Club of the Month: June 2001

Girls Just Wanna Have Funds

CHICKS: How did you all meet?

GIRLS JUST WANNA HAVE FUNDS: Most of the members are people Julie Girl has known from childhood, work relationships or current friendships. Not many of the members knew each other until our first face-to-face meeting in Miami. We branched out from there, including friends of friends, and now have 11 members.

Where are you located?
We are mostly in Atlanta, but also have Girls in Chicago, Miami and Canton, Ohio.

How long have you been together?
We started with our first on-line meeting in October 2000.

Would you accept any new members?
We just took on two more bringing our total to eleven and we think that's plenty for now.

Do you meet online or face-to-face?
On-line ten times a year and we love meeting face-to-face twice a year for a fun excuse for a Girls' weekend!

What prompted you to start the club?
Julie Girl listened to her good friend, Chick Jana, talk about all the fun they were having and watched her become a confident investor over the past few years. In fact, Julie Girl got tired of Chick Jana talking about how much fun it sounded and Julie Girl finally got the initiative to start a club herself.

How did you come up with your name?
As one of our first "assignments" we all threw in a few names and voted. Girls Just Wanna Have Funds was Dianna Girl's idea.

What stocks do you own?
We currently own AMD & Merck, which we are proud to say have done fairly well considering the market. Our plan is to buy once a quarter. We are in the process of buy #2. We had in narrowed down to two final stocks, but realized neither were good choices at the time. So we had to rethink our approach and extend the process another month. It's always a learning process!

How has your portfolio done?
We'll let the portfolio speak for itself. We're quite pleased!

What is the greatest benefit you've received since joining your club?
This is a great outlet for all of us for various reasons. It is so energizing to be involved with such a great group of dynamic and diverse women. And to top it off we're teaching each other. Nothing is better than that!

What's your club's funniest story?
As far as a funny story... the one we came up with was when we went out in Miami for our BIG "girls night out" and we only stayed out until 11:30 PM. There we were, all sitting in Madonna's club, we only had one drink, looked around at the "cool" people and said 'ok, we have seen it, now lets go back to the hotel. It's funny how "mature" we all are. Ha Ha. Maybe we should be called "Girls Just Wanna Have SLEEP".

What has been your greatest problem running the club?
The toughest challenge we face is probably time. We really try to keep our time commitment to a minimum so that nobody feels it becomes a burden. But inevitably, each of us always has deadlines, crises, and last minutes events that can't be avoided that make it difficult to participate. Luckily, we each know all the Girls are committed and we know that there will be times when we need to carry the load for one another.

What advice do you have for other clubs either starting out or that have been around awhile?
What has worked well for us is clearly identifying up front, as a group, what type of commitment we expect from each other financially, as well as the amount of time involved each month. That way we all have the same expectations.

And if you are just starting out - Just Do It! Many of us had wanted to do something like this for quite a while, but it took us so long because we feared how much work we would take on in our already busy lives. But if you involve other women with the same amount of drive and passion, it's easy to share the workload. And it's fun to have everyone contribute her own strengths and skills.