🟣 The Most Iconic Money Mansplaining Moments from 8 Experts Worldwide

💸 And 4 new exclusive discounts on women-led services to take control of your financial power

Seven years ago, I worked as a content manager, specialized in financial education, for a European investment platform.

One evening, I received a text message from my American cousin, Gina. She said: Have you heard of this investment platform for women?

I hadn’t. I had never heard of an investment platform for women. Gina had sent me the link to Ellevest’s website.

I was thrilled. I felt instinctively so attracted to this idea. I immediately checked if they had plans to come to Europe. And when I came to work the next day, I went into the coffee room and shared my excitement with a male colleague who worked in the tech team.

I hadn’t really thought about his reaction. We got along well. I just assumed he’d be excited too, or at least excited for me.

But he immediately rolled his eyes and said: “Oh please, another bullsh*t business. Women don’t need specific financial services. Why would women need that stuff? It’s bullsh*t.”

I honestly cannot remember what the rest of the conversation was. I only remember feeling stunned by how strong his reaction was, frustrated, and unable to find my arguments in that moment.

It took me way too much time and a lot of research (including reading the excellent The Authority Gap by Mary Ann Sieghart) to understand why I felt this way.

This was a textbook case of mansplaining:
→ A man teaching me about my own area of expertise: financial education.
→ A man teaching me, a woman, what other women want and need.

At the time, I would have loved to be able to tell him that a survey by Ellevest showed that 89% of women feel more confident making money decisions when working with a woman financial planner. And that instinct makes sense when you look at the data: research from 2023 analysing 27,000 real meetings between financial advisors and clients found that women are given worse financial advice than men. They are more often recommended expensive products that benefit the advisor or the bank, while men are more likely to get discounts and cheaper options. The surveys also showed that many advisors assume women know less about money, are less confident, or are more sensitive to price, and they adjust their advice based on those assumptions.

And yes, the bias still exists when the financial advisor is a woman, but according to the research, it’s significantly weaker: “female advisors engage in less discrimination than their male colleagues”.

Anyway, this is one of many personal stories from my years working in finance that pushed me to explore mansplaining and the Authority Gap more deeply. On Money Feelings, we’ve already looked at the psychological effects of mansplaining and how it reinforces the idea that finance belongs to men, becoming one of the invisible forces that gatekeep this space for women.

Today, I invited eight brilliant personal finance experts from around the world to share their most iconic money mansplaining moments, with three goals in mind for us (+ a personal one):

🟣 To show that mansplaining is not anecdotal. It happens to all of us, everywhere. It has nothing to do with you. Not all men do it, and when they do, it’s often not consciously, but it’s one of the many expressions of the Authority Gap, the invisible gap between how competent women are and how competent they’re perceived to be, and the well-documented tendency to trust men’s expertise more than women’s.

🟣 To help us recognize money mansplaining situations so we can get out of our state of frustration faster and overcome our tendency to silence ourselves. To understand how this shows up in our financial lives as women and discover ways to call it out or turn it into something positive for both women and men. Because equality benefits us all.

🟣 To show that there are plenty of brilliant women-led financial services out there and that it matters to show them. The Authority Gap also means our brains (women’s and men’s) have been conditioned to picture a man when we think of a financial expert. I’m hoping that after reading this, we’ll all be quicker at picturing women too.

And I have a last personal one: It’s my birthday today! And this edition is also a gift to myself, the gift of community. It’s been wonderful connecting with women working toward similar goals. Thank you all for giving some of your precious time to this special edition!

🔒 New for Money Feelings paid subscribers this week: get four new exclusive discounts from women-led services to take back control of your financial power. All the codes and links are waiting for you in your dedicated Paid Corner.

OK. Let’s get started.

Can’t wait to hear what these stories bring up for you.

Pauline 💜

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🟣 If you’re new here, Money Feelings is two moments a month to build your financial well-being using psychology, cognitive science, and the occasional spreadsheet (because money management is 80% behavior, 20% knowledge). 

