Being grown up when it comes to money for women in the prime of their lives…
As women in our prime, we fall into one of a few categories:
1. The married/coupled woman
Often with the luxury of two incomes and no singles tax. Maybe you do money as a couple jointly (we put everything together, what’s ours is ours), or perhaps you run separate finances/bank accounts and split the bills and date night 50/50 (we are committed but not financially), or there’s always the hybrid model, where we do some things jointly, like a house, holidays and expenses, but we keep some of our finances just for us and no one else.
No matter which money couple type you fit into, the basics remain the same. Knowing how to make money, manage money and multiply money matters!
No matter which money couple type you fit into, the basics remain the same. Knowing how to make money, manage money and multiply money matters
2. The single woman
The luxury of being single is a double-edged sword! All your income is yours, along with the decisions you need to make about it. Albeit the singles tax is real when it comes to housing costs, utilities, holidays and, well, just about everything.
If you have been in the know about money/financial literacy, then you probably feel secure when it comes to making, managing and multiplying your money. In short, you get paid your worth, you use money in a values-aligned way, and you know that buying assets, be it gold, shares or property – is a far better pastime than retail therapy.
3. The separated/divorced woman
Being a woman post-divorce or separation looks different for every woman. If it was amicable and you both had each other’s best interests at heart, you are lucky, it’s rare!
If you were smart and had a Binding Financial Agreement in place, you always knew what your end position would be, so there were no surprises there. But for those of you who needed to use the services of a family lawyer or the family law courts, the financial separation would have been full of many unknown twists and turns.
Along the way (usually far too late), you would have realised that the legal fees significantly reduced your settlement and that spending days, weeks or months engaging with lawyers and family courts was no holiday.
You would have gained a new vocabulary along the way, with terms like financial disclosure, marital assets, affidavits, continuance, being served and so much more.
4. The finding-my-way-back woman
I’m yet to find another term to capture the exhaustion, shock, heartbreak, sense of failure and shame that encapsulates a woman who has had a major money issue literally take her out financially.
Sometimes it is an entrepreneur who didn’t anticipate an ATO audit, or an unscrupulous business partner or lover who blindsided her. For others, a stranger, otherwise known as a “scammer”, is the person responsible for her now having to find her way back to financial stability and safety.
Whatever the reason, when a woman finds herself here, she is usually about to embark on the biggest personal development journey of her life. The good news is, with the right help, these women usually end up developing a fire in their belly and making mighty comebacks that propel them into the best versions of themselves.
These women usually end up developing a fire in their belly and making mighty comebacks that propel them into the best versions of themselves.
No matter what kind of woman you are with money…
By the time you’re in your prime, you realise that money is your one constant companion in this lifetime.
Whether its presence has been scarce or entangled in the complexity of family or romantic relationships, or it has blessed you by showing up in overflowing, constant abundance, by now you understand that money is, in many ways, a master of our lives, determining where we live, where we holiday, how we dress and, largely, who we get to connect with.
As we journey through the rest of our days with money as our constant companion, it is one of the most critical skills for us to master. This means investing in our financial upskilling and being willing to let a professional support us with negative or harmful money patterns and blockages.
Regardless of where you are right now, your number one power move is to master the art of money: making it, managing it and multiplying it.
For too long, the patriarchs who designed and developed the financial system for men have us believe that money is complex and that making, managing and multiplying it is too complicated for our pretty feminine brains.
Fun fact: In Australia, it wasn’t until 1974 that women could first legally apply for credit cards.
The truth is, if you can cook a meal, make a baby or learn to drive, you have the smarts to do money well.
The only caveat is “your money story”, your subconscious story about yourself and money. You’re not expected to know or understand your money story, as it is deeply buried in your subconscious and has been there since you were in the single digits in age, but you can find out with professional support. This is where things often get a little crazy, and very helpful! Doing behavioural money work can bring results fast, even with things that you have struggled with for years.
Regardless of where you are right now, your number one power move is to master the art of money: making it, managing it and multiplying it.
Why your money story matters!
Your money story matters because all your decisions in life are made by the subconscious brain, which makes up 95% of your processing. The other 5% is your conscious brain. So, if you don’t know what is driving your handling and decision-making with money, it’s hard to make decisions from the logical/conscious 5% part of the brain.
What that looks like in the real world (true cases) is illogical outcomes with money that differ greatly from what we want or need to be financially well.
