Hi {{first_name|friend}},
In our closest friendships — the 100-texts-a-day-in-the-group-chat kind of friendships — women talk about everything. Our kids’ brattiest behavior. Our most shameful parenting moments. Our concern that our dad’s faulty memory could be dementia. The thing that makes us want to divorce our partner. What speed we like the vibrator on. And we don’t just skim over these topics — we dissect them together. We offer advice, we share our own experiences, we tell each other what to do or say to make it better, we SOLVE them alongside each other.
But what’s the one big thing women don’t talk to each other about very much? Money. Which happens to be the very topic where women might most benefit from that kind of guidance and collective problem solving.
Surveys suggest that women are less comfortable talking to their friends about money than men are. On average, women have roughly half the net worth of men, they tend to have lower financial literacy than men, and only 31 percent of women have met with a financial advisor, compared with 59 percent of men. In most households, men take the lead on both daily and long term financial decisions. And our collective failure to discuss money with each other — to reveal how much we earn, how we negotiate, how we invest, how we manage our expenses with our partner, what our retirement plan is — is only exacerbating these gaps, and therefore only contributing to women’s disempowerment.
This topic is in the air. Writer Melinda Wenner Moyer recently interviewed Stacy Francis, founder of Savvy Ladies, a nonprofit that helps women make proactive financial choices. She was inspired to start the company after witnessing the physical and financial abuse her grandfather enacted on her grandmother. And one of the most gutting parts of Belle Burden’s divorce memoir Strangers is when she shares how her husband manipulated their pre-nup to her grave disadvantage.
Our feature this week is about some of the big and small problems that arise when money talk isn’t the norm – either between partners or between friends. Think about it.
Bye,
Your friends at Gloria
I was 30 and had moved into the apartment of my dreams with the roommate of my dreams. Once unpacked, we decided to throw a series of dinner parties to introduce our friends to each other. We drew up a guest list and a menu, then split up who would buy what. (I had dessert and wine). We did not set a budget, but because we’d decided on pasta and salad, I assumed it would be reasonable. At the time, I was earning roughly $1,250 to $1,500 a month as a freelance fact-checker while pursuing a life in the theater. My share of the rent was 600 dollars. Life was lean. But we were artists. It wasn’t hard to live within my means.
So I was shocked when my roommate came back from grocery shopping at the luxe Dean & DeLuca. (New Yorkers of a certain age will remember it as the fancy gourmet and coffee shop on Broadway and Prince. I think Felicity worked there in season two, around the time she cut her hair.)
The point is, our pasta dinner cost what a steak from the local Grand Union grocery might. And this is when I realized we’d never discussed numbers.
I think of this experience more and more often, over 20 years later, as I watch the economy and my family’s finances fluctuate. The Wall Street Journal calls our national economy a “roller coaster soaring and falling through tariff shocks, a cooling job market, robust AI investments and a near-record close to the U.S. stock market.” In the entertainment industry, where I’ve been making a living, more and more people are out of work. TV writing jobs dropped by 42% last year. And it’s not just us; many, many middle class Americans are feeling the rising cost of living and, specifically, of healthcare.
I used to believe that creatives like me might struggle in our 20s but eventually tap into some form of financial security by middle age. But everyone I know is back to basics with their finances. And so, our ability to navigate money, learn its language, and speak about it coherently is more crucial than ever.
By and large, women of my generation were raised not to talk about money. Many of us find the conversations around who has it, who doesn’t, and how to get/earn/ask for more charged. We have been told that our money, or lack thereof, is related to self esteem (not unlike our love lives) and if we could only “own our worth” we’d magically call in more money. While that is not untrue, it’s not the whole story, and it leaves us in the dangerously related realms of self-blame and magical thinking. We can ask for sex with more ease and confidence than we can ask for money. Can you imagine an episode of Sex and the City/And Just Like That where, after Cosmos, those friends divide up the bill and talk about mortgage payments? What if this were normalized, or even just modeled for us?
For writer Rebecca Walker, talking about dangerous subject matter came easily, but “talking about money was the hardest. Harder than talking about feminism or polygamy!” Walker’s book, Women Talk Money, came out of these difficult conversations. Despite the challenges, Walker knew that “in telling our stories we are set free.”
“Everyone was struggling, and all of a sudden people could talk about it,” she says of the period after the 2008 financial crash. “There was an urgency that opened the floodgates and helped us all be more honest and transparent about our struggles with money.”
“That’s the way our class system is perpetuated and the way economic disparity is maintained. People don’t talk about their finances, the money they have, the money they want. They secret it in this shame-based ethos that’s very dangerous. But talking about it [money] with my friends allowed us to pursue other ways of talking about and making money.”
For UK-based writer Keris Fox, a midlife divorce was the catalyst. She writes, “Over the years, I’d tried to get a handle on money – read books, tracked spending, tried budgets, etc – but nothing stuck. And then, in 2018, my marriage ended. I was on my own for the first time since my early twenties, responsible for myself and my two sons, and my financial situation was precarious, to say the least. Quite a few of my friends were in a similar situation. One had never even been involved in the financial side of her marriage at all, didn’t know who their energy provider was or who their mortgage was with. I realized we should all be talking about money a lot more than we are.” And so Fox began a Substack, The Ladybird Purse, devoted to midlife women and our money habits. She even trained to become a Trauma of Money counselor! Fox talks to women at every stage of financial literacy and abundance or lack thereof, asking, what does it feel like?
Wayfair’s Spring Cyber Week Sale is running March 19–23, with up to 80% off across key home categories. It’s exactly when we start to want to update some worn-out essentials, especially in the rooms other people see.
We’re thinking about these Egyptian cotton towels, upgrading to pretty Laura Ashley sheets, and investing in an all-season goose down comforter for a cozier sleeping experience. All for a great price, and with free shipping sitewide. Shop it all here. #partner
The Forsytes. Image via PBS.
TO WATCH Downton Abbey and Gilded Age hive, rejoice. PBS’s The Forsytes follows a wealthy Victorian-era stockbroking family and has all the silly outfits and lovely accents. For something decidedly more modern – it did, after all, first develop a fanbase on TikTok – Jury Duty is coming out with a season 2 of sorts. This one is called Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat and follows the same premise – a layperson goes on a business trip unknowingly accompanied by a cast of actors, absurdity ensues. And if Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette has you seeking some more ‘90s nostalgia, check out Marc by Sofia.
TO SHOP Old Navy’s Easter sale running today through 3/25. It’s 50% off everything online. We want this cute sweatshirt with matching sweatpants, this versatile denim dress, and these gingham linen pants. Shop it all here. #partner
TO MAKE They mention this mushroom shawarma recipe all the time during The Daily ad breaks, and we finally made it. Our rec for meat eaters: add some Italian sausages to the sheet pan and cook as instructed.
TO LISTEN It’s 2006. You’re a fresh college graduate spending Saturday night in the backyard of Brooklyn’s Union Pool. You light a cigarette and lock eyes with your crush, just as the opening notes of Band of Horses’ The Funeral lilt over the speakers. Recapture that feeling – the band is re-issuing an expanded version of their debut album, Everything All The Time, this week, and starting a cross-country tour.
Celebrities are upset about the harsh lighting at the Vanity Fair Oscars party. • Radical compassion is an interesting idea. • The hunt for comfy clogs. • Learning about “alpine divorce,” aka when men act terribly on a hike. • This Cesar Chavez thing is horrible and painful to read.
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