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📍 Scotland

I’m a Chartered Accountant, content creator, and founder of Financial Hot Girl®, a media brand helping ambitious women earn, keep, and grow their wealth. I create content and digital products that make financial confidence feel chic and attainable, blending practical systems with behavioural psychology and real-life context.

🔗 Financial Hot Girl® | Youtube | TikTok | Instagram | LinkedIn

🟣 What’s a mansplaining that struck you the most?

When I first started creating finance content, I’d often get comments from men correcting things that weren’t wrong, they were just explained in plain English. I remember once talking about emergency funds in a video, explaining it as money that gives you the option to leave toxic situations, and a man commented ‘aren’t these just liquidity buffers’. Similar situations have happened in a lot of my content. The great irony of trying to explain financial jargon, only to be mansplained back into the jargon, summed up how financial confidence is often gate kept by mansplainers turning simple things into said jargon. All on top of me being a qualified finance professional!

🟣 How did it make you feel at the time?

Frustrated in the first instance, but mostly disappointed. I realised how many women would see a comment like that and doubt themselves - maybe even think that it was a reminder of how little they knew. It’s subtle, but it reinforces the idea that finance is a male-dominated, overly technical space, where the technicality exists mostly for show. It made me double down on my mission to make financial education feel chic, inclusive and approachable, because women shouldn’t need to prove their competence before they’re ‘allowed’ to participate or make a financial decision for themselves.

🟣 How did you respond in the moment? And is there something you wish you had said or done differently?

I used to reply politely or explain why I didn’t use the words ‘liquidity buffer’, but I’ve stopped doing that. Now, I try to let my work speak for itself. What I wish I’d said, and what I’d tell any woman now, is that the opposite of intelligence isn’t being more clear. Using plain language doesn’t make something less valid or smart. There is more power in inclusivity.

🟣 Do you have anything else you’d like to share on this topic (advice, reflections, a good read)?

Mansplaining in finance is a symptom of a bigger issue: who society sees as an authority on money. When men dominate the narrative, women internalise that they need to ‘learn more’ before taking action, while men are taught to lead with confidence even when they’re guessing. My advice here is: 1) keep sharing your perspective, even when you’re challenged 2) use your own language, not anyone else’s and 3) you don’t have to wait to be seen as smart to start behaving smartly. A book I love on reclaiming power of your natural instincts and inner voice is Women Who Run With The Wolves - it reminded me that there is a part of us that already knows what’s true and right, but we’ve been trained to question it. Mansplaining often silences that voice inside us, especially around money, where women are made to second-guess their instincts.

📍 Germany

I’m the founder of Fortunalista, a platform helping women build wealth and confidence through investing and financial education. We’ve supported over 2,000 women so far through our Bootcamp and community.

🔗 Fortunalista | Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn

During a finance seminar a few years ago, the male speaker said, “Don’t tell your wife what you learned here today she’ll just get hysterical.”

I was honestly shocked and deeply uncomfortable. It hit me how normalized this kind of attitude still is.

At the time, I didn’t say anything I just sat there, fuming. But that anger turned into energy. It became one of the sparks that made me create Fortunalista, to make sure women never have to feel that way again.

My takeaway? Use the frustration as fuel. Change doesn’t always start in a boardroom sometimes it starts in moments like that.

📍 New Zealand

I’m the founder of Friends That Invest, Forbes 30 Under 30 honouree, and a globally recognised investing educator. I specialise in making investing accessible and inclusive, helping women and minorities build long-term wealth through education, workshops, and media. I have a brand new membership on Substack!

🔗 Friends That Invest | Substack | Instagram | LinkedIn

I was looking into acquiring a company and the business broker tried to explain to me what EBITDA was. He got ruder and I had to explain to him on the phone that he was being disrespectful, and in true Karen fashion I wrote a strongly worded email to his manager. Sir, if I’m about to buy a company, I don’t need you to talk down to me!

It made me feel frustrated, but also a little amused. I couldn’t help but think about how often women are underestimated in conversations about money, even when we’re the ones leading the room.