For example: A woman will come to me and say, “I’m a CEO, I run my own company, I’m in my early 60s, and I’m making money in a way that keeps me working 70 – 80 hour weeks, yet I’m completely underearning and not making enough money.” She logically explains how qualified she is and how hard she wworks but still cannot make the money she needs to.
Or the barrister who tells me she has made $300,000-plus for the past five years but literally has nothing to show for it. She does not logically understand why she continues to spend way beyond what she earns every year, racking up credit card and personal debt.
Or the schoolteacher who has saved $250,000 but has never invested or bought a house and is clinging to her quarter of a million dollars for dear life, knowing that at the current rate of inflation 4.3%, her money is going down in value daily, but she cannot bring herself to invest it, even though logically she knows it’s the same thing to do to grow her money.
So, understanding the subconscious template you inherited from your loved ones, parents, and caregivers is truly the key to changing your real-world outcomes with money. But back to the bit we can control when it comes to doing money well.
Understanding the subconscious template you inherited from your loved ones, parents, and caregivers is truly the key to changing your real-world outcomes with money
Essentially, money requires us to have three simple skill sets:
1. Making money
The ability to earn money, be it as an employee or self-employed. The current national average salary is $103,000, and that comes with sick leave, maternity leave, holiday pay and super. For those of you who are self-employed, that is an important benchmark to aspire to if you want to run a business. If you want to carry the risk and hard work of having your own business, you at least want to be enjoying a salary on par with the national average wage.
2. Managing money
This is truly the heart of doing well financially. I’ve seen single mothers who earn as little as $60K buy investment properties and shares, and I’ve seen entrepreneurs who make $500K-plus have absolutely nothing to show for it.
I’ve been teaching workshops on this subject for over a decade, and this is truly how simple it is.
You only have three kinds of spending in life:
- Fixed costs: rent, mortgage, loans, food, utilities, etc. These are the ones that require paying virtually every month.
- Fun costs: life is not about working, paying tax and dying. In between that, we must live and enjoy the fruits of our labour. This is where we spend to enjoy life: dinners, holidays, gifts, fashion and fun adventures.
- Future costs: this is the money that will take care of your more fragile, less energetic future self.
To add to this, we always want to have an emergency fund for those OMG moments – the visit to the dentist for a clean that turns out to be a $7,000 root canal and an income safety buffer, which is typically one to six months’ worth of net (after-tax) living costs tucked away somewhere.
Why? Because life happens. Redundancy, separation, ill health and failed businesses are real.
3. Multiplying money
If I had five minutes to teach you how to be financially well, it would look like this:
Buy assets that go up in value and have the capacity to produce a passive income, like a property with rental income that eventually becomes a monthly pay cheque for you. The other part would be minimising your tax legally and having structures in place that keep you and your assets safe.
That’s it!
I trust I’ve done a good job of summarising how simple it really is to do money well. The hard bit for most women is meeting reality where it is at, because that requires us to dig deep and own what we have created or not done – and that is not always easy.
For many women, they would rather keep the conversation at the level of being about the system gaps, “over there”. You know the ones: the pay gap, the wealth gap, the savings gap. But that doesn’t really help us understand where we are actually ctually at and what our unique gaps are. I’d like to invite you, and perhaps remind you, that whilst the system gaps are real, they usually relate to an underdeveloped part of ourselves that we can absolutely change.
Until we can meet our own reality where it is at, by identifying where our own personal gaps are, we are never at the starting line – the only place from which change can be made. It is the basis of all my work with women and money, and after a decade, I realised women needed a tool to help them understand their own reality and their gaps, so I built it!
In under three minutes, from the privacy of your own phone, you can take your very own Financial Gap Self-Assessment and see exactly where you are right now and what needs your attention most to start closing your own gaps.
Happy gap finding!
Marion Mays
Marion Mays is an award-winning financial services innovator, certified money coach, and founder of Money Strong Australia, a professional education platform dedicated to helping women build financial confidence, capability, and security.
A regular media contributor, Marion has been featured in the AFR, The Age, Herald Sun, Money Magazine, and CEO Magazine. Her approach goes beyond spreadsheets, using behavioural science to shift the beliefs, habits, and money patterns that shape women’s financial outcomes.
Through her work, Marion empowers women to increase their earning potential, manage money with confidence, and build long-term wealth. She is on a mission to help women achieve financial independence, security, and the freedom to live life on their terms.
Links & Resources:
- LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/marion-mays/
- Website – https://www.moneystrong.com.au/
- Gaptool – https://survey.moneystrong.com.au/gaptool
