9 female financial leaders to follow in 2021
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Every time I heard the word “financial industry” I immediately picture someone that looks like this:
Does anybody else do this too?
You immediately picture a white man in a business suit on Wall street. He might be yelling into a phone with big computer screens behind him computing who knows what, but there’s lots of graphs and charts that I could never understand.
This is where my mind goes when I say the word “financial industry.” If you’re anything like me it makes sense why so many people especially women are intimated by the financial industry.
The financial industry seems intimidating, confusing, and not for regular people like me.
The truth is: finances are really fucking simple.
I know what you’re thinking: investing is the really complicated part or big complicated financial decisions that involve interest rates, words like refinancing, lets’ defer those decisions to other people (like men).
GUESS WHAT? Investing IS NOT COMPLICATED.
The whole industry is built around this intimidation that finances are confusing, that there’s all these moving parts, and you need a PHD to understand it.
It’s honestly the most simple industry I’ve ever learned about it. Especially investing.
Investing in the most basic stocks (index funds) and letting your money sit there through recessions or stock market craziness, will result in an average of 7% return on your money every year.
Don’t believe me? Let’s take a look at the stock market over the past 100 years:
Anytime someone is trying to “complicate” investing, RUN.
They’re typically trying to make money from you by telling you they can make you more money, blah blah. Just keep it simple for now.
Once you start to accumulate a more financially complex portfolio that’s when you can start talking to people who will manage your investments.
How did I get to this place?
Where I can sit here and insert pictures of the Dow Jones stock market over the past 100 years and confidently tell you that the financial industry is trying to intimidate you?
Following some smart fucking women. Women who didn’t make me feel like an idiot or that I didn’t know anything about money.
Women who openly shared about their debt.
Women who openly shared financial advice in a relatable way.
Women that opened up about being a mom and running a business.
Women who put a fun twist on talking about money.
Women who share big financial wins.
Let’s talk about these 9 amazing female financial leaders that have changed my life:
1) Farnoosh Torabi
I’ve been following Farnoosh the longest. I don’t even know why or how I joined her list but I know it’s been over 5 years that I’ve been on her list. For the 5 years I’ve been following her, I wasn’t really into money until the past 2 years. But I still loved following her, I still loved her advice, I still loved all the personal details she shared about her life.
The best part? It was seeing her on morning news show like Live with Kelly or Good Morning America.
She’s always felt so relatable and at the same inspirational. She shares just little bits of financial advice through her newsletter. Nothing crazy and she has a program that teaches you about how to start your first podcast.
She’s host of a highly successful podcast called So Money, if you’re more of a podcast person, listen to it!
2) The Budgetnista
Okay let me be honest about Tiffany. I saw her on The Real, a couple years ago and thought.. wait someone like me could be on The Real!? I remember being super inspired and then totally forgetting about her.
Fast forward to this past year and I started diving into more of her stuff and then I found out a bombshell about her.
The budgetnista makes over $1 million dollars a month from her very affordable monthly money membership.
CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT NUMBER? Over $1 million a month. After figuring this out, I put this girl on my vision board. Not even for her financial skills although she’s helping obviously A LOT OF WOMEN in the their financial future. I put her there because she is a BOSS at business.
The best part about her? Is her whole business model is about giving and teaching in the best way possible. She does these monthly long money challenges and she just gives and gives and gives. In her membership for the price tag, you get an abundance of financial information.
Her membership also is the LEAST intimidating place. Women come from all different walks of life with all different types of credit scores. If you ever feel like you can’t join a money membership because you don’t know anything about money or feel intimidated by the women in there, join her membership.
Her membership includes courses like this:
Healing Your Relationships with Money
Buying A Home While Managing Student Loan Debt
How To Get Over The Down Payment Hurdle When Buying A Home
Building Boundaries with Family Member
Student Loans: What Every Borrower Should Know
22 Ways to Master Your Taxes
How To Prepare for Job Loss
How To Raise Financially Fit Kids
Tax Free Retirement & Guaranteed Lifelong Income
How Pay Off Debt and Increase Your Score
Affordable Real Estate Investing
22 Day Stock Intensive
Meal Prepping On A Budget
How To Get Paid To Be A Speaker
How To Write, Sell And Market Your Book
How To Get Your Name, Brand or Business in the Press
How to Start A Home Based Business
How to Get Funding And Grants For Your Non-Profit
Estate Planning: How To Keep Your Money In The Family
AND FREAKING MORE.
Right? You can check out her membership here for more information.
3) Sallie Krawcheck of Ellevest
Finally a platform aimed towards women and investing!
Maybe you’re a woman who’s like… “Shannon.. I do not want to learn about investing, I don’t want to figure out how to create my own index fund account, just let someone else do that for me.”
