What Really Drives Women’s Financial Behaviour (and Why Awareness Is the First Step)
Oct 15, 2025
Over the past few months, I’ve been working with researchers at Newcastle University Business School to explore what really drives women’s financial behaviour, and what helps create lasting financial wellbeing.
We wanted to understand why so many capable, intelligent, hard-working women still feel uncertain or anxious when it comes to money. Why do so many of us say things like “I’m just not good with money,” when we’re perfectly competent in every other area of life?
And why do confidence and financial capability so often fail to grow at the same pace?
It turns out, the answers have less to do with knowledge or discipline, and much more to do with awareness, emotion, and the meaning we attach to money.
The Confidence Gap Isn’t About Competence
The data paints a clear picture. Women now influence almost half of household wealth. That's a figure that’s expected to rise significantly over the next decade. Yet research consistently shows that women’s confidence with money hasn’t kept up.
It’s not that women can’t make smart financial decisions — it’s that we often don’t fully trust ourselves to. For generations, financial systems, products, and even the language used in the industry have been designed by men and for men. When women hesitate, it’s not a reflection of ability — it’s actually a reflection of how invisible we’ve often been in the design of those systems.
Real-World Decisions Are Rarely Rational
Economists once believed people make decisions logically — comparing options, calculating outcomes, and choosing the best one. But the truth is far more human.
We make hundreds of small financial choices every week — from what to buy to how to save — and most are influenced by emotion, habit, or stress. Psychologists call this bounded rationality: we’re all doing the best we can with the information, energy, and focus we have in that moment.
In today’s “attention economy,” where distractions compete for our "attention units" every second, it’s no wonder that we often default to what feels easy or familiar — even when it isn’t what serves us long-term.
Early Patterns Leave Deep Financial Imprints
One of the most powerful insights from the research is how early experiences shape our relationship with money.
If you grew up around financial stress, conflict, or scarcity, you may unconsciously carry those patterns into adulthood — even when your circumstances improve. These beliefs, often formed in childhood, become unspoken stories like:
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“I’m not good with money.”
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“There’s never enough.”
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“It’s safer not to look.”
Left unexamined, these scripts drive our financial decisions unconsciously — from how we spend to how we save, invest, or avoid money altogether.
Awareness Creates Choice
Here’s the encouraging part: once we become aware of these patterns, we can begin to change them.
Awareness gives us choice. It allows us to step back from automatic habits and ask, Is this actually true for me now?
This is the foundation of financial wellbeing — not perfection, not rigid discipline, but self-awareness. When we understand our own stories and behaviours, we can replace guilt and avoidance with curiosity and conscious action.
What’s Next
This collaboration with Newcastle University is shaping everything I create next — from programmes and workshops to the development of new tools that help women connect the dots between psychology, behaviour, and money.
Financial wellbeing grows from awareness: knowing your patterns, recognising your emotions, and making deliberate choices that align with the life you want to create.
If this resonates, stay tuned — I’ll be sharing more of the research and how it’s being applied inside my work at Sarah McCalden: Finance, Mindset, Wellbeing & Growth. You can also join my free community where we will be exploring these ideas more deeply.