Women & Their Finances

We partnered with the brilliant minds at the finance site Investopedia to determine what’s holding women back in the money department. The findings? We’re on our way! But we’ve got some work to do.

- MELISSA MATTHEWS

MANY OF US, especially women, are taught not to talk about money. We're told it's rude, or crass, some kind of top-secret matter.
But experts agree that discussing finances helps normalize the topic, gives us ideas, motivates us to save, and makes complex situations less confusing.
Always down to discuss all things cheddar, we teamed up with our friends at Investopedia and built the Her Money Mindset Survey.
We posed questions to more than 2,000 women about how they think about money, what they do with it, what they'd like to learn to do with it, and more. Then we analyzed their answers.
Here's what we found, plus some advice for our survey

ON CONFIDENCE

SOME ADVICE
How to Get More

Money Confident Financial literacy-i.e., being informed about saving, investing, budgeting, managing debt, and spending wisely-is the key to feeling secure in your money decisions, says Anna Attkisson, senior editorial director at Investopedia.

"The biggest barrier everyone faces to becoming more financially literate is not knowing where to start," she adds. And if you weren't taught about money, taking that first step can feel especially overwhelming.

"You don't know what you don't know," Attkisson says. Her advice? "Pick one thing you think you don't understand and read a bit about it.
Doing one Google search or watching a couple of TikTok videos can only take you so far, but these can be baby steps toward financial confidence."

ON INVESTING

SOME ADVICE
How to Start Investing

If you're like the nearly 25% of respondents who said they want to learn more about it, follow these steps from Kathy Longo, a certified financial planner and the author of Flourish Financially.

1 Understand your money emotions.