Most women are happy to have a makeover done - whether it be of their wardrobe, hair, makeup, shoes, career - and sometimes even their men!

But how many of us take the time to complete a financial makeover to ensure we're refreshing our finances for a secure future?

We've all heard the reports about the inequality of pay between men and women in the workforce, and the sacrifices and campaigning that many of our forbears have undertaken to try and right this in-balance.

But hiding in the shadows is a much greater problem that has the potential to impact more significantly on women, and their standard of living in the future.

The credit crunch and global share markets have taken another turn for the worst this week reflecting a combination of continuing bank failures/rescues in the US and Europe and the US House of Representatives initial rejection of the US Government's debt relief package.

Uncertainty regarding the investment outlook is continuing to drive massive daily swings in share markets. Over the last twenty trading days the Australian share market has seen 17 days where the market has moved by 1% or more, with US, European and Japanese shares seeing an average of 14 days. This is way above historical norms.

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The past 60 years has not seen anything like the freezing up of lending between global banks, the distruption to credit flows or the need for so many financial institutions in the US and Europe to be rescued as we have seen in 2008. The current crisis is not the worst in Asia (1997/1998) or Austrsalia (the early 1990s was). But for the world as a whole it is the worst financial crisis in the post wwar period. So how did it come to this? What will it mean going forwrad? what are the lessons for investors?

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Asian shares have been hard hit by the global financial crisis and subsequent global recession. However, at a time when the medium term outlook for US, European and Japanese shares is fraught with uncertainty there are good reasons to believe Asian shares (ex Japan) will perform well over the next 5 to 10 years.

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As if investors didn't have enoug to worry about, concerns about another flu pandemic - swine flu in this case - are now causing concerns globally following deaths in Mexico and spreading to various parts of the world.

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