Want to get smarter about money without sacrificing your sanity or social life? The Smart Cookies — a group of five young women who banded together to form a money club — offer a hands-on guide for people looking to sharpen their financial skills. Here's an excerpt from chapter one of "The Smart Cookies' Guide to Making More Dough."

Chapter One: The Taboo Topic
Starting the Conversation about Money

Money.

How often have you said the word aloud? How often do you talk about it with your friends, your family, or your colleagues at work? Do you know your best friend’s credit-card balance? Or how much your parents owe on their mortgage? Have you ever asked your colleagues how they manage their money?

Probably not. To do so would seem almost as intrusive as asking about their bedroom activities, right? Or worse! In fact, we’re probably more likely to share stories of our sexual exploits than to divulge details about our paychecks or credit-card statements with our friends and family.

Money is ever-present in our lives. We use it daily and can’t survive without it, yet women hardly ever talk about it with each other. We’ve been conditioned to believe that it’s impolite to ask how much money someone makes, or how much they paid for their home, and distasteful to disclose how much we earn from our investments. We’re discouraged from discussing how much money we have, and we worry about being perceived as greedy for wanting to earn more–or, at least, saying so out loud–especially if we have a job that we love. (The Smart Cookies definitely do not subscribe to this belief. It’s one of many myths about money we’ll discuss in this book that keep women from earning what we’re worth.)

You probably have no problem telling your girlfriends about the great deal you got on that Isaac Mizrahi dress at Target. But have you ever compared earnings or investment strategies over cocktails?

Until we formed the Smart Cookies Money Group, we hadn’t either. In fact, we would consciously keep from talking about how much money we had, made, or owed, to avoid making anyone uncomfortable, including ourselves. Instead, we’d steer the conversation toward more neutral topics like dating or shopping or the last great book we read. We didn’t want to find out that our friends were making a lot more than we were or to admit that our paychecks weren’t as big as we wished they were. Some of us were embarrassed to disclose how much credit-card debt we had or, worse, to admit that we had no idea what our bank-account or credit-card balances were.

Whatever the reason we gave, we know now that our collective refusal to discuss our money problems only made them worse, and that our explanations were really all just excuses. Do any of these sound familiar?

If I don’t acknowledge my debt, maybe it will go away. -Robyn

I used to live by the motto “ignorance is bliss” when it came to money: If I didn’t think or talk about my growing debt, I thought, I wouldn’t have to worry about it. Of course, I knew deep down that it was there. But I figured I’d pay it off at some point. In the meantime, I just didn’t want to stress out about it. So I avoided looking at my ATM receipts and credit-card statements. I rarely even kept track of my bank balance (it was usually so depressingly low). I regularly went over my checking-account limit and paid extra fees as a result. But if my debit card was declined, I’d just pull out a credit card. That would explain why, at the time I joined the Smart Cookies Money Group, I had nearly $12,000 in debt.

I’m no good with money, so why talk about it? -Angela

I didn’t like to discuss money because that would have meant revealing my ignorance on the topic. I remember being so clueless about my finances when we had our first money-group meeting that I actually had to check with my then-boyfriend to find out how much we had in our bank account and what we paid on our mortgage each month. It is awful to admit, but I handed my paychecks over to him every two weeks and he essentially handed me an allowance. At the time it seemed like the right decision. He was good with money, and I thought I wasn’t (something I laugh about now). He liked reviewing our finances, and at the time I’d convinced myself that looking at numbers on a spreadsheet was boring. He told me he had everything under control, and I believed him. I rarely spoke up about our finances because I felt I didn’t have much credibility. The result? I wasn’t even sure where to find any of our financial documents or how much equity in our home I was entitled to claim when we separated.

I don’t want my colleagues to think I can’t keep up with them. -Sandra

Since my friends and I never talked about how much money we made, I’d assumed that Andrea, with her well-kept hair, Seven jeans, and designer sunglasses, had it all together and wouldn’t relate to my financial problems. Andrea and I both worked at the same company, but I never asked how she afforded her elegant attire. That seemed impolite. I just figured that if she could, I should be able to too. I had been really disciplined when I’d lived at home with my parents, automatically depositing a portion of my paycheck into a savings account. I’d put away nearly $8,000. But saving money became a much bigger challenge once I moved out on my own and was suddenly responsible for covering my room and board and everything else. Within months, I went through the money I had saved up and charged another $2,000 on my credit card, going out and trying to keep up with Andrea and my other well-dressed colleagues. I was shocked (and a little relieved) to learn at our first money-group meeting that Andrea had the most debt of all of us: nearly $18,000.

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