user: News: Sarah Casey remembers her mother collecting allowance from her father every Monday morning. "The cash went towards lunch money, grocery shopping and I'm sure gas for the car," Casey says, adding that there were times when the money would run out by the weekend and her stay-at-home mom would have to ask for more funds. "It made the dinner table really uncomfortable," she says of the instances when her parents discussed money in front of the family, "and it wasn't until I was older that I realized it was weird that my mother had no access to the bank account."

Casey, 27, a pharmaceutical salesperson, is getting married this October, and her relationship with money--and her fiancé--is much different than her mother's. Casey and her husband-to-be are equal-earning partners and have "so far" made all financial decisions for their wedding and their future together.

"It's thanks to my mom," she says of her determination to have a handle on her own finances. "My mom knew nothing about money, and it was scary for her. I knew I never wanted that."

In Pictures: Seven Ways Money Can Enhance Your Relationship

Casey and her mother embody two of the financial personalities that demographer Maddy Dychtwald says are common in women today. After years of researching the effects of an aging population at her San Francisco-based think tank Age Wave, Dychtwald began talking to women about their relationships with money at a time when women wield more economic power than ever before.

"I started talking to women in focus groups, and I began to notice this tectonic shift in the marketplace, says Dychtwald. "Women were gaining financial emancipation from the archetypes of the past."

Working with financial services company Allianz ( AZ - news - people ), Dychtwald studied the financial behavior of women, specifically in an area that she saw was lacking: the psychology behind women's money relationships and behavior. "It's not only the behavior, but the characteristics and reasoning behind that behavior that uncovers a woman's financial style," she says. The study asked women about their public relationships with money and their private lives--secret stashes, fantasies of financial white knights coming to the rescue--you name it.

In the course of the research, Dychtwald found that there are five "identities" that women most often self-reported. "There is an overriding financial personality that most people feel like they fall into," she says, noting that these categories are often fluid and that a woman is not bound by her financial identity. "It has a lot to do with how a woman feels about money, how much she defers to someone else to get the job done, what she wants money to do for her, what she wants to do with her money and, most importantly, how confident she is in her relationship with her money."

Title: What's Your Financial Personality?


News: Charlie Sheen is apologizing for remarks he made indicating he partied for hours with Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa in Mexico.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa found himself sucked deeper into the Charlie Sheen-TMZ-Hollywood gossip vortex Tuesday, with the actor speaking out again about the night they met up at a hotel in Mexico over the holidays.

Sheen made news last month after he tweeted a picture of himself with his arm around Villaraigosa the night of Sheen's bar opening in Baja California, Mexico. The former star of "Two and a Half Men" praised the mayor as a man who "knows how to party." But Villaraigosa downplayed the significance of the image, telling KNBC's Conan Nolan over the weekend that he had only "bumped into" Sheen and engaged in a three-minute conversation.

On Tuesday, Sheen challenged Villaraigosa's account, telling celebrity website TMZ that the mayor was drinking in Sheen's hotel suite in a room full of beautiful women, including at least one porn star. "I memorize 95 pages a week, so the last thing that I am is memory challenged," Sheen told the website. "We hung out for the better part of two hours."

Hours later, Sheen issued a more muted account, saying the mayor had spoken to many other people at the opening of the bar. "I am a giant fan of the mayor's and apologize if any of my words have been misconstrued," the statement said.

By then, however, Villaraigosa found himself fending off related questions at a news conference meant to be devoted to billionaire Eli Broad's new downtown art museum. "Can you just set the record straight for us?" asked one reporter. "What was it? Two hours or three minutes?" asked another. Then came the zinger: "Does what happens in Cabo stay in Cabo?"

Villaraigosa cackled at the Cabo crack but refused to take the bait. "I've said what I'm going to say on that, everybody," Villaraigosa declared. "You had fun. Let's talk about the important things, like a thousand jobs today" — a reference to construction work going on at Broad's museum.

Villaraigosa has frequently bristled at media questions about his personal life, going silent on some occasions and becoming visibly angry on others. Last week, he told KNBC's Nolan that Nolan had asked a "bozo question" about the Sheen photograph. He also noted that Nolan and other newsroom staffers have, like Sheen, asked the mayor to pose for pictures with them.

Sheen has been a TMZ staple, using the website as a platform to talk up his $100,000 gift to celebrity Lindsay Lohan and his porn star "goddesses." And Villaraigosa has glided easily between the world of politics and the entertainment industry since being elected in 2005.

"He's a celebrity mayor. And he's always wanted to be that," said Jaime Regalado, professor emeritus of political science at Cal State L.A. "If you're going to be a celebrity mayor, you have to take the good and the bad and everything in between" when it comes to news coverage.

Title:

assistant: Charlie Sheen downplays Baja encounter with L.A. mayor