What Women Need to Know About Money in 2026

January 26, 2026

Hello and welcome to The Financial Diet's weekly newsletter! We'll be in your inbox every Monday sharing our best tips to keep your money, career, and life in order.

As a reminder, friend of TFD and investing expert, Amanda Holden is taking over our newsletter this month in celebration of her new book, How To Be A Rich Old Lady.

And, as always, make sure to read through the entire newsletter so you don't miss anything! Thank you for being a part of this special little corner of our community!

❤️ TFD

Written by Amanda Holden, friend of TFD and author of the new book, How to Be a Rich Old Lady

Women have long relied on shared resources and informal networks for survival. This was true of the whisper networks of the suffragette and women’s liberation movements, as well as the clandestine abortion underground that existed before Roe. 

You’ve probably even heard the phrase “gossip saves lives.” In some cases, particularly for women and marginalized people, that is quite literally true. Many anthropologists describe gossip not as trivial chatter but as an adaptive form of information-sharing, especially in communities where it can serve as an early warning system for danger. 

Last week, I hosted TFD’s January workshop on the state of women and money in 2026. It turned into exactly the beautiful, collaborative conversation that I believe is essential to this moment.  

What Is Going On

I probably don’t have to tell you that 2025 was a rough year for women, as were the years leading into it. Here’s what happened across the economic, political, and cultural landscape.

Economic: A widening pay gap

In both 2023 and 2024, the gender pay gap widened by the largest amount in modern history over a two-year period, with women earning 81 cents to a man’s dollar, down from 84 cents in 2022. The gap is even wider for Black and Latina women, who earned 65 cents and 58 cents, respectively, for every dollar paid to a white man.

What about 2025? We do not yet have official data, but the outlook is grim. “I expect it to be a bloodbath,” says Stefanie O’Connell, author of the forthcoming book The Ambition Penalty. “With more than 300,000 Black women pushed out of the federal labor force and declining workforce participation among mothers, I expect the pay gap to widen for a third consecutive year.”

At the same time, the costs of childcare, elder care, and healthcare have become completely untenable. Many women are left to absorb these costs through unpaid labor, reduced hours, or lower-paying jobs with fewer protections. The result is a self-reinforcing cycle: women appear less attached to the workforce, which is then used to justify further wage suppression. 

Political: Attacks on reproductive freedom

At the same time, women are facing continued legal and political attacks on their ability to access safe reproductive care. Although this didn’t begin with Project 2025, reducing women’s reproductive freedom is a core tenet of the project and, therefore, the current administration. 

Worse, the newly released blueprint for the upcoming year, Project 2026, “picks up where Project 2025 left off: banning abortion pills, weaponizing the 150-year-old Comstock Act to criminalize medication by mail, embedding fetal personhood across federal agencies, and stripping every federal safeguard protecting reproductive freedom,” writes Kathy Spillar at Ms. Magazine. 

Say it with me now: reproductive rights are economic rights! Forced pregnancy, limited access to contraception, and medical risk all reduce women’s ability to plan their lives and their careers. The effect is, of course, uneven. Those with resources will pay for travel and out-of-pocket care. Those without resources are locked into outcomes that permanently alter their economic futures. 

Cultural: A return to traditional gender roles

The tradwife trend reflects a broader cultural movement that seeks to romanticize (and thereby normalize) raw milk and women’s economic disempowerment. 

Plenty of ink has already been spilled on the matter, but it’s worth examining how these ideas are now reflected in the public's measurable attitudes. For decades, support for gender traditionalism had been steadily declining. Then, in just two and a half years — between May 2022 and November 2024 — public opinion on traditional gender roles underwent a historic shift. The share of Republican men who said women should return to the home jumped from 28% to 48%. Among Republican women, it rose from 23% to 37%, indicating that the shift is not just aesthetic or online.

What We Can Do About It

First, we must resist the temptation to individualize collective and structural problems. Unfortunately, in a system that is precarious by design, there is no one personal choice or personal finance hack that guarantees safety. There are, however, strategies that can increase our resilience and power when pursued together, both collectively and personally.

Collective Action

History is clear about what shifts material conditions for individuals: collective action. And there are many ways to band together with people for the benefit of all! Here are just three ideas:

Mutual aid:

Mutual aid is the sharing of resources in the spirit of solidarity, not charity. Look for a local organization near you. Or, you can start your own mutual aid pod.

Mutual aid is not a replacement for systemic reform, but it is essential in the meantime. Networks of care provide immediate relief and build trust among groups. Knowing your neighbors, showing up locally, and participating in shared care are forms of infrastructure in an unstable system.

