http://www.moneymoveswithmelissa.com/

Money Moves with Melissa, New York, NY (2026)

03/27/2024

I don’t know about you, but I find the content shared by most companies about downright disingenuous. They celebrate a few amazing women and systemic governmental policy wins that they had nothing to do with their own policies (or lack thereof) that maintain a wide . Which company policies am I talking about?

💥 POLICIES. Hybrid or on-site work models do NOT support women. Many more women than men leave the workforce when they can’t work remotely. And research shows that the majority of women believe they are victim of micro-aggressions at the office. Women would rather work from home, and studies show remote workers are actually 16% more productive than on-site workers. And remote workers aren’t given promotions or raises as often as on-site workers. By not going remote, companies are penalizing women… who already have the short end of the stick.

👀 OPEN-FLOOR CONCEPT. FFS. I can’t believe I have to bring this one up again. As a journalist for SNRM wrote, “Executives considering whether to redesign their offices to modern, open-office floor plans to foster collaboration and improve creativity may want to think again.” Many women believe an open-floor concept leaves them feeling exposed and open to their appearance being scrutinized. Unsurprisingly, far fewer men share these feelings.

💸 LACK OF PAY TRANSPARENCY. Do you know what your coworkers make? If not, how do you know you’re being paid fairly? A lack of pay transparency means women are often paid far less than men who hold similar positions.

🐣 CHILDCARE (or lack thereof) is a big reason why many women leave the workforce. Companies that offer childcare options not only retain more employees who might otherwise leave to take care of their children, but a recent report showed that “retaining as few as 1% of eligible employees can cover the cost of providing childcare benefits for all of those who are eligible within a company.”

Rather than just chime in once a year, I’d rather see companies make genuine commitments to leveling the playing field for employees of all genders.

What do you think? Which policies do you think I missed?

03/14/2024

💥 just introduced a bill to establish a 32-hour workweek in the US without a loss of pay or benefits! This bill is VERY important to me — and if you’re a woman in the workforce, I suspect it may also be important to you.

Many pilot studies have shown that transitioning to a 4-day / 35-hour workweek decreases stress and increases employees’ happiness and work-life balance while also increasing productivity at work — happy people = better employees! Also, those focued on climate health may be interested to learn that a 4-day workweek means a drop of commuting that leads to a reduction in nitrogen dioxide emissions and improved air quality.

A 4-day workweek is a women’s issue, as the decreased number of hours has been shown to increase the retention of people who are also caregivers. And who shoulders the burden of unpaid caregiving in the US? Ding-ding-ding if you guessed women, who (unfairly!) take on the lion’s share of this work! Work life balance is hard enough — but I know from my own personal experience how difficult it is to add caregiving into the mix. Decreasing the workweek from 40 to 35 hours a week without decreasing pay or benefits would have a profound impact on the lives of many women just like me.

Basically, the 4-day workweek is a giant WIN-WIN-WIN! Sadly, outside of a handful of pilot programs, companies aren’t making a transition to this model, which has been proven again and again to be so great for employees and employers alike. It’s a pity more employers aren’t moving to this model on their own. But since they aren’t, if passed, the legislation would better the lives of millions of Americans.

So, what can you do? Hop on a call with your state legislators and tell them what the “Thirty-Two Hour Work Week Act” would mean for you and your family. Tell them it’s NOT a radical idea!! In a statement, Bernie said, “Today, American workers are over 400 percent more productive than they were in the 1940s. And yet, millions of Americans are working longer hours for lower wages than they were decades ago.”

How would a 32-workweek change YOUR life?!

03/12/2024

It’s good to be ambitious. It makes us hustle. Since placing a deadline of March 11 on myself to launch Money Moves With Melissa, I’ve gotten a LOT done. What I didn’t anticipate was how much less I can get done on personal projects with a two and a half month-old newborn who still wakes 3-6 times a night as I wind down my parental leave and head back to work. I’m tired!

Women can do all the things, but we can’t necessarily do them all at the same time. So, while I’m still thinking big, I’m readjusting my own timeline, pushing back my launch to Monday, March 18th.

It’s ok to readjust as long as we’re transparent about why — especially if it’s for the same of our mental and physical well-being.

