Key findings from the 2025 Clever Girl Finance Women & Money Survey<\/strong><\/p>\n The short version:<\/strong> Women in the Clever Girl Finance community are more financially engaged than ever. Investing more, chasing debt-freedom harder, and building emergency funds at higher rates than in 2022. But they\u2019re doing it while carrying more credit card debt and feeling less optimistic about the future than they did three years ago. Progress and pressure, showing up at the exact same time.<\/p>\n In the summer of 2025, we surveyed 591 women in the CGF community about their money \u2014 their habits, their confidence, their goals, and their worries. It\u2019s the third time we\u2019ve run this survey, following studies in 2020 and 2022. Which means we finally have something most personal finance platforms don\u2019t: a real trend line on how women\u2019s relationship with money is actually changing, year over year. And the story the data tells isn\u2019t the one you\u2019d expect from the headlines.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s start with the number that jumped out at us first: only 54.3% of women told us they feel optimistic or extremely optimistic about their financial future, down from 67.3% in 2022. That\u2019s a real drop, and it makes sense Inflation, a tighter job market, and general economic uncertainty haven\u2019t exactly made the last few years easy on anyone\u2019s wallet.<\/p>\n But here\u2019s the part that matters more: that dip in optimism did not<\/em> come with a dip in confidence. 72.1% of women still feel confident in their ability to build long-term wealth. In other words, women aren\u2019t losing faith in themselves \u2014 they\u2019re just being more clear-eyed about the conditions they\u2019re building in. That\u2019s not defeat. That\u2019s realism paired with resolve, and honestly, it\u2019s a pretty healthy place to sit.<\/p>\n We\u2019d be doing you a disservice if we didn\u2019t lead with the hard news here: 60.1% of women now carry credit card debt, up from 54.9% in 2022. Student loan debt remains just as heavy. 67.7% of respondents carry it, and nearly three-quarters of those with student debt (73.3%) owe more than $20,000. And 17.3% of women have had to lean on a payday loan at some point, a number that\u2019s ticked up 2.4 points since our last survey.<\/p>\n None of that is easy to read, and we\u2019re not going to sugarcoat it. Debt \u2014 especially the kind that compounds against you \u2014 is one of the biggest things standing between women and the financial futures they want. That\u2019s exactly why it matters so much that it\u2019s also the thing women told us they care most about fixing.<\/p>\n If there\u2019s one number that should get every financial educator\u2019s attention, it\u2019s this one: 70.2% of women told us their biggest financial concern is not having enough saved for retirement. That\u2019s been the top concern in every CGF survey since 2020 \u2014 it\u2019s not a blip, it\u2019s a pattern.<\/p>\n And it\u2019s not hard to understand why. Retirement is the kind of goal that\u2019s easy to put off when credit card bills and day-to-day expenses (a concern for 39.1% of women) are sitting right in front of you. But the fact that retirement anxiety keeps outranking every other worry tells us women aren\u2019t just thinking about next month. They\u2019re thinking decades ahead, even when the present moment is asking a lot of them.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s where the story turns, and it\u2019s the part we don\u2019t want to get lost under the debt and anxiety numbers: women are still actively building wealth, at higher rates than ever.<\/strong><\/p>\n That last stat is worth sitting with for a second. When we asked women what they actually want, more of them said \u201cget out of debt\u201d than anything else. That\u2019s not avoidance \u2014 that\u2019s women looking directly at the hardest part of their financial picture and deciding to go after it first.<\/p>\n And for the 84.2% of women who don\u2019t yet own a home but want to, that ambition hasn\u2019t gone anywhere either, even in a housing market that\u2019s made homeownership feel further out of reach for a lot of people.<\/p>\n If debt-freedom is your top goal too \u2014 and for 58% of the women in this survey, it is \u2014 don\u2019t wait until it feels \u201curgent\u201d to make a plan. Pick one method (snowball or avalanche, whichever keeps you motivated), automate one extra payment this month, and revisit it quarterly. Progress on debt doesn\u2019t require a perfect system. It requires a consistent one.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Put it all together, and here\u2019s what we see: financial literacy isn\u2019t a \u201cnice to have\u201d anymore for the women in our community. It\u2019s core to how they define who they are and where they\u2019re headed. Women aren\u2019t waiting for the economy to get easier before they start building. They\u2019re doing the work in real time, against real pressure, and they\u2019re doing more of it than they were three years ago.<\/p>\n That\u2019s exactly the narrative we set out to change back in 2020, when we ran our first survey specifically because the mainstream story about women and money \u2014 disengaged, disempowered, leaving it all to someone else \u2014 never matched what we saw in our own community. Five years and three surveys later, the data keeps proving that story wrong.<\/p>\n If this data resonated with you, here\u2019s more from the same research:<\/p>\n If any of these numbers hit close to home \u2014 whether it\u2019s the credit card debt, the retirement anxiety, or just wanting to build a stronger emergency fund \u2014 you don\u2019t have to figure it out alone. That\u2019s the entire reason Clever Girl Finance exists.<\/p>\n A few places to start:<\/p>\n Wherever you\u2019re starting from, the data is clear on one thing: showing up and doing the work \u2014 even messily, even under pressure \u2014 is how progress actually gets made. 591 women just proved it.<\/p>\n Source: Clever Girl Finance 2025 Women & Money Survey Report. Explore the full Women & Money Survey Series (2020\u2013present) for year-over-year trends.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Key findings from the 2025 Clever Girl Finance Women & Money Survey The short version: Women in the Clever Girl Finance community are more financially engaged than ever. Investing more, chasing debt-freedom harder, and building emergency funds at higher rates than in 2022. But they\u2019re doing it while carrying more credit card debt and feeling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7028705,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[93],"tags":[2539,832,19746,7351,313],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-7028704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance","tag-building","tag-money","tag-told","tag-wealth","tag-women"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"591](\"https:\/\/www.clevergirlfinance.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/591-Women-Told-Us-About-Money-1024x683.jpeg\")
<\/figure>\nWomen are more cautious \u2014 but not more defeated<\/h2>\n
The debt picture is the toughest part of this survey<\/h2>\n
Retirement anxiety is still the #1 worry \u2014 for the second survey in a row<\/h2>\n
![\"Clever](\"https:\/\/www.clevergirlfinance.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/CGM-scaled.png\"\/ "\\"Clever")
<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nBut women are still showing up and building \u2014 in real, measurable ways<\/h2>\n
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Expert tip: Make a plan to pay off debt<\/h2>\n
What this tells us<\/h2>\n
Related posts<\/h2>\n
Where to go from here<\/h2>\n
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