Want a financial glow-up? Start with money fluency

By 2030, women will control more than $113 trillion in global wealth, marking a massive and historic shift in financial influence. Yet while more women are shaping the future as founders, investors, philanthropists and leaders, fewer than one in three feel prepared to navigate complex financial priorities, according to research from HSBC.

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That’s why “Morning Joe” co-host and Know Your Value founder Mika Brzezinski recently joined Racquel Oden, Head of International Wealth and Private Banking at HSBC USA – as well as activist Monica Lewinsky – to host a special HSBC event in L.A., sharing what financial fluency looks like at every decade.

“What fluency really means is knowing what to do, when to do it and how to do it,” Oden said. “That’s the space we’re all moving into – from literacy to fluency.”

Over the past year, Know Your Value and HSBC launched two groundbreaking reports: “The Giving Shift: Global Living, Local Giving,” and more recently, “The Financial Glow Up: The Fluency Gap in Women’s Wealth,” based on conversations with more than 2,000 individuals, including over 1,000 women across generations and backgrounds. The latest report explored the gap between understanding money and knowing what to do and when to do it as life evolves.

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“In the moment of stress – of death, of destruction, of divorce, of loss – that’s when you need to step up for yourself and you do need to be [financially] fluent,” Brzezinski said. “I saw so many women doing what I did – apologizing or self-deprecating – we depreciate our value in real time when we talk that way, so I love the concept of celebrating our worth, learning to talk about money in real and tangible ways and shedding the negative psychological habits that cause us to avoid the subject.”

Lewinsky, a contributing editor to Vanity Fair and host of the hit podcast, “Reclaiming,” admitted that a negative money mindset held her back for years. “I developed an adversarial relationship with the idea of taking care of my money,” Lewinsky recalled. “I wish I had a relationship with money that wasn’t psychological.”

According to “The Financial Glow Up” report, 43 percent of women are financially planning for other people – children, aging parents, or both – far more than men. Nearly 60 percent of women are primary caregivers, which directly impacts income and long-term planning. So, it’s no wonder that only 29 percent of women feel prepared for aging-related costs.

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In Lewinsky’s case, her journey in resilience and reinvention included periods of instability where she struggled to save money until her 40s.

“I lost a lot of my earning years,” she said. “I definitely feel like being a woman had so much to do with what my experience was … even moments when I stepped back out into the public arena a little over 10 years ago, I was so conscious of appearing to make money.”

It was not until she secured her podcast that Lewinsky embraced a more empowering perspective. “When we closed the [podcast]deal I said to the team, I want to help a lot of people, I want to move conversations forward and I want to make a ton of money,” she remarked. “That was a really big thing for me to be able to say – I deserve that financial freedom.”

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Bianca Brosh