Our uniquenesses can make a big difference in our personal finances. We ignore them at our peril; taking them into account can give us significant advantages.

Are we as different as I claim? Let's first look at survey data from the gay market research firm, Overlooked Opinions. Then let's see how these differences impact our risks, spending, taxes, investments, and net worth. According to this quantitative data we're:

More educated; 32% of us have a degree, with 26% having a graduate degree.

Better off, with gay men having an average income of $52,000 and lesbians and average of $43,000. In relationships, the gay men over 56%, with lesbians over 71%. In our own homes, gay men 48%, lesbians 43%. More political, with gay men 93% registered and 88% voting, lesbians 90% registered and 82% voting.

We get major coverage in the book American Couples. Its qualitative analysis of extensive survey data concludes:

• Gay men in couples equate power with money in the relationship, while lesbians successfully separate power and money issues.
  
• Gay men judge their success by comparing it to what their partners achieve, something no other couples do.
  
• While lesbians are much more coupled, they're far more reluctant to pool resources.
  
• When lesbians are poor, they don't let poverty impact their satisfaction with their relationships, unlike any other type of couple.
  
• Gay men are happier at work if they're out; it doesn't seem to matter with lesbians.
  
• Young or old, lesbians cannot seem to find enough time together while, young or old, gays are more satisfied with the amount of time they have.

Facts are not enough. They are merely descriptive. Just what are the economics, the financial patterns of our lifestyles?

First, we are childless, with gay men less than 5%, lesbians less than 10%. Second, we cross all social strata, cultural classes, economic barriers. Third, we are essentially entrepreneurial, on our own, rarely integrated into biological, cultural, economic, political, or corporate families.

Lastly, beyond facts, beyond economic patterns, we have always had a unique cultural and spiritual role in society. And we must reclaim that turf to achieve our true success. In most ancient societies, we were the guide, the shaman, the spiritual leader, the prophet, the healer, and the artist. Because of our inside/outside role, because of our invisibility, because of our multiculturality, we have less to lose and more to gain. Because of the leverage of our perspective--we can make great contributions.

We're special people. Gay men and lesbians are genetic keystones to the human race. We break the pattern. Because we cross national, cultural, racial, and class boundaries, we come to see life as La Cage says, 'at an angle.' Because we're on the outside we see alternatives. We're often the first or the only ones to see things as they are at all. This vision gives distinct financial advantages. Our multiculturality enables us to see many perspectives, more than one solution to a problem.

Our predecessors never questioned these deep differences though they often saw them as liabilities. As things open up for us, as we leave our closets, these differences can function as assets. Or we will simply abandon them if we try to live straight financial and career lives.

The bonus for suppressing our inner selves is a booby prize: The same mediocre salaries and fees as the other 90% of society. Let's not sell out our major ticket to both inner and outer success.

Career Considerations

My message is simple. For all practical purposes, we are entrepreneurs--whether we work for one client or many. We are cut off from all forms of traditional families: Biological; nuclear; corporate. If we use straight financial advice, we ignore our assets and take on their liabilities: their children, their bondage to the reproductive cycle, their nonworking spouses, their lack of freedom, their lack of freedom, their lack of perspective. To illustrate this let's look at stages of life--first as a straight given, second as a variable.

Only a few books in social psychology attempt to define the practical implications of life's stages: Daniel Levinson's Season's of a Man's Life (and its knockoff, Gail Sheehy's Passages) and Roger Gould's Transformations. Only one book in personal finances, Financial Passages, attempts to determine what to do when--financially.

But for gays and lesbians, there are drawbacks in even these few references. They're geared to the reproductive cycle. They treat primarily the male mid-life crisis. They're purely descriptive--and don't reveal the dynamics that could be tinkered with and changed. Even with these shortcomings, however, they do raise the issues: That there are stages in life; and that things true at one stage may be quite different at another.

The underlying psychological dynamic of life stages for everyone is really awareness of morality. In our 20s we're immortal; in our 30s we get serious, in our 40s we get upset. Almost nothing is written on the 50s, 60s, and beyond, other than the more philosophical than practical works of Erik Erikson and Abraham Maslow.

Even though everyone goes through stages, we can got through them differently. Major social differences can appear between is and straights.

Heterosexuals often prematurely hook up in marriage in their 20s, short circuiting their exposure to life's teaching experiences. They're birthing babies in their 30s, which drains time and money away from long-term investment and career, prompting a premature emphasis on job security vs. job satisfaction and career expansion. When they hit their 40s, the frustrations and stresses often tear the marriages apart, leaving only an empty nest, hobbled by the liabilities of college educations and divorce settlements. The 50s reveal the folly of pinning hopes on corporate pyramid politics, with most people winnowed out, unprepared for alternative careers. The 60s become a time for catch-up, of too little, too late, salvaging whatever one selfishly can. This can make the 70s more a reaction to a lifetime of overwork in too narrow a grove, hunkering down to reduced circumstances. And the 80s can be bitter indeed, a tallying up of the true personal cost of raising a families the traditional way.

What about gays? Here's a positive portrayal. We're able to experiment grandly in our 20s, traveling, switching occupations, creating a rich quilt of friendships. We're able to focus on work, unimpeded, in the 30s, racking up a track record, developing depth, investing in ourselves and our futures. We're able to focus on self in the 40s, redirect, take time out, and perhaps forge a more individual path. We're able to blaze ahead in the 50s, enjoying the benefits generated by our vocations and avocations. We're able to give back in our 60s, mentoring, bearing our creative children and artifacts. We're able to reap the benefits of all our investments in our 70s and savor the freedom of having done it all in our 80s. This is my vision of what gay and lesbian life can be--if we don't follow the straight scripts.

Harsh? Yes. But true. When we raise children, we're doing it differently--as a matter of choice, and usually after being financially prepared.

Inventing New Patterns

If we take assimilation to mean assuming straight financial patterns, we've gained nothing. If we use our genuine differences to create different patterns, we stand to gain much. Only careful career management will make the choice ours.

The mismanagement of our careers starts in schools, with our career counselors. Behind every standardized career path there's assumed to be a heterosexual family waiting. We, more than anyone else, must shake off straight assumptions that shortchange our futures--such as: that employment be full-time, that the best careers are continuous, that competition is the law of life, that security is best, that a single employer offers the best chances to advance, that salary is best--and finally, that personalities are best hung in the closet.

This is why I focus first on my client's career assumptions. Careers drive all the money we will ever make. Career drives satisfaction. The right career moves create the money, skills, and assets that then are spent, saved, taxed, invested, and passed on. We're one of the few minorities in America which is psychologically and financially equipped to, as Joseph Campbell says, follow our bliss. But first we must break out of our career closets. A book just out addresses this question: The Corporate Closet.

How can we hope to make the most of our best, of who we're hiding out? A new book, written by Ed Mickens, publisher of Working it Out!, to be published next spring, The 100 Best Corporations for Gays & Lesbians, put the case in its first sentence: "Employers who do well addressing gay issues are the organizations that will excel in the years to come...why? Talent." Our talents are the characteristics, the life training, the experience of life that is our hallmark, that makes us great contributors to tomorrows corporations.

Coming our means more than declaring our sexuality. Fully embrace it can mean rediscovering those parts that are really us that got buried along the way. So, first, we need to dig out. We need to unearth who we are and make our careers out of that, out of our unique qualities, interests, skills, and styles.