Will you join me on March 18th in increasing your financial literacy? Click on the link in my bio, scroll to the end of my “coming soon” page, and SUBSCRIBE for FREE well-written, well-researched articles, a podcast, and other great resources to help you invest more toward your future while gaining control over your finances today.

03/12/2024

It’s Equal Pay Day. While the day raises awareness of the gender pay gap, there’s literally nothing to celebrate. According to Pew Research Center, in the U.S., the difference between the earnings of women and men has barely changed in the past two decades.

WHAT THE F**K.

This keeps me up at night. I actually wake up thinking about how to adjust my finances so that I can one day retire and also set up my two kids with at least a little generational wealth. And I put my career on the back burner for a long time to care for my daughter and give her the mother she deserved. A single parent with no child support (Mr. Biodad is a deadbeat and a half), I tried to do it all – and I DID do it all – but it came at the cost of my own emotional and physical wellbeing. Living paycheck-to-paycheck was STRESSFUL.

The single most important money move I made (after deciding I needed to make money moves!) was to increase my income. I did this by:

💡Transitioning to working in more industries that pay well (i.e., semiconductors over higher ed).
✉️Developing a side hustle strategy that involved directly contacting CMOs and other marketing/comms execs at companies.
💲Networking with, and finding mentors in, independent (not working for a company) women writers/marketers/storytellers who made more than $150,000 p/year.
🥇Launching my own content/marketing/comms/strategy business.
🚫Saying “no” to most opportunities because they didn’t want to pay me what I was worth.

While I can’t celebrate Equal Pay Day, I can, and do celebrate myself and the many women I know who have fought together against the machine. In many ways, it’s a fight for survival – as our future selves depend on what we earn today. Also, the world is changing – AI will take many jobs – we need to consider this into our planning.

I’d love to know YOUR story. What strategies have you leaned on to increase your own income? And if you haven’t yet increased your income, why not? Let’s commit to earning more, together.

♥️ Melissa

03/09/2024

I crossed over 100K in retirement savings without a lot of excitement or fanfare. Why? Because I’ve been relishing ALL of my financial milestones.

I made my first contribution of $200 to a Roth IRA in 2019. That was my first retirement savings... ever. I celebrated the major win of that contribution — it took a lot of work to get there. First, I had to deal with some major money trauma, poor spending habits and behaviors around money, and a mammoth effort to increase my income so that I could actually make contributions. Since then, I’ve (quietly!) celebrated a multitude of wins, including:

💸 Increasing my income nearly x5 (despite the gender wage gap!)
🕺🏽Launching my own business in 2019
🥳 Raising a remarkable daughter (Kid #1) into adulthood (and funding her homeschooling without a dime of child support)
🪣 Putting savings in buckets so that I can pay for large expenses
🏫 Paying for Kid #1 to go to college
⚠️ Funding a (decent-sized!) emergency savings account (liquid funds)
💲Contributing the max I’m able to into Traditional and Roth IRAs (and contributing to a SEP-IRA)
👩‍❤️‍👩 Starting (and contributing to) a custodial Roth IRA for Kid #2 and developing a strategy to ensure Kid #1 isn’t left behind
🏖️ Saving for, and then going on, vacations (and having many other buckets of savings in a high-yield account to gain interest and increase my net worth outside of my investments)
♥️ Healing my relationship with money

I have a long way to go in my investment journey. But rather than focus only on the finish line, I’m continuously assessing my goals as I keep improving my financial literacy and understanding how to make smart(er) financial decisions.. In 2019, my goal was to have $500,000 in the coffers by the time I retire. Now my goal is at least $2.5 million.

isn’t about making a kazillion dollars. It’s about changing women’s relationships with money so that we can make decisions that give us increased security. Join me? 💥www.moneymoveswithmelissa.com💥

03/08/2024

Spurred by the female suffrage movement in the 1800s, International Women's Day originated from labor movements in Europe and North America during the early 20th century. It was a day filled with demonstrations and parades of women protesting against gender-based discrimination in the workplace and the right to vote. In 1917 in Russia, women textile workers began a demonstration to demand an end to World War I (among other things), sparking a revolution.

Today, International Women's Day is a ghost of what it once was, as it has been sponsored by companies as a way to either pat their leaders on the back for their (often minimal) contributions to gender equality rather than their work to move the needle on social reform and policy changes that improve the lives of women.

