Take Control Your business's finances are in good shape--but what about your own?

Kim Kiyosaki travels around the country giving financial seminars and offering products based on her book, Rich Woman. Michael Zmistowski runs a financial planning firm, First Gulf Advisors, and speaks nationally to groups of advisors and brokers. The two take different approaches but agree on one thing: It's crucial for women to take control over their financial lives. "We've made so many strides in business, women's rights and politics," says Kiyosaki, co-founder of The Rich Dad Company. Financial independence, she continues, "is the one thing that's still out there."

Zmistowski, for his part, readily ticks off numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Eighty percent of women die single, while 80 percent of men die married. The poverty rate for elderly women living alone is five times higher than for married elderly women. "Get your mind around that and tell me women shouldn't create their own financial plan" when they're young, he says.