‘Nothing Bad Happens When Women Have More Money’

Sally, Priscilla, I am so excited to be here with both of you. In preparing for this conversation, I was thinking a lot about something that you brought up, Priscilla, which is Virginia Woolf's 'A Room of One's Own.' You're laughing, you're laughing already, but it actually was really serious. It drove home something to me that is an essential truth: when we're talking about women's wealth, we're not just talking about money, we're talking about agency. And Sally, when I told you about this the other day, you said we're talking about power. So how high stakes is this? I would love to hear what you think. Go ahead, please.

I agree. Let me tell you why you care. First of all, the gender pay gap is about 80 cents to a white man's dollar. The gender wealth gap is about 30 cents to a white man's dollar. For Black women, it's a penny, and it's been going backwards, whereas the pay gap has been steady or increasing a little bit. The reason we care on a macro basis: at Ellevest, we love to say nothing bad happens when women have more money. When women have more money, they spend it, so the economy grows, your businesses grow, their families are stronger, societies are fairer, communities are stronger. Women give more to nonprofits. Women are more likely to believe in the negative effects of climate change and give money to them. Politics—everybody's super happy with politics in this country, I know we are. Women give about 30 cents of political donations to a white man's dollar, but when they do, they tend to support politicians who agree with their points of view and are more family-friendly. So everything gets better when women have more money. Today, with the gender wealth gap, too many women are stuck in marriages they can't leave because they don't have the money, stuck in jobs they hate because they don't have the money, getting chased around a desk at a job they hate because they don't have the money, not starting a business because they don't have the money, living smaller lives because they don't have the money. And finally, you care because your companies' women's number one financial concern is not having enough money and not building wealth. As a result, the stress on them leads to presenteeism, which means they're sitting there worrying instead of working. I want to start with housing. What is the state of the housing journey for women?

What is your take on where housing fits in women's overall financial health?

Oh, first of all, I love my house. So absolutely, it's an important component of wealth building. In fact, I would argue there have only been two scalable, predictable over a medium to longer period of time means to build wealth in this country: it's not entrepreneurialism—that's too hit or miss—it's been owning a home and investing. For investing, the stats I've seen show home prices increase about 3% a year, different amounts in different places, but it compounds on itself. Investing in the stock market since the early 1900s has returned about 10% a year, which compounds on itself. If you stayed invested for 15 years, you could have invested on any given day and stayed in the market for 15 years, historically you had a 98% chance of a positive return, and for 20 years it was 99%. So I'm in favor of homeownership, but I'm also really in favor of investing, which is what we do at Ellevest, because it's actually been less risky historically than women have thought.

Housing is a big issue in this year's election cycle. There's an election coming up, I don't know if anyone's heard. Regardless of the outcome, how do you foresee this election cycle affecting women's wealth?

You gave a real shrug there. I'll talk about politics. We all know the answer to this one. A good part of the answer is the repeal of Roe v. Wade was many things, and it was a negative economic issue for women, for their families, and for the states in which they live. And that's just the beginning. Then these states where abortion rights are being restricted don't have things like paid family leave or adequate childcare support, so it's a double and triple impact to women's wealth.

Boo, hiss. But I wasn't going to let them boo you.

What's that?

I wasn't going to let them boo you.

Not boo me, but boo that. That's before you get to tariffs and what their impact will be. So we all know the answer here. On the subject of other completely ubiquitous news—AI—how do you see AI affecting women's wealth moving forward? I know you have distinct thoughts about this.

Well, you know what they say: garbage in, garbage out. Miss truths in, miss truths out. So let me give you a couple of things. If we put in the world as it is today, what comes out is the world as it is today. For example, we all know women are risk averse, so they don't invest as much or buy houses as much. We all know women aren't as good at math as men, so they don't invest. We all know women need more financial education to invest. We all know they don't enjoy investing. These are things we know and are said all the time, and none of them are true.

These are repeated so often that I had nodding heads. So let me tell you: we do a ton of research on women and money at Ellevest. Let me tell you one thing we found. Another thing we all know: women are not confident around money, so they don't have as much money because they're not confident, so they don't invest. But when women get money—and I'm looking at you, great wealth transfer—when women get money, they become more confident. The relationship is inverse. That's why I'm looking forward to the great wealth transfer. Not when the Boomer husbands die—that part—but not all of them anyway. I have nothing against middle-aged white men. I've been married to a couple of them. But I am looking forward to when women get the money. We think about Millennials and Gen Z getting the money, but it goes to Mom first. I'm looking forward to when women have the majority of wealth in this country, which is coming. The amount of confidence we will have. So one thing to watch out for, particularly for your daughters, is the media still gives women negative messages around money. 'Financial planning doesn't have to be really hard'—they're like, 'Oh, so it must just be really hard.' And 'don't buy the latte, don't have the facial, don't have the avocado toast and the pumpkin spice latte.' The press goes berserk about that because it's all those women spending their money that otherwise would make them millionaires on that frothy, pumpkiny, delightfully spicy pumpkin spice latte, the Swift concert tickets. You know what I loved about that? The media tried to mock women for it with the bracelets, and women just said, 'Forget it, we're going, we're going to dance, we're going to multi-generational dance.' I loved that women were stepping into their economic power and didn't mind the blowback they were getting.

Any questions? How are you doing? No? I've heard Sally speak before; we love you. This is great.

I love you too. You're the best.

We have time for one quick question for Priscilla and Sally. Who wants it? And it's got to be a fast one. Anyone? Anyone over here? There's a mic right behind you.

Is there anywhere around the world that you think could role model this and we could look at them and learn?

Scandinavia.

That was quick. That was incredibly quick. I want to spin that out, but we are running out of time. I want to leave the audience with one takeaway from each of you—one piece of advice, financial or otherwise, that you think they need to remember when they walk out of this room.

I would ask you to remember: nothing bad happens when women have more money. Nothing. And the best day to invest was yesterday, but if you didn't invest yesterday, the next best day is today, and then there's also tomorrow. It doesn't mean there won't be volatility along the way, but if you can invest for the medium to longer term, particularly if you can get your daughters and sons started, the power of compounding is simply enormous. Warren Buffett, who used to attend this conference, always said that was the secret to his success—not stock picking and trading—tapping into that compounding is really it. So for all of our daughters, opening brokerage accounts for them, opening investment accounts is key.

If you want to leave our audience with one word, what would it be?

Courage to invest.

Money, money, money. Yes. And as we established, when we're talking about money, we're not just talking about money. Thank you all so much. Priscilla, Sally, thank you.