One thing has been true in each single Intelligent Lady Finance survey since we began operating them in 2020: Black girls make up the most important racial group in our group, persistently outpacing each different group we observe — 45% of respondents in 2020, 46.1% in 2022, and 50.6% in our most up-to-date 2025 survey. That means over half the ladies in our most up-to-date survey determine as Black or African American. You’ll be able to see this development for your self throughout our full Girls & Cash survey sequence.
That’s not a small element. It implies that after we discuss “what girls informed us about cash,” we’re, largely, speaking about what Black girls particularly informed us. And their monetary actuality deserves to be named immediately, not folded quietly into a mean.
The numbers behind why this issues
Black girls are navigating a monetary panorama formed by compounding, well-documented gaps that don’t present up equally for each lady:
Black Girls earn 63 cents for each greenback white males earn
In comparison with white males’s earnings, white girls earn 78 cents on the greenback, however Black girls earn simply 63 cents. That hole alone represents a large quantity of misplaced lifetime revenue earlier than you even account for debt or investing. (Institute for Girls’s Coverage Analysis, 2025)
Black Girls carry the very best scholar mortgage balances of any group
Black girls graduate with the very best common scholar mortgage balances of any group, and greater than half of Black feminine school graduates report actual problem repaying that debt. Largely as a result of curiosity compounds quicker than the wage hole permits it to shrink. (American Affiliation of College Girls)
Black households maintain simply 10 cents of wealth for each greenback white households have
The median Black household within the U.S. holds roughly fifteen cents of wealth for each greenback held by the median white household. And that hole persists even amongst households with a bachelor’s diploma or increased. (Brookings Establishment, 2024)
The ‘Black Tax’: Supporting relations comes at an actual monetary price
Many Black girls supporting relations financially every month — typically referred to as the “Black tax” — face an added drain on financial savings that isn’t factored into most traditional monetary recommendation. It’s cash that has to go someplace else earlier than it could actually go towards your individual objectives, and it may be genuinely exhausting to construct momentum round.
These aren’t summary statistics. They’re the backdrop each Black lady in our group, and past it, is constructing her monetary life towards.
Skilled tip: Plan for the Black tax
In the event you’re financially supporting relations every month — the “Black tax” — don’t deal with it as a leak in your finances. Give it its personal line merchandise, identical to hire or groceries, with an precise greenback quantity hooked up. Naming it turns an invisible drain into an actual, seen quantity you’ll be able to plan round. And it makes it rather a lot simpler to see what you even have on your personal objectives, as a substitute of feeling like your objectives preserve quietly dropping to everybody else’s wants.
And but, the info on resilience is simply as actual
Right here’s what we need to sit with simply as firmly: regardless of each a type of structural headwinds, the ladies in our group, the vast majority of whom are Black girls, report actively investing, actively constructing emergency funds, and actively working towards changing into debt-free at significant, measurable charges, 12 months after 12 months. Discover the numbers behind that resilience in our Girls & Cash survey sequence.
That’s not a coincidence, and it’s not simply particular person grit both — although there’s loads of that too. It’s what occurs when monetary training is definitely constructed to be accessible, judgment-free, and relatable, as a substitute of assuming a place to begin (a wage gap-free one) that doesn’t mirror most ladies’s actual lives.
Associated posts
Need extra of what our group’s information reveals? Maintain exploring:
Why we constructed Intelligent Lady Finance the best way we did
That is precisely the hole we got down to shut from day one. Monetary recommendation that assumes away the wage hole, the wealth hole, or the truth of supporting prolonged household isn’t recommendation that really works for an enormous share of the ladies who want it most.
We needed a unique place to begin — one that claims: right here’s the place you truly are, right here’s what you’re truly up towards, and right here’s an actual plan that works from there, not from some assumed clean slate.
If any of this resonates with you, right here’s the place to begin:
- Our 30+ free programs cowl budgeting, debt payoff, and investing; constructed to work no matter your beginning revenue or debt load.
- Our 1-on-1 teaching offers you a plan constructed particularly round your numbers, your loved ones obligations, and your objectives — not a generic template.
- Our debt payoff assets are constructed round actual methods for actual balances, with out disgrace hooked up to how you bought there.
The wage hole and the wealth hole are structural issues, and no quantity of particular person budgeting fixes them by itself. That work issues too, and it’s larger than any one in every of us. However constructing actual monetary confidence and actual, tangible progress within the meantime? That’s completely nonetheless attainable, and the ladies in our group are proving it each single day.
Sources: Intelligent Lady Finance Girls & Cash Survey Sequence, 2020–current; Institute for Girls’s Coverage Analysis (IWPR), Black Girls’s Equal Pay Day evaluation; American Affiliation of College Girls (AAUW), scholar debt analysis; Brookings Establishment, “Black wealth is growing, however so is the racial wealth hole.”