I don’t regret my response, it was polite, but it made the point. I also think women in positions of authority should utilise their voice. I had nothing to lose by being honest with him, and thus I did!

Mansplaining in finance is a symptom of the deeper issue that women’s financial expertise is still undervalued. My advice to readers is to remember that your knowledge is valid, and your lived experience with money has value. If someone talks over you or down to you, it says more about them than it does about you.

📍 USA

I’m a personal finance journalist and educator and author of “You Don’t Need a Budget: Stop Worrying about Debt, Spend without Shame and Manage Money with Ease.” I write the newsletter Healthy Rich about money for misfits.

🔗 You Don’t Need a Budget | Substack | Instagram | LinkedIn | Money Feelings Questionnaire

I was a guest on a personal finance podcast last year to talk about why budgeting doesn’t work and why we need to look at the larger systemic issues that contribute to our financial circumstances — based on the research I’d just done while spending a year writing my book. The hosts (both white men) take a very traditional, budget-forward, approach to personal finance, but they were game to hear my critiques. However, toward the end of our conversation, one of them said in response to my critiques of the American capitalist system, “When you look at the numbers, we live in the most prosperous country in the history of the world, and there is a reason that people are lined up to immigrate to the United States.”

He said people want to move here because they believe it’s the “land of opportunity,” they have a chance to move up in income and they have a chance at a better life. He said, “What does that say to you about the system?”

🙄 I was irritated to hear this trope coming from someone who people trust to teach them about money — someone with a bigger audience than I have. It’s exactly the reason I want to lead a different kind of conversation about money. This is a typical knee-jerk response to someone critiquing inequality in the U.S. — to say that, in spite of our flaws, this country is still the best option for most people. It’s not. And it really reveals your limited perspective and your biases to assert that it is, especially when you’re speaking to someone with less privilege than you who’s telling you about inequalities in the system.

I’m happy with some of what I said. I wasn’t prepared for him to bring up this argument, so I wish I would have said more. But I did make one good point: “We have a really effective story in the United States about the opportunities that people can have under capitalism, and that continues to motivate people to feed that system.” I pointed out that the social mobility he was touting has become less and less accessible to Americans while the gap between rich and poor in this country has widened. I said the prosperity that underlies the “American Dream” story is increasingly benefitting a shrinking number of people at the very top.

He went on to glorify American innovation, saying the system incentivizes it, and I wish I would have added that innovation in this country has been stagnant for decades. The most innovative period in the U.S. was the mid-20th century, when we were also heavily regulating business, taxing fairly and protecting workers.

I recently wrote a piece about that wealth gap in America that has some data to back up what I said about all of our wealth concentrating at the top.

As for advice, I did hear a woman once offer some advice to counter mansplaining. She said to just confidently spout data back at someone, whether it’s true or not. I have a hard time stating facts if I don’t know them to be absolutely true, but I have adopted this in spirit a little bit. I try to respond to mansplaining or bad-faith arguments with more certainty than I might actually feel. It’s what they’re doing with their nonsense information! Why not give it back to them?

📍 Canada

I’m a money expert, TV personality and speaker. I’m a Certified Financial Counsellor™, an award-winning financial content creator and the host of the chart-topping More Money Podcast (4+ million downloads). As a personal finance educator for over 13 years, I have given presentations throughout North America and I’m regularly featured by major Canadian and US media including CBC News, CTV News, BNN Bloomberg, the Toronto Star, Forbes and USA Today. My book Everything but Money: The Hidden Barriers Between You and Financial Freedom came out December 31, 2024 (HarperCollins Canada) and became an Indigo Staff Pick, Globe and Mail Bestseller, Toronto Star Bestseller, Quill & Quire Bestseller, and Amazon Bestseller.

