Financial Wellness for Women: A 7-Step Guide

Women tend to ensure their family’s basic financial and other needs are taken care of before their own. It often comes with managing a household — caring for children, a partner, maybe even aging parents.

Often, women are taking care of family finances on their own: According to Pew Research Center, one in four mothers are single. And despite the fact that more than 57% of women have a job, they continue to face a lot of societal pressure to be an involved parent. Consequently, women often set aside their own financial wellness.

Financial wellness is defined as understanding and mindfully managing your income, investments and spending so you can achieve your financial goals. It’s important that you feel confident and capable of making the long-term, as well as basic short-term, financial decisions for yourself and your family. As wealth managers, we’re like the fitness trainers — helping women take care of themselves by bringing their financial picture into focus and providing guidance and encouragement to stay on track.

So here are seven positive financial health and wellness tips that you can use for every stage of your life to take care of yourself, as well as your family.

1. Take a financial inventory

The first step toward financial wellness for women is knowing what you have, where you have it and how to access it. This is especially important if you do not manage your own finances. Understand what your household assets and liabilities are by creating a personal balance sheet. Also consider:

• Are you accumulating 401(k)s from previous employers? Do you know how to access these accounts? How are they invested?
• Are you able to cover your expenses each month without tapping into credit card debt? Where are you spending excessively?
• What are the gaps in your financial education and knowledge? How will you fill them? Don’t be afraid to ask questions. It’s better to know what you don’t know then to never ask at all.

2. Have a flexible financial plan

Financial planning provides a roadmap that guides you toward achieving your goals. A wealth manager can help you create a financial plan by analyzing your information and listening to what’s important to you. Your financial plan should evolve as you evolve. You can’t predict what the future holds, but you can take actions that will build your economic security.

• Understand your spending. You may have high income, but wealth is all about what you are able to save, protect and grow.
• Set your own goals and be intentional about how you work toward them. It’s important to quantify goals so you can realistically plan for them.
• If you’re going through a major change like a divorce, career transition or loss of a loved one, it may be an appropriate time to review your financial plan.

3. Put your money to work

Goals-based investing is key to helping you achieve your goals. As you focus on the long-term, you should look toward high net worth investment strategies that will take the appropriate level of risk while preserving your growing wealth.

• Line up your investment time horizon with your goals, which will be done through the financial planning process.
• Put your savings on autopilot. Try to save money automatically in an investment account each month so you don’t think of it as money available to spend.
• Check your tax withholding. Are you giving the IRS an interest-free loan every year? If you’re receiving large tax refunds, consider reducing your withholdings so you have more in each paycheck to invest in yourself.
• Understand your risk tolerance and align it to your investment allocation. The amount of risk you need to take may change over your lifetime.