Financial confidence – the new currency

AS we start the new year, I thought its best that we delve into why smart women still feel anxious about money.

Smart women are not anxious because they are not intelligent or lack knowledge.

We are anxious because money has a lot of deep-seated psychological, social and cultural pressures that logic and the rationale mind cannot override.

Women are generally taught to play nice, to not take risks which in the past has caused most women to delegate financial control to partners, husbands, fathers, brothers.

Women tend to carry the emotional responsibility of financial decisions in order to keep the household running effectively, yet we do not take control of the decision-making.

Since many of us are the default caretakers of our children’s well-being and future, as well as family security and our ageing parents’ well-being, our money is often tied to a moral obligation which is a heavy emotional burden for anyone.

This results in the added pressure that the penalty for making financial mistakes is a lot higher.

Hence why most of us end up putting our savings in bank deposits and investing in what our mother’s know, gold and other investment instruments that might not always fit in with what our life requires.  

The world unfortunately remains patriarchal and a boy’s club.

In Malaysia, like most Asian countries, particularly for Muslim women, inheritance laws still favour men to provide for the women in their families.

This is great but times have moved on and more women are in the workforce and are the main breadwinner for their families. And frankly they don’t make men like they used to either!

I am a good example of tying my self-worth to money because for me, money signals survival and safety. For generations, women were financially dependent on others.

Having “my own money” became linked to safety, freedom, and not being vulnerable if things went wrong.

This was especially true in my 40s when I saw many friends having to stay in bad relationships because they were highly dependent on their husbands.

The economic reality is that pay gaps, career breaks for caregiving, and fewer assets compared to men make women more anxious about money – so financial security feels like proof they’re doing okay. 

The Employees Provident Fund (EPF) annual reports consistently show that women lag the men when it comes to retirement savings, as much as 43% for the RM1mil and above savings bands.

The same report shows that among the four million active female EPF members, only 39,358 or 8.39% had savings exceeding RM1mil, whereas the recommended comfortable retirement savings by the EPF is now RM1.3mil!

Money is not neutral. It carries safety, power, care, responsibility and fear – often all at once.

And for women, money rarely belongs to just one person.

It belongs to families, futures, expectations and silent obligations. We were taught to be careful with money.

Not to command it.

To preserve, not to decide.

To manage risk quietly while someone else took the credit for boldness.

So we learned to be responsible before we learned to feel in control.

We were told confidence would come once we earned more, saved more, knew more.

But confidence doesn’t arrive through accumulation.

It arrives through agency.

Many women carry the emotional labour of money without holding the steering wheel.

They worry, plan, cushion, anticipate – yet hesitate to claim authority over decisions that shape their lives.

This is not a capability gap.

It is a permission gap.

We live in a world that rewards perfection and punishes mistakes – especially when women make them.

So we wait.

We double-check.

We delay.

Not because we are unsure – but because we are taught that certainty is the price of safety.

But money does not reward certainty.

It rewards clarity, consistency and self-trust.

Anxiety is not a personal failure.

It is a signal.

A signal that awareness has outgrown the systems supporting it.

A signal that responsibility has outpaced control.

The goal of Femme Finance is not fearlessness.

It is calm competence.

Calm that comes from knowing where your money is.

Competence that comes from making choices – imperfect, informed, intentional.

Control is not dominance. It is not predicting every outcome.

It is the quiet confidence of knowing you can respond.

This is the new currency.

Not wealth without peace.

Not knowledge without power.

But a relationship with money that supports the woman you are becoming.

We choose clarity over avoidance.

Structure over stress.

Agency over approval.

This is Femme Finance.

And control, finally, is ours to define.

At its core, tying self-worth to money is about wanting control, dignity and peace of mind in a world that hasn’t always given women that freedom.

And for me, most importantly as most women are, I want to make sure that I don’t end up reliant like my mother is on my father for everything.