By Kevin Fagan, Asst. News Editor -

Tuesday evening, Smart Woman Securities hosted a panel entitled “Is Investing the New Shopping?” as a way to soft launch their group that has the goal of educating undergraduate women about investing. The panel, which included members of the Boston College administration, as well as students from the Carroll Graduate School of Management, led a discussion on a broad range of investment and financial topics.

The event began with a discussion on the basics of personal finance and investing. Saving was mentioned as the primary way to have money for investing. Andrea Bevis, MBA/MSF ‘10, said that a good rule of thumb was to save 10 percent of your annual salary and put it into an account that cannot be touched for at least few years. “Get yourself into the habit of putting money away ever month,” said Mary Lou DeLong, vice president and university secretary. “The sooner the better.”

The panel also discussed different investment strategies based on risk tolerance and the need for taking on additional risk to achieve higher returns. In response to the market’s rockiness in the past few years, Mary Ellen Fulton, assoc. dean for finance, research, and administration at the Lynch School of Education, said that it was necessary to watch what is happening currently in the market.

Panelists discussed the importance of utilizing retirement plans where an employer agrees to make a matching contribution up to a certain amount. The existence of plans that allow money to be taken out of each check tax-free allows individuals to pay themselves first. This makes the process of saving for retirement much easier, given the money is quite often not as missed if it were in each check.

At the end of the event, there was a brief discussion of how to get started with investing. Panel members brought up their favorite resources that students could use to start doing their research, including Yahoo! Finance, Investor’s Business Daily, and databases the library subscribes to, including Thompson ONE Banker. The panel emphasized the need to understand a company by reading its profile and knowing its competitors before investing in a company.

A brief education ensued to give attendees an awareness of the lingo needed to begin investing. Earnings per share and price to earnings ratio were described as some of the most important ratios needed to value a company. The panel used the example of J. Crew Company to show where these ratios and other important information appear in Yahoo! Finance.

The event concluded with a discussion of how women influence the stock market. Members of Smart Woman Securities stated that 85 percent of all consumer spending in America is done by women to the tune of $5 trillion. These spending decisions influence which stocks succeed in the market. The event concluded with a raffle of J. Crew gift cards.