Every August, we pause to celebrate the strength, resilience and contribution of women. But alongside the celebrations, Women’s Month is also a fitting moment to have a more practical conversation; one about money.
Financial wellbeing isn’t just a “nice to have.” It underpins independence, choice and security at every stage of a woman’s life. Yet research consistently shows that women, even highly capable and successful ones, are less likely than men to feel confident about investing, retirement planning and long-term wealth building.
I’ve often thought, why is this the case?
This isn’t a competence gap. It’s a confidence and access gap, often shaped by career breaks, longer life expectancy, and financial conversations that historically excluded women from the table.
This article unpacks five areas every woman regardless of age, income or life stage should think carefully about.
- The Money Basics Every Woman Should Know
Before we talk about investing or legacy planning, it’s worth grounding ourselves in the fundamentals. These aren’t complicated concepts, but they are the foundation everything else is built on:
- Know your number. Understand your income, your expenses, and critically, your net worth (what you own minus what you owe). You can’t manage what you don’t measure.
- Build an emergency fund. A general guideline is three to six months of essential expenses, held somewhere accessible. This is what protects you from having to sell investments or take on debt when life throws a curveball.
- Understand “good” debt versus “bad” debt. A home loan financing an appreciating asset is different from high-interest credit card debt eroding your future income.
- Start investing early, even in small amounts. Thanks to compound growth, a woman who invests R1,000 a month from age 25 will typically end up significantly wealthier at retirement than one who invests double that amount starting at 40 – simply because of time in the market.
- Get comfortable with the language of money. You don’t need to become an economist, but understanding terms like asset allocation, diversification and risk tolerance means you can ask better questions of your advisor and be more involved in the financial planning process.
The goal isn’t perfection. It’s participation. Financial confidence is built one informed decision at a time.
Marriage. But What About the Money?
Weddings are steeped in romance, but marriage is also, quite literally, a financial merger. In South Africa in particular, the marital regime you choose in community of property, out of community of property (with or without accrual), has enormous, lasting implications for how assets, debt and even inheritance are treated.
Too often, these conversations happen too late, or not at all. Consider building the following into your pre-marriage (and ongoing marriage) financial conversations:
- Talk about money styles, not just money amounts. Are you a saver or a spender? How was money handled in the household you grew up in? These patterns tend to resurface.
- Keep some financial independence. Many advisors recommend maintaining your own retirement fund, investment account, or even a modest personal “just in case” fund, regardless of how joint your finances otherwise are.
- Revisit your will and beneficiary nominations the moment your marital status changes, this is one of the most commonly overlooked administrative steps.
- If a divorce or the death of a spouse occurs, get advice quickly. Financial decisions made in emotionally difficult periods benefit enormously from an objective, professional sounding board.
- Understand your matrimonial property regime and what it means for jointly and individually held assets, debt liability, and what happens on divorce or death.
Marriage should be a financial partnership of equals, and that starts with both parties being informed, not just involved.
- Life Stages of Women, and What They Mean Financially
A woman’s financial priorities shift dramatically across her lifetime, often in ways that differ meaningfully from a man’s, largely due to career breaks for caregiving, the gender pay gap, and a longer average life expectancy. A few key stages to plan around:
Early career (20s–30s): This is the best window to build strong savings habits and start investing, even modestly. Prioritise an emergency fund, begin retirement contributions, and start learning how markets work while time is still on your side.
Growing a family: Maternity leave, childcare costs, and potentially reduced income or career pauses all affect long-term earning and retirement trajectories. This is a critical time to protect your income (via risk cover) and to keep contributing to retirement savings, even at a reduced rate, rather than pausing entirely.
Mid-career (40s–50s): Often peak earning years, but also frequently the years of supporting both children and aging parents, the so-called “sandwich generation.” This is the time to accelerate retirement contributions, stress-test your retirement plan, and ensure your estate planning (will, beneficiary nominations, powers of attorney) is current.
Pre- and post-retirement (60s+): Because women statistically live longer than men, retirement savings need to stretch further. This makes decisions around annuities, healthcare cover, and inflation-protected income especially important.
At every stage, the guiding question is the same: does my financial plan reffect where I am now, and where I’m heading?
- Working and Being a Woman: Navigating Career, Life and Finances
Balancing a career with family responsibilities, caregiving and personal ambition remains, for many women, a daily negotiation. A few practical financial principles can help:
- Protect your income. Income protection and disability cover are especially important if you are a primary or co-breadwinner, or if your household relies on dual incomes to meet its goals.
- Invest in your own name, in your own right. Even within a strong partnership, having assets and investments that are unambiguously yours protects your independence and your voice in financial decision-making.
- Negotiate, for salary, for promotions, for benefits. Women are statistically less likely to negotiate starting salaries, and that gap compounds significantly over a career.
- Don’t neglect your retirement fund during career breaks. If you take maternity leave or step back from full-time work, explore options to keep contributing, even at a reduced level, or top up when you return.
- Understand your employee benefits fully, retirement contributions, medical aid, risk cover and any employer matching. These are often underused simply because they’re not well understood.
Financial empowerment at work isn’t just about earning more; it’s about actively directing what you earn toward your own long-term goals.
- Investing for Your Family, and Leaving a Legacy
For many women, financial planning isn’t only about personal security; it’s about family: children’s education, supporting ageing parents, and building something that outlasts them. This is where thinking shifts from saving to true wealth planning.
A few considerations as you think generationally:
- Start with clarity of intent. What do you want your wealth to do: fund education, support a cause, provide a safety net for the next generation, or all of the above?
- Diversify across time horizons. Short-term needs, medium-term goals (like education funding) and long-term legacy assets often require different investment strategies and risk profiles.
- Keep your estate plan aligned with your investment plan. A will, trust structures and updated beneficiary nominations ensure your intentions are actually carried out.
- Simplify the complexity of managing wealth across a family. As families grow, through marriage, children, or generational wealth transfer, keeping track of multiple portfolios, reporting and beneficiaries can become genuinely difficult to manage well.
This is precisely the gap that Ninety One’s Family Office offering is designed to close.
Through the Ninety One Investment Platform, families can consolidate their investments onto a single platform with unified, consolidated reporting across the whole family group, giving a clear, single view of collective family wealth rather than a scattered set of individual accounts.
As family assets grow, or as new family members are added, the platform’s sliding fee structure means the family benefits collectively from reduced costs.
For women who are stewarding wealth across generations, whether as the primary decision-maker or in partnership with a spouse, this kind of consolidated, transparent structure makes it significantly easier to plan proactively, keep the next generation informed, and ensure a legacy is transferred with intention rather than left to chance. Speak to your financial advisor about whether this kind of structure could support your family’s long-term goals.
In closing, financial confidence isn’t built overnight, and it isn’t about having all the answers today. It’s about starting where you are, asking the questions that matter, and treating your financial life with the same care and intentionality you bring to every other part of your life.
This Women’s Month, consider it an invitation: have the money conversation with your partner, your family, or your advisor that you’ve been putting off.
Future you will be grateful you did.
This article is intended for general informational purposes and does not constitute personalised financial advice. Please consult a licensed financial advisor to discuss your individual circumstances.
