I’ll start with what I know: I was not taught about money growing up. Not really.
I was taught to save. I was vaguely told that debt was bad. I watched the adults around me stress about it in the background, in lowered voices, in the kind of conversations that stopped when you walked into the room. Money was something that caused problems. Something you never had enough of. Something you didn’t discuss at the table.
What I was not taught: how to invest. How compound interest actually works in your favor when you’re young and against you when you’re not. What a 401k is and why the match is free money you’re leaving on the table if you’re not taking it. That your 20s are — financially — some of the most important years of your life, not because you’re earning the most, but because time is on your side and that window closes quietly.
Nobody told me that. And the more women I talk to, the more I realize nobody told most of us.
That’s not an accident.
Women have historically been kept at arm’s length from financial literacy. We were the ones who were supposed to marry into security, not build it ourselves. And while we’ve blown past a lot of that — we’re outpacing men in college graduation, we’re starting businesses, we’re out here doing the damn thing — the financial literacy gap is still real. We’re still more likely to carry the emotional and logistical weight of a household while being less likely to be the one managing the investments. We’re still more likely to take the career pause, the part-time pivot, the salary hit — and less likely to negotiate our way back up from it.
So here’s what I want for us. Not a listicle. Not empty inspiration. An honest conversation about what we weren’t taught, why we weren’t taught it — and then three actual things you can do right now to start taking it back. At whatever age you’re reading this.
It’s not too late. It was never too late. It was just never explained.
Let’s actually do something about it.
Three things you can start today, no financial background required:
1. Open a high-yield savings account. If your money is sitting in a regular savings account at a big bank, it is doing almost nothing for you. A high-yield savings account — I use and love SoFi — earns significantly more interest on the same money, just sitting there. It takes about ten minutes to open. There’s no catch. Your money just works harder while you sleep. (Use my referral link to get started with SoFi — and start your account with $25. We both win a little.)
2. Find out if you have a 401k match and actually use it. Log into your employer’s HR portal today. Right now. Find out if your employer matches your 401k contributions and whether you are contributing enough to get the full match. If you’re not — you are leaving free money on the table every single paycheck. This is the closest thing to a guaranteed return that exists. Start there before you do anything else.
3. Start investing, even if it’s $5. This is the one that feels the scariest and is actually the most straightforward. If you have never invested before, start with Acorns — it rounds up your everyday purchases to the nearest dollar and invests the difference automatically. You genuinely will not feel it leaving your account. It is the lowest-friction entry point into investing that exists right now, and it works. Once that feels comfortable, look at opening a Fidelity or Vanguard account and putting money into a simple index fund. You don’t need to understand the whole market. You just need to be in it — because time in the market is the thing that builds wealth, and every year you wait is a year you don’t get back.
None of this is complicated. That’s kind of the point. The financial world has spent a long time making this feel inaccessible — the jargon, the gatekeeping, the quiet assumption that it’s not really for you. It is for you. It always was.
Start with one of these. Come back and tell me which one you did.