Support union efforts:

From How to Be A Rich Old Lady: “Labor unions are worker-led organizations that use collective bargaining to negotiate fair pay and conditions for everyone they represent. That collective approach levels the playing field in ways that individualized strategies can’t: Women in unions in the US earn 23% more than women in nonunion workplaces. The gender wage gap between unionized men and women narrows to 94%, compared with the 78% for nonunion women and nonunion men. The racial pay gap narrows, too: Black union workers earn 17% more than their nonunionized peers; Latino union workers earn 23% more. Because unions help to standardize wages, it’s a lot harder for employers to quietly discriminate on the basis of race or gender.

Unions also fight for what allows women to stay in the workforce: paid family leave, job protections, and flexible schedules. The benefits don’t stop there: Union members are also three and a half times more likely to have retirement pensions than nonunion workers. And the wins they secure don’t just benefit union members; they ripple outward, raising standards across industries. If you have access to union work, take it seriously! It’s one of the most reliable ways to protect your pay, your time, and your future.” 

That said, many people will not have access to union work. Still, it will be imperative to support union efforts as policies are put in place to dismantle labor protections. That means no crossing picket lines, darlings!

Labor strikes:

As someone who spends a lot of time thinking about the levers of money and power, I believe that everyday people hold their greatest leverage in withholding their labor.

I know this suggestion may feel outrageous! And to be clear, I am not calling on the most vulnerable among us to strike. But many of us hold significant privilege within this system, and we need to become more comfortable using it. Even if we cannot strike right now, it is still important to mentally and logistically prepare. This moment is asking a lot of us, and I believe we must rise to it. 

I have intentionally placed this after the section on mutual aid groups and labor unions because they are the vehicles through which broader strikes become possible. As we saw in Minnesota last Friday, local groups, including unions, lead the population into a historic general strike. It was incredible to behold, and we must build on this work. 

Personal Action

On a personal level, the goal is to reduce vulnerability and build power where possible. Here are a few ideas, rapid fire:

• Use every social service available to you.

• Build emergency savings in a private bank account so that you can act from a position of power, not subservience.

• Create a personal abortion fund, a toolkit that includes cash, Plan B, and Plan C. Plan B is available at Costco (and Amazon) for $7, and Plan C can be purchased by mail. 

• Develop a skill that could become an income stream in the event of a job layoff. For example, a friend of mine learned to cut men’s hair.

• Pay down high-interest debt, which is often a tool for enforcing compliance.

• Invest as a way to keep money growing beyond inflation and to create additional options.

• Understand that gender pay gaps transmute into wealth gaps, therefore women need to have their strategies dialed. We simply do not have as much room for making mistakes.

• And if you are a reader of TFD’s newsletter, you are already engaging in this important form of resistance: Educating yourself about financial systems, sharing resources, and yes, gossiping about money.

If you would like to continue to learn (and gossip) with me about money, investing, wealth-building, and creating a life of options, it would be an honor to be your teacher. My book, How to Be a Rich Old Lady, is out now.

Let’s be rich old ladies together,

Amanda

If your goal in 2026 is to learn to invest (and how to choose more ethical options), grow your wealth, and build TRUE confidence in yourself and your financial plan, consider using Amanda’s HOW TO BE A RICH OLD LADY as your guide. Available wherever books are sold. 

FEBRUARY 18: We’re hosting a free wealth-building workshop next month! Join Chelsea & licensed financial advisor, Kellen Thayer for How To Financially Prepare For An AI Driven Future. As AI, layoffs, and contract work make income feel more volatile, the old rules of “steady paycheck” investing don’t always apply. In this workshop, we’ll break down how investing strategy can adapt when income is uneven or uncertain—without panic, extreme risk-taking, or constant market timing. We’ll cover what still works, what needs updating, and how to build real resilience into your financial plan in a shifting labor market. Take our short quiz to register!

The Society at TFD is our members-only community with access available on both YouTube and Patreon. Joining The Society is the best way to directly support TFD! The Society offers the exact same things on both platforms, so choose whichever one you prefer!

We offer 3 tier options:

The Society at TFD Lite: $2.99/month

• Monthly office hours with Chelsea to chat and get your personal questions answered

• Access to our monthly book club hosted by TFD Creative Director, Holly

• Illustrated tech backgrounds every month

• Access to Society Discord

The Society at TFD: $4.99/month — includes everything in the $2.99 tier plus:

• Monthly ad-free extended director's cut videos from Chelsea

• Exclusive members-only events and workshops

• Complete post archive (including exclusive members-only videos of Chelsea ranting on different topics)

The Society Premium: $9.99/month — includes everything from the previous tiers plus:

• Weekly newsletter from Chelsea

• Monthly multi-page workbook/guidebook on a different topic each month

• Members-only capsule podcasts