Key findings from the 2025 Intelligent Woman Finance Girls & Cash Survey
The quick model: Girls within the Intelligent Woman Finance group 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 strain, exhibiting up at the very same time.
In the summertime of 2025, we surveyed 591 girls within the CGF group about their cash — their habits, their confidence, their targets, 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 girls’s relationship with cash is definitely altering, 12 months over 12 months. And the story the information tells isn’t the one you’d count on from the headlines.
Girls 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 normal financial uncertainty haven’t precisely made the previous couple of 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 capacity to construct long-term wealth. In different phrases, girls aren’t shedding religion in themselves — they’re simply being extra clear-eyed concerning the circumstances they’re constructing in. That’s not defeat. That’s realism paired with resolve, and actually, it’s a fairly 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 arduous 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 practically three-quarters of these with pupil 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 towards you — is likely one of the largest issues standing between girls and the monetary futures they need. That’s precisely why it issues a lot that it’s additionally the factor girls instructed us they care most about fixing.
Retirement anxiousness continues 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 arduous to know why. Retirement is the type of purpose 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 girls aren’t simply fascinated by subsequent month. They’re pondering a long time forward, even when the current second is asking plenty of them.
However girls 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 beneath the debt and anxiousness numbers: girls 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 changing into debt-free amongst their prime 3 monetary targets — making it the one most-cited purpose in the whole survey, forward of accelerating earnings, rising investments, and even homeownership.
That final stat is price sitting with for a second. Once we requested girls what they really need, extra of them mentioned “get out of debt” than the rest. That’s not avoidance — that’s girls wanting straight 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 wherever both, even in a housing market that’s made homeownership really feel additional out of attain for lots of people.
Skilled tip: Make a plan to repay debt
If debt-freedom is your prime purpose 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 methodology (snowball or avalanche, whichever retains you motivated), automate one further fee 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 group. It’s core to how they outline who they’re and the place they’re headed. Girls aren’t ready for the financial system to get simpler earlier than they begin constructing. They’re doing the work in actual time, towards actual strain, and so they’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, once we ran our first survey particularly as a result of the mainstream story about girls and cash — disengaged, disempowered, leaving all of it to another person — by no means matched what we noticed in our personal group. 5 years and three surveys later, the information retains proving that story unsuitable.
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The place to go from right here
If any of those numbers hit near house — 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 whole purpose Intelligent Woman Finance exists.
A couple of locations to begin:
- 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 really suits your life.
- Desire a plan constructed round your particular scenario? Our 1-on-1 teaching is precisely for this.
- Need the total information? Discover each discovering, chart, and breakdown in our 2025 Girls & Cash Survey Report. Pr see how these numbers examine throughout our full survey sequence going again to 2020.
Wherever you’re ranging from, the information is evident on one factor: exhibiting up and doing the work — even messily, even beneath strain — is how progress truly will get made. 591 girls simply proved it.
Supply: Intelligent Woman Finance 2025 Girls & Cash Survey Report. Discover the total Girls & Cash Survey Collection (2020–current) for year-over-year traits.