🔗 Website | Podcast | Book | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube | LinkedIn

I’ve got a ton of mansplaining stories considering I’ve been in the financial space since 2011, but the one that immediately comes to mind is the time an older gentleman mansplained my own presentation to me before I presented it. I was running a series of workshops for a bank as part of their financial literacy initiative. While I was still setting up, this gentleman came in early, took a seat, then proceeded to tell me how much he knew about the topic, his desire to write a book about it, and had I considered talking about this or that to ensure I covered the most important points. He followed that up by asking me if this was my first time public speaking and then offered me any help if I needed it. To this day, I have no idea we attended since he was already an “expert.” This was around 2018 or 2019, when I’d had years of speaking experience, had a regular segment on the news, a top-charting financial education podcast, and was an accredited financial counsellor.

At the time, it made me feel frustrated because no matter my CV, the assumption continued to be that I couldn’t possibly know what I was talking about.

Partially because the whole situation was so awkward and unbelievable, and partly because I wanted to maintain a level of professionalism, I grinned-and-beared it. I was polite and let him talk. I was more concerned about upsetting him than letting him know that he was upsetting me. But if I could go back in time, I wish I could have called out his behaviour in real-time, because he likely left the presentation thinking he’d done some good and helped that poor young girl in her career thanks to his wise words.

Look who has the bestselling book on shelves now, ha! But really, although I’m at a stage in my life and career that I’m questioned less about my expertise than I used to be, it still hasn’t completely dissipated and it’s still ever present with younger female financial content creators. The only way we can all stand up to it is to be vocal about it, something I wish I’d done more of when I was in that situation. We need to call it out when we see it because that’s the only way to motivate people to change their behaviours.

📍 England

I’m an Award-winning Certified Money Coach (CMC)® and Money Mindset Expert, whose ethos is to educate, elevate and empower. I specialise in money mindset, diving into the foundational behaviours that shape our relationship with money. My mission is to get everyone comfortable with money; learn how to manage it, save it, invest it and most importantly, talk about it! My work has been recognised by organisations like the BBC, The Voice Newspaper, PWC and more. I have worked with a variety of companies including educational institutions like The Royal Ballet School and De Montfort University teaching financial literacy and self-employability skills.

🔗 Website | TikTok | Instagram | LinkedIn

A male associate explained cryptocurrency to me. I know what blockchain is and actually used to invest every month in two tokens for a couple of years before I sold. It makes me laugh, especially when being in this space and men thinking I don’t know what it is and don’t even get me started on trading!

It made me feel annoyed that they didn’t ask me first whether I already knew what it was before mansplaining. Men tend to feel superior over certain topics in finance such as crypto and trading...thankfully this is changing :-)

I kinda wished I stopped them in their tracks and cut them off but I allowed them to continue telling all that I already knew. When they finished, I impressed them by mentioning something that would happen to a coin due to an interview happening that week with a Billionaire and I was right when I followed up with them after it aired.

I’ll forever encourage others to do their due diligence and research topics they’re interested in. And one book that really explained money to me in terms anyone could understand is ‘How to own the world’ - A Plain English Guide to Thinking Globally and Investing Wisely- Andrew Craig

📍 USA

I am the founder of The Purse, a newsletter about women and the culture of money. I am the founding editor of Refinery29 Money Diaries, and I have worked in top roles at CNBC and Fortune. I live in Brooklyn with my husband and son.

🔗 Substack | Instagram | LinkedIn

I was at my 20th high school reunion about a year after the Money Diaries book came out. At the time, I was a deputy managing editor at CNBC Make It and CNBC Select, and I had probably been writing about personal finance topics for a good five years. I wouldn’t have called myself an expert, but I also wasn’t a novice. At the reunion, I was chatting with a classmate who has essentially spent his entire career working for a national brokerage firm. He started talking about IRAs, but he was calling them Ira’s, like the man’s name. It was loud in the bar, and I had no clue what he was talking about. And it’s not because I don’t know about individual retirement accounts! I had just never heard them referred to that way. As you can see from this photo of me, I was very annoyed when he started explaining the basics to me in the most condescending manner.