Oh hello Ellevest! This all in 1 platform gives you all the tools you need to start investing including educating you, coaching you, and doing all the investing for you.
In addition to that.. they also want you to make more in your career. They’re going to give you career tips, advice, and coaching on how to advance in your career AND GET. YOUR. MONEY.
This is for you if you’re wanting to invest, advance in your career, start saving for retirement but get intimidated by the whole financial industry.
This company is making big waves and I am so thankful Sallie Krawcheck saw the need for this platform and created it.
THANK YOU SALLIE!
4) Jean Chatzky of Her Money
When I started my debt pay off and saving journey, I was looking for a group of women that wanted to talk about things like: paying off debt, the best savings accounts, refinancing mortgages, where to invest money, or any big financial moves.
I found it through Jean’s Facebook group, you can find that group here.
Through her podcast and her Facebook group I found financial advice and comfort. I didn’t feel like an idiot for asking questions and I found other women who wanted to feel confident about making big financial decisions.
I felt inspired by women who were asking questions in the group about what to do with their money and women who had made a butt ton of money through smart financial decisions.
One more thing I love about Jean: she was recently featured on my favorite budgeting software You Need a Budget. MAD STREET CRED.
5) Tonya Rapley of My Fab Finance
Stumbling across Tonya was so random. I was doing some research for this article and then I was attending an event through HeyMama (my favorite mom entrepreneur membership, check it out here and get $70 off using the code: SHANNOND) and Tonya was a guest speaker at the event!
I had stumbled across her twice in 1 day. I knew I needed to know more about her.
My Fab Finance is a leading financial education and lifestyle blog for millennials who want to become financially free and do more of what they love. (totally stole that from her site but she really put it into such great terms!)
She offers straight forward money management advice for all of us adults out here trying to finance right.
6) Maggie Germano
Maggie has a refreshing way of looking at money, a perspective that I also share about money, and that’s that money is EMOTIONAL.
You can’t change your money habits and actions if you don’t address the mental health of money.
Maggie digs into topics like:
positive money conversations with your spouse
financial abuse
budget friendly ways to get help with your mental health
social change issues that affect financial issues too (voting, racism, criminal justice reform)
Her view on money is all about giving women support and the tools they need to succeed.
I love the way she incorporates mental health, social justice, and money all together.
7) Clever girl finance
Bola is my girl when it comes to money. She’s done some incredible things personally and her business helps so many women. I mostly follow her through her Youtube channel. I really enjoy ingesting her financial information through video.
Clever girl finance’s mission is all about empowering women to ditch debt, save money and build real wealth.
The best thing about Clever girl finance? The FREE COURSES.
Bola offers completely free courses on:
savings
money mindset
financial organization
creating a budget
creating financial goals
pay off debt
build a good credit score
master student loans
buy a home
pay for a wedding
AND THERE’S FREAKING MORE!
She also offers free resources like this:
creating your financial roadmap
the best budgeting, banking, financing, and investing tools and resources
financial worksheet library
coaching call replays
and more!
Obviously this woman is all about giving more. She’s created mountains of content to help women become empowered around money!
8) The Financial Diet
This was the first financial Youtube channel I started watching and I’ll tell you why, Chelsea is clever AF. She’s sarcastic, funny, and just a no bull shitter. I love that in people. TFD is more than just finance advice too.
It will help you with:
career/finding a job
entertainment/ lifestyle
budgeting
money management
investing
TFD’s mission is to fundamentally change and improve the way we talk about money, to take it from something shameful or intimidating into something we can all feel confident about.
Here’s one of my recent Youtube favorites:
9) Shannon DePalma of The Girl Who Couldn’t Save
(AKA, ME). Like duh, I am writing this post and I’m going to plug myself.
My spin on financial advice is specifically for female entrepreneurs.
I’m looking at:
the woman who is running a coaching business and has just made her first big month in her business
the youtuber who just got her first big fat check
the blogger who’s making her first couple of sponsored brand deals
and this woman has no idea on how to spend her money to get the most out of it now that she has some!
She may also be carrying debt from building her business and really craving building a savings account.
I show her how to create wealth in her business, manage her money, without having to make more money.
A lot of female entrepreneurs feel like.. “Oh I’ll manage my money when I’m actually making some!”
But I was able to go debt free and build a 6 month savings account in my worst revenue year yet.. while in my best revenue year I still carried $17,000 of credit card debt.
It came down much more to my financial habits than it did about the money I was making.
That’s what I teach women with my content and programs.
Wealth isn’t about how much money you’re making but it’s way more about your spending habits.
Who’s your favorite female financial leader to follow?
Is there someone I should know about?
Leave it in the comments below!
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