The Quiet Power of Wealth
On optionality, self-belief, and creating choices for your future self
This is the fifth in a series of five posts, each focused on a single word. Words that cut to something real about how women move through their careers and lives. Last post: time. This week: money. The word that might be the most uncomfortable of all.
I’ll be honest. This is the post that I sat with the longest. The other four words felt important. This one made me feel exposed.
So let me dive into that vulnerability with a story I haven’t shared before.
A few years into my career as an engineer, I thought I was being responsible with money. After years of being a student, I landed a good job. I was earning a paycheck I dreamed of. I was paying my bills. And slowly, quietly, money was accumulating in my checking account. I called it saving. I felt proud of it.
I wasn’t saving. I was parking.
When my now-husband and I started talking finances as we approached our wedding, he discovered that cushion sitting in my checking account, untouched, uninvested, quietly losing ground to inflation. His reaction was somewhere between astonished and concerned. But he didn’t leave it there. He sat down with me and showed me the math. What that money would have been worth if I’d invested it, even conservatively. He walked me through the 401k I wasn’t fully using, the employee stock plan I’d barely looked at, the student loans I could have been aggressively paying down.
I felt embarrassed. A little ashamed. Not because I’d done something reckless. I hadn’t. I’d worked hard for every dollar. Paid my own way through most of college. Prided myself on being responsible.
But I’d been so focused on not losing money that I’d never learned what it could become.
Underneath the embarrassment was something quieter: fear. Fear of getting it wrong. Fear of making a move I didn’t fully understand and losing what I’d worked so hard to build. So I’d done nothing. Which felt safe. But safe isn’t the same as smart.
Looking back, what strikes me is that I never really learned any of this. I knew the value of money. I knew how to earn money. I knew how to save money. But I didn’t know anything about wealth. It felt like a word that belonged to someone else’s life.
More Than Money
Notice I said I didn’t know about wealth, not money. Because they’re not the same thing, and that distinction is part of what this post is about. Most of us learned about money. How to earn it. How not to waste it. How to be responsible with it. What most of us never were exposed to or learned was how to build wealth. Not the yacht in the Caymans wealth. The I’m safe and secure kind of wealth. And there’s a reason for that.
For many women, money is a word we learn to manage but never fully claim. We track the budget, pay the bills, make sure the household runs. But building wealth, thinking strategically about what money could become, asking for more of it, investing it, that’s where something quietly stops us.
It starts early. Most of us absorbed messages, rarely spoken out loud, that made money complicated. Wanting more money felt greedy. Talking about it felt crass. Asking for it for ourselves — in a salary negotiation, a client proposal, a performance review — felt aggressive. Too much. So we learned to be grateful for what we were offered. To take the job, accept the number, undercharge the client, and tell ourselves it was fine.
I felt this firsthand when I returned to the workforce after several years away. In the interviews when the inevitable salary question arose, I fumbled every time. Not because I didn’t know the market, but because I didn’t believe I had the standing to confidently assert it. I was so focused on my perceived lack of value that I couldn’t see my actual worth.
That’s the “good girl” conditioning. And the cost is real. Women still earn roughly 84 cents for every dollar men earn, a gap that widens significantly for women of color. But the gap isn’t only in what employers offer. It lives equally in what we accept, what we ask for, and what we never ask for at all.
I want to pause here for a moment, because I’m aware this topic lands differently depending on where you are right now. Some of you are in a season of building: stable ground, thinking about the future, ready to think bigger. Some of you are in a season of surviving: navigating a job loss, stretched by rising costs, wondering how to make it to next month. Both of you belong in this conversation. Because the conditioning that keeps women from claiming what they’ve earned doesn’t check your bank balance before it kicks in.
This isn’t a personality trait. It’s a pattern. And patterns can be interrupted.
What Wealth Actually Buys
So what does interrupting that pattern actually look like?
It starts with understanding what wealth actually buys.
We grow up associating wealth with things. The brand name handbag. The vacation house. The fancy car. The European vacation. The visible markers that signal arrival. But that’s not wealth. That’s richness. And they’re not the same thing.
Wealth is quieter and more invisible than that. Wealth is what you don’t spend. It’s the optionality you preserve. The door you keep open. The decision you get to make on your own terms, because you built something that gives you the freedom to choose.