I was both a bit embarrassed and a bit annoyed. It also felt like being back in high school, TBH. I was not a withering violet in high school. I was known for being bold and speaking my mind. I went to a Catholic school, and I would always try to push the boundaries. In speech class one year, I gave a speech on why we should legalize same-sex marriage—this was a good 20 years before the Supreme Court ruling. Things like that. And yet here I was, 20 years later, still trying to prove myself to these idiot, know-it-all boys.

I think at some point I politely interrupted him and said something like, “Oh yes, of course I know about I-R-As.” And then I moved onto a different conversation with someone else, because who wants to waste too much time being mansplained to at your high school reunion, especially on such a boring topic? Truly, it should just be gossip and good fun!
I’m not sure I’d handle it differently now then I did back then. Any woman in this space knows that men always like to explain how finance works.

I hope by sharing this story, other women see that it happens to everyone and it’s nothing to be embarrassed about. I really believe that some men in finance act like this because they think this industry is still their sacred space. The financial services industry is so overly reliant on jargon to keep customers intimidated. If you find yourself in a situation with a man who’s mansplaining or making you feel bad for not knowing a term or a concept, excuse yourself and go find someone else to get advice from.

I’ll also add, not all men are like this. I absolutely adore my accountant because he’s very patient and explains everything to me. (Sometimes twice.) Don’t be afraid to ask questions! That’s how we learn!

📍 The Netherlands

I’m the founder of Elfin, the leading financial platform in the Benelux founded by women, for women. We empower thousands to manage, earn, and invest their money with confidence through our online platform with e-courses, practical tools, and a powerful community. I’m also the co-author of Financial Selfcare, a bestselling book about reclaiming financial power in a system designed to exclude us.

🔗 Elfin | Instagram | YouTube | LinkedIn

“Let me explain it to your husband.”
That’s basically what the mortgage advisor didn’t say, but very clearly implied.

I was in my early twenties, trying to buy my first home. The mortgage advisor, an older white man in a suit that probably cost more than my deposit, launched into a complicated rant about investment-linked mortgages. Jargon, graphs, more jargon. He looked and spoke directly to my boyfriend. Not to me.

When I finally gathered the courage to say, “I don’t understand, could you explain it differently?”, he sighed, rolled his eyes, and repeated the exact same thing, just louder. As if I had a hearing problem, not a clarity problem. I left the meeting with more questions than answers and a deep feeling of self-doubt.

I now know this feeling is all too common. In the Elfin community, one woman shared that her salary wasn’t included in the mortgage calculation because “she’d probably work less once she had kids.” No pregnancy, no kids, just patriarchal assumptions baked into financial systems.

It made me feel small. Dumb. Like I wasn’t supposed to understand. And worst of all, ashamed that I had to ask. It took years to realise that it wasn’t me who should’ve felt ashamed. It was him, for deliberately keeping the gate closed.

At the time, I froze. I nodded politely, even thanked him. If I could do it over, I’d say, “If you can’t explain this to me in plain Dutch, you have no business selling it.” And then I’d take my money elsewhere.

That moment is part of why I started Elfin. Women deserve financial clarity and confidence without the condescension.

If you’ve ever felt dumb in a financial meeting, you’re not the problem. The system wasn’t built for you. But we’re rebuilding it, one confident woman at a time.

💜 So, how did all these stories make you feel? Did any part of this feel uncomfortably familiar? Do you think you’ll be more likely to picture a woman when one asks you to imagine a finance expert? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

And to join our next Money Feelings session, you can always sign up as a free subscriber, but a paid subscription gives you access to the No Buy Challenge, the 10+ tools, a chance to unplug with off-screen exercises, and discounts on professional support, including four new ones. All the codes and links are waiting for you in The Paid Corner.

And remember: Money Feelings is your space, your platform, and your tool.

If you have questions, confessions, or something you’d like help with in your relationship with money, don’t hesitate to message me. You can also share something completely anonymously here 👇

See you in two weeks, or sooner on Notes.

Pauline 💜