I had traveled on that train often enough to be acquainted with most of the passengers who always took the first car. This morning was very peculiar. Nearly every other seat was taken by a young man. They were not sitting together, two by two, as passengers usually did. Each was neatly dressed in a dark suit. Each wore a crisp white or light blue shirt. Each wore a carefully tied necktie.

Many had opened a copy of the Wall Street Journal. The car was unusually quiet.

I stood it as long as I could. Finally I spoke to the somber quiet. "Where's the funeral?" I asked. The young man seated in front of me said quietly, "It's not a funeral ma'am." "What is it then?" I asked with real puzzlement.

"We're from the Graduate School of Business of the University of Wisconsin at Madison. This is the Finance Class, and we're going in to Chicago to hear a special speaker."

"Oh," I said with dawning understanding. Brightly I asked, "Are the girls in another car?" "There are no girls, ma'am," said the polite student.

"What do you mean, 'there are no girls.' Do you mean to tell me that there are no female students in your class? Or just that they were not interested in the speaker?"

"There are no girls in our class, ma'am."

I was dumbfounded. Here were all these nice-looking young men, well on their way to the credentials for a job in the broad field of financial services...decent well-paid jobs, and no women were in training last year in that class. I was also angry.

Why were there no women? What are the social blocks in 2006 that prevent bright young women from developing the career paths in this field, that currently is starving to fill jobs in accounting, just one aspect of this wide field of work?

Why are women still so willing to let the men in their lives own all the knowledge about the financial side of life? Why does my friend, who is a senior financial planner, so often have to help bereaved women learn their financial fate, just as they have become widows and are often facing some kind of decreasing health condition?

Perhaps most aggravating of all, in this 21st century, in the richest country of the world, why are women so much more likely to fall into poverty in their most vulnerable years, due to a combination of lifelong lower paid work and lack of adequate financial information?

Although my experience with the class of young men at the peak of preparation for rewarding life ahead was nothing like a funeral, I thought later that it was not about full life either. If you are a woman reading this, I urge you to wake up this part of your life now! If you are a man reading this, and there are women and girls in your life whom you love, I urge you to encourage their interest in every question about savings and earnings, taxes and investment, the real cost of your consumer goods, the danger of overextended credit card use.

You can begin right now by following the Ten Commandments that I have laid out in my free e-course. You are urgently invited to begin TODAY. Just click on http://www.www.goldafter50.com