Morgan Housel, in The Psychology of Money, puts it simply: the purpose of wealth isn’t consumption. It’s options.
Wealth is being able to leave a job that is slowly diminishing you, without panic, without desperation, without jumping to the first thing that comes along just because you need the income. Wealth is being able to say no to a client who doesn’t respect you, because you don’t need that particular yes. Wealth is being able to take a risk on yourself: a new role, a new venture, a new direction, without catastrophizing about what happens if it doesn’t work out immediately. Wealth is being able to recover from a mistake without it defining you.
This is what I mean when I say wealth buys optionality. Not luxury. Not status. Choice.
Wealth isn’t about having more than you need. It’s about having enough freedom to choose what happens next.
Building Wealth is a Decision
There’s a quote that stands out to me:
Being rich is having money. Being wealthy is having time. – Margaret Bonanno
My last post was focused on time. About how fragmentation steals it. About how protecting it is an act of intention. But here’s what I’ve come to understand since writing that post: time and wealth are more connected than most of us are taught. The decision to build wealth, is, at its core, a decision to own your time.
That’s the reframe. Wealth isn’t a number on a spreadsheet. It’s not a threshold you cross someday when you’ve finally made enough. It’s a decision you make, quietly, consistently, imperfectly, that your future self deserves to be taken care of.
And that decision, for many women, is harder than any spreadsheet.
I know because I lived the other version. For years I sat in our annual meetings with our financial planner, a brilliant woman who asked sharp questions and pushed us to think strategically, and I said almost nothing. I was half of our household income. I had every right to be in that conversation. But I showed up as an observer, not a participant. I let the decisions happen around me rather than with me.
It took time to change that. And honestly, it’s still a work in progress. To get educated. To ask the questions I was afraid sounded naive. To claim a seat at a table that was always mine to sit at.
That’s the deeper work of wealth. Not just building it. But believing you deserve to.
Because here’s what I’ve learned: the women who build wealth aren’t necessarily the ones who earn the most or start the earliest. They’re the ones who decide, at some point, in some season, that their future self is worth investing in. That she deserves options. That she deserves the freedom to choose.
Wealth, at its core, is an act of self-belief.
Resources Worth Your Time
Recently in a coaching conversation, a new grad asked me where to start with money. Not investing strategy, just where to begin. I gave her three voices I learn from and want to share with you:
Vivian Tu or YourRichBFF: I first heard her as a guest on The Pivot Podcast, then learned she has her own podcast and books (Rich AF and now Well Endowed). I was excited to hear her speak at Grace Hopper last year too! I love how she makes budgeting, building and creating wealth so understandable and accessible.
Tiffany Aliche or The Budgetnista: I first heard Tiffany speak at a conference and was impressed with her story (she’s a former teacher!) and her mission to increase financial education. She has a book Get Good with Money and has numerous resources.
Katie Gatti Tassi of Money with Katie: I came across Katie’s newsletter (she also has a great podcast) and love her take on budgeting, planning and building wealth. I appreciate how she states that women’s relationship with money is different. She also has a book Rich Girl Nation worth checking out.
What Path Are You Funding?
As you sit with this, I want to leave you with three questions. Pick the one that stings a little:
What would you ask for — in a negotiation, a proposal, a conversation you’ve been avoiding — if you genuinely believed you were worth it?
What would you save toward or invest in if you trusted that your future self deserved it?
What choice would you finally make (or what would you walk away from) if money weren’t the obstacle holding you back?
You’ve spent five weeks with me exploring Power, Purpose, Focus, Time, and now Wealth. Next week I’ll bring all five together. But this week, sit with whichever question just got under your skin.
That’s where your next move lives.
Keep carving your path.
—Tracy
Wow - love this post! My earning power represented my self-worth for so long, and it took a devastating financial trauma to reframe this image. My husband and I came to the (very difficult and painful) decision to pay off a large medical debt for one of our 3 children totaling nearly $1 million, which meant we emptied all of our savings accounts and cashed in our investments. It took some major efforts on my part to finally realize that I am not defined by money, and yes - wealth really does represent one's options, not one's self-image!