Why Financial Literacy Is Becoming The New Self-Care

For much of modern American history, women were legally and institutionally prevented from fully participating in our financial system. Until the Equal Credit Opportunity Act was passed in 1974, lenders discriminated against women applying for credit based on their sex or marital status. Women seeking mortgages and business loans encountered similar barriers, while married women were often expected to rely on their husbands’ financial identities and earning power. Meanwhile, Wall Street and the world of investing have historically been overwhelmingly male-dominated.

In other words, the financial literacy gap didn’t appear out of nowhere. For generations, women received the message, through laws, workplace discrimination, family dynamics, and cultural expectations, that money was something men managed. Even as those barriers have fallen, their effects haven’t disappeared entirely. Women still face a gender pay gap and tend to live longer than men, making the ability to understand and manage money particularly important.

Yet financial literacy isn’t usually included in conversations about self-care. We tend to associate self-care with the things that help us unwind: exercise, meditation, therapy, sleep, vacations, or a quiet evening at home. Those things matter, but it can be difficult to truly relax when you’re worried about whether you can pay next month’s rent, don’t know how much debt you have, or are avoiding opening your retirement account because you don’t understand what any of the numbers mean.

Financial literacy offers another kind of self-care: security. Understanding where your money goes, how much you need to live, what you owe, and what you’re building toward can replace some of the uncertainty surrounding money with a sense of agency. A financial plan can’t eliminate every stressor, particularly when the cost of living is high or money is genuinely tight. But knowing your financial reality means you can make decisions based on information rather than fear or avoidance.

Becoming financially literate isn’t as challenging as it seems. Start with your own financial life. Track your monthly income and expenses. Check the interest rates on your debt. Learn how your employer’s retirement plan works and whether it offers a match. Understand the basics of credit scores, emergency savings, compound interest, and investing. If financial jargon makes your eyes glaze over, choose one concept at a time, rather than trying to master everything at once.

There are more financial resources created specifically with women in mind than ever before. The Financial Feminist podcast and book by Tori Dunlap, founder of Her First $100K, explore money through the lens of gender and systemic inequality. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Investor.govoffers free explanations of investing concepts, while the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau provides tools for everything from budgeting to understanding credit.

For a refreshing and funny approach to thinking about your financial future, How to Be a Rich Old Lady by Amanda Holden also makes a compelling case for why women should become more comfortable talking about, understanding, and building wealth. Its premise reframes financial planning as something more personal than accumulating money: taking care of the woman you’ll become.

That may be the most useful way to think about financial literacy as self-care. Saving for an emergency is caring for the version of you who encounters an unexpected expense. Contributing to retirement is caring for the woman you’ll be decades from now. Learning to negotiate your salary is caring for your present and future earning power. Even sitting down and looking at numbers you’ve been avoiding can be an act of care.

Self-care isn’t only about helping yourself feel better today. Sometimes, it’s about creating the financial security that will help you breathe easier tomorrow.