What actually happens when smart women talk about money together
There’s a particular moment that happens in almost every Women’s Investment Boardroom. It usually comes about forty minutes in. The polite catch up conversation is over and we sit down for the first course. Someone has shared a story, an experience with business, a property value, an investment idea, and the room shifts. Not dramatically. Not emotionally. Just… honestly. And what happens next is not what most people expect.
This isn’t a manifesto about women and money. It’s an observation drawn from dozens of conversations with intelligent, high achieving women who should feel financially confident and often don’t.
The quiet difference in how women talk about money
Men in my experience talk about money vertically. Who’s ahead. Who’s behind. What worked. What didn’t. There’s often an implicit hierarchy in the conversation even when it’s friendly. Wins are broadcast. Losses are selectively edited, reframed.
Women talk about money horizontally. They ask how decisions were made. What assumptions sat underneath them. Whether something felt right at the time. There’s less posturing and more context. Less “here’s what I did” and more “here’s how I thought about it”.
Neither is better. But they produce very different outcomes. Male dominated rooms often generate confidence quickly sometimes prematurely. Female dominated rooms generate clarity sometimes uncomfortably slowly. And clarity, as it turns out, is far more powerful over time.
The myth of “lack of confidence”
Women are often described as lacking confidence with money. That hasn’t been my experience at all. What I see instead is women holding themselves to a higher evidentiary standard. They want to understand the full picture before acting. They’re aware of downside risk and they’re conscious of who else is affected by their decisions, children, partners, ageing parents, employees. They don’t mistake caution for ignorance but the world often does.
In investment rooms this shows up as under statement.
A woman who owns three properties will describe herself as “lucky”.
A woman with a seven figure pension will say she’s “behind”.
A woman running a profitable business will tell you she’s “still figuring it out”.
Not because she doesn’t understand her position but because she understands how fragile it could be without a plan.
What women consistently underestimate
Across these conversations a few patterns repeat themselves with almost boring consistency. Women underestimate:
The cumulative power of their existing assets
The optionality they already have
The compound effect of decisions they’ve already made
Their ability to course correct without blowing everything up
Many are far more financially secure than they feel. And paradoxically, that lack of felt security often stops them from taking measured, intelligent risks, the very ones that would strengthen their position further.
The uncomfortable truth about “doing well”
Here’s something else that happens in these rooms. When women realise they are doing better than average, sometimes significantly better, there is often discomfort rather than pride. Outperforming peers feels socially risky. Talking openly about success feels boastful. Admitting financial competence feels… unseemly. So women tend to self edit. They soften. They minimise. And the cost of that minimisation is not just personal it’s collective. Because when capable women don’t articulate what’s working, everyone else assumes it must be harder than it is. Or worse that they’re failing.
Why safe rooms change financial outcomes
A “safe” room is not one where nothing challenging is said. It’s one where:
Numbers can be shared without judgement
Questions aren’t confused with incompetence
Experience is valued more than bravado
Nobody is selling anything
In those rooms women stop performing competence and start building it. They compare notes. They spot patterns. They recognise when fear not strategy is driving decisions. And crucially they see themselves reflected in others who are slightly further along the path. That’s how financial confidence actually grows not through hype but through proximity.
What happens next is the interesting part
Once women have clarity action follows but it looks different. Not reckless. Not reactive. Not driven by FOMO. It’s quieter. More deliberate. Often more diversified. And almost always more sustainable. The irony is that from the outside, this can look like hesitation. From the inside, it’s strategy.
The real power of women talking about money
The most powerful thing that happens when smart women talk about money together isn’t motivation. It’s calibration. They recalibrate what “normal” looks like. They recalibrate what’s possible. They recalibrate what they’re allowed to want and protect. And once that internal calibration shifts behaviour changes naturally. No manifesto required. Just better decisions, made in better rooms.
If you want to be in the room with other intelligent and savvy women find out more about our Women’s Investment Boardroom here, hosted most months in London with Tunbridge Wells coming soon.
