Key findings from the 2025 Intelligent Lady Finance Ladies & Cash Survey
The quick model: Ladies within the Intelligent Lady Finance neighborhood are extra financially engaged than ever. Investing extra, chasing debt-freedom more durable, and constructing emergency funds at larger charges than in 2022. However they’re doing it whereas carrying extra bank card debt and feeling much less optimistic concerning the future than they did three years in the past. Progress and stress, exhibiting up at the very same time.
In the summertime of 2025, we surveyed 591 ladies within the CGF neighborhood about their cash — their habits, their confidence, their objectives, and their worries. It’s the third time we’ve run this survey, following research in 2020 and 2022. Which implies we lastly have one thing most private finance platforms don’t: an actual pattern line on how ladies’s relationship with cash is definitely altering, 12 months over 12 months. And the story the info tells isn’t the one you’d anticipate from the headlines.
Ladies are extra cautious — however no more defeated
Let’s begin with the quantity that jumped out at us first: solely 54.3% of ladies instructed us they really feel optimistic or extraordinarily optimistic about their monetary future, down from 67.3% in 2022. That’s an actual drop, and it is smart Inflation, a tighter job market, and basic financial uncertainty haven’t precisely made the previous few years straightforward on anybody’s pockets.
However right here’s the half that issues extra: that dip in optimism did not include a dip in confidence. 72.1% of ladies nonetheless really feel assured of their potential to construct long-term wealth. In different phrases, ladies aren’t shedding religion in themselves — they’re simply being extra clear-eyed concerning the situations they’re constructing in. That’s not defeat. That’s realism paired with resolve, and truthfully, it’s a reasonably wholesome place to take a seat.
The debt image is the hardest a part of this survey
We’d be doing you a disservice if we didn’t lead with the exhausting information right here: 60.1% of ladies now carry bank card debt, up from 54.9% in 2022. Scholar mortgage debt stays simply as heavy. 67.7% of respondents carry it, and almost three-quarters of these with scholar debt (73.3%) owe greater than $20,000. And 17.3% of ladies have needed to lean on a payday mortgage in some unspecified time in the future, a quantity that’s ticked up 2.4 factors since our final survey.
None of that’s straightforward to learn, and we’re not going to sugarcoat it. Debt — particularly the sort that compounds in opposition to you — is among the largest issues standing between ladies and the monetary futures they need. That’s precisely why it issues a lot that it’s additionally the factor ladies instructed us they care most about fixing.
Retirement anxiousness remains to be the #1 fear — for the second survey in a row
If there’s one quantity that ought to get each monetary educator’s consideration, it’s this one: 70.2% of ladies instructed us their largest monetary concern isn’t having sufficient saved for retirement. That’s been the highest concern in each CGF survey since 2020 — it’s not a blip, it’s a sample.
And it’s not exhausting to grasp why. Retirement is the form of aim that’s straightforward to place off when bank card payments and day-to-day bills (a priority for 39.1% of ladies) are sitting proper in entrance of you. However the truth that retirement anxiousness retains outranking each different fear tells us ladies aren’t simply serious about subsequent month. They’re considering a long time forward, even when the current second is asking numerous them.
However ladies are nonetheless exhibiting up and constructing — in actual, measurable methods
Right here’s the place the story turns, and it’s the half we don’t wish to get misplaced below the debt and anxiousness numbers: ladies are nonetheless actively constructing wealth, at larger charges than ever.
- 73.3% of ladies are actively investing for his or her future — up from 72.6% in 2022.
- 62.5% both have an emergency fund or are actively constructing one, with 28.3% already holding three or extra months of bills in financial savings.
- 58% of ladies ranked turning into debt-free amongst their high 3 monetary objectives — making it the only most-cited aim in the complete survey, forward of accelerating earnings, rising investments, and even homeownership.
That final stat is value sitting with for a second. Once we requested ladies what they really need, extra of them stated “get out of debt” than anything. That’s not avoidance — that’s ladies wanting immediately on the hardest a part of their monetary image and deciding to go after it first.
And for the 84.2% of ladies who don’t but personal a house however wish to, that ambition hasn’t gone anyplace both, even in a housing market that’s made homeownership really feel additional out of attain for lots of people.
Knowledgeable tip: Make a plan to repay debt
If debt-freedom is your high aim too — and for 58% of the ladies on this survey, it’s — don’t wait till it feels “pressing” to make a plan. Choose one technique (snowball or avalanche, whichever retains you motivated), automate one additional cost this month, and revisit it quarterly. Progress on debt doesn’t require an ideal system. It requires a constant one.
What this tells us
Put all of it collectively, and right here’s what we see: monetary literacy isn’t a “good to have” anymore for the ladies in our neighborhood. It’s core to how they outline who they’re and the place they’re headed. Ladies aren’t ready for the financial system to get simpler earlier than they begin constructing. They’re doing the work in actual time, in opposition to actual stress, they usually’re doing extra of it than they have been three years in the past.
That’s precisely the narrative we got down to change again in 2020, after we ran our first survey particularly as a result of the mainstream story about ladies and cash — disengaged, disempowered, leaving all of it to another person — by no means matched what we noticed in our personal neighborhood. 5 years and three surveys later, the info retains proving that story fallacious.
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The place to go from right here
If any of those numbers hit near dwelling — whether or not it’s the bank card debt, the retirement anxiousness, or simply wanting to construct a stronger emergency fund — you don’t need to determine it out alone. That’s the complete cause Intelligent Lady Finance exists.
A couple of locations to start out:
- Feeling behind on retirement? Our free investing programs stroll you thru the fundamentals, no jargon required.
- Able to sort out debt? Take a look at our guides on paying off debt and constructing a payoff plan that truly suits your life.
- Need a plan constructed round your particular state of affairs? Our 1-on-1 teaching is strictly for this.
- Need the complete knowledge? Discover each discovering, chart, and breakdown in our 2025 Ladies & Cash Survey Report. Pr see how these numbers evaluate throughout our full survey collection going again to 2020.
Wherever you’re ranging from, the info is obvious on one factor: exhibiting up and doing the work — even messily, even below stress — is how progress really will get made. 591 ladies simply proved it.
Supply: Intelligent Lady Finance 2025 Ladies & Cash Survey Report. Discover the complete Ladies & Cash Survey Collection (2020–current) for year-over-year tendencies.