Episode Three: Laurinda Rainey, Managing Director, Travel & Affinity Cobrand General Manager at Chase

Forget Rainy Days. Are You Saving for Your Future?

Most of us have heard the statistics about women doing the lion’s share of caregiving. Far fewer of us recognize the ripples of impact that caregiving can have on our lives, careers, and financial futures. Laurinda Rainey, Managing Director of Travel and Affinity Credit Cards at Chase, talks with Women on the Move host Sam Saperstein about the often-unseen consequences of raising kids, taking leave, and being a caregiver.

 

“If women are caregivers to older parents or an older sibling, the time that they're out of the workforce compounds the wage gap that already exists in our country and in our world,” she explains. “Since women tend to also live longer, it's really, really important that they think ahead to their 70-, 80-, or 90-year-old selves. They must make sure that they have enough money for the life that they want to live, because they spend so much of their life constantly giving to others.”

 

Laurinda also dives into the importance of having long-term savings goals as a woman regardless of caregiver status, pointing out that saving for retirement and emergencies—as well as fun things like travel or homebuying—helps us be flexible and confident in the face of unexpected changes. A true advocate for preparedness, she encourages women to explore and invest in insurance, especially if they have known health risks. It may feel uncomfortable to insure yourself for worst-case scenarios, but Laurinda insists doing so often helps women through incredibly difficult times. Some of which she’s been forced to face on her own.

 

“I'm from a very large family, and that made me want to enroll in catastrophic medical care plans. I also have a cancer insurance policy, since I've lost both of my parents to cancer,” she says. “Some might have said that I was wasting money on these insurance plans, but with each of these instances, as they have occurred, I had a plan in place that gave me resources to help me navigate.”

 

Avalanche vs. snowball

Of course, preparing for the future also means balancing out your debts. Laurinda tells Sam about two mindsets that helped her understand the best way to tackle paying down her own debts. The first is the “avalanche method,” which involves rank-ordering all of your debts, paying off whatever has the highest interest rate first, and once that debt is cancelled out, applying the money you’d once put toward it to the next debt in line.

“What worked for me, though, was the snowball method,” Laurinda says. “Building the snowball is rank-ordering by the smallest amount of debt that you have to pay. When I paid off one debt, I could then apply the minimum payment I was making on it to the next debt that I had. That worked because I liked the adrenaline rush of quick wins.”