planning firm in Calabasas, she wrote “Get Your Share: The Everyday Woman’s Guide to Striking It Rich in the Stock Market” (Berkeley Publishing Group of Penguin Putnam Inc.). She said her book explains how she made her fortune by screening the stocks that share criteria with 50 stocks over the past 100 years just before they took off.
“If we’re down 10%, we’re out. We protect our profits. I don’t claim to have the best strategy, but I have one that works,” Stav said. “It’s like a recipe. I have a recipe for paella, and it usually comes out great.”
* “Get Your Share” can be seen on KCET on Tuesday at 8 p.m. “Obtenga Su Porcion” can be seen Saturday at noon.