I hate what International Women's Day has become. Rather than highlight the contribution of women and girls, I'd like to see companies commit to improving policies that would increase the quality of life for the women who work for them. There are so many zillions of inequalities I could talk about, but because I'm a mom of two who also works outside of the home (I have a 22-year-old and a newborn just over two months old), today I'd like to reflect upon what it means to be a caregiver in the workforce:

I often work with a breastfeeding baby in my lap. In these photos, I was typing with one hand. I work just as hard as I've ever worked, but it takes more of a toll on me physically and emotionally. I don't often feel like I can talk about my experiences with people, as I fear they'd judge me for not being as committed to my paid work. This fear isn't unwarranted. Bias against mothers also working outside the home greatly drives discrimination against women. And yes, employers are, indeed, more likely to think that women caregivers are less committed to their jobs. Compared to women employees who don't have children, mothers are regularly passed over for raises and promotions.

Data shows that caregivers (and women in general) are more likely than men to choose to work remotely. Should this come as a surprise? Childcare is expensive and often unsafe, and for moms like me who breastfeed, it can be difficult to pump at work (milk supply can decrease, etc.). Working offsite doesn't have the negative effect many employers think it has... it actually leads to an increase, not a decrease, in productivity (to the tune of 13%). Yet remote workers are promoted half as often as people who work onsite and they are often forgotten by managers when important projects are doled out.

For most of my work history, I chose to rarely talk about being a mom. When my first child was sick, I called in and told employers that I was the one sick so that they wouldn't judge me for "choosing" parenting over work. Over the last few years, I've changed my tune. I talk about my kids all the time. Yet I still find myself scanning the faces of my clients and colleagues for judgment. I'm not the only one to feel this way. Research shows that many caregivers feel judged in the workplace for, well, caregiving.

Becoming a caregiver is often driven by the societal expectation that women, not men, should leave the workforce to care for children, aging parents, friends, and even neighbors. Women often find ourselves taking on the lion's share of unpaid caregiving responsibilities, leading to career disruptions or a transition to part-time work. When companies provide parental leave, women take it more than men. Sweden, which has the most progressive parental leave policy, solved this problem by mandating men to take at least a certain number of days of their leave (90 days) or lose their leave entirely.

Becoming a caregiver often comes at a cost to women’s long-term financial security — to the tune of an average of $295,000 in lost lifetime earnings.

What would I like to see happen on International Women's Day? I suppose I'd like more people to better understand what it's like to be a mother and caregiver in the workforce. To understand that we're as committed as ever to our work outside of the home, and that we hustle even harder to get s**t done. But more than that, I'd like for more policies that improve the lives of caregivers — policies that ensure fathers and men also take on just as much caregiving.

03/07/2024

On March 11, I’m launching to talk about financial issues that actually impact women over 40. Why should you join me?

🤡 Because I don’t pretend to be an expert. In fact, I’m not an expert at all. I’ve been incrementally increasing my financial literacy over the last few years — and now I’ll be learning alongside your sweet self.

👊 I think money is political. To ignore the (patriarchal!) policies that built our money system is to ignore systemic changes we need to make that will even the playing field.

💥 That’s why I believe understanding policies impacting women must be discussed… And I talk an awful lot about a women’s right to her own body, universal income , paid financial leave, tax breaks for parents, and a slew of other issues.

💸 I’m not a millionaire. But I plan to be one by the time I retire by carefully saving and investing. I don’t believe in selling snake oil. I want to share my success story… and the monumental nosedives I made to get where I am today.

🕺🏽In 2018, I didn’t have a dime of savings. Nor had I invested any money into retirement. I felt panicked and learned that before I tried to save, I first needed to address my s**tty relationship with money and go through a nasty breakup with the patriarchal boys club on Wall Street.

🥹 As I healed my relationship with money, I started to increase my financial literacy… and then I began saving and investing in earnest. Today I have emergency savings, multiple retirement accounts, zero debt, and other investments. I still have a ways to go, but I’m feeling a hell of lot more secure than I was just a few years ago.

🐣 I have two kids — a 22-year-old and a newborn who is only two months old. I’ve learned how to prioritize their financial futures alongside my own.

💣 Because I don’t pretend to be an activist or a recent convert to feminism. I am these things! I’m a journalist and founder of a nonprofit that focuses on gender and climate. And I’ve focused on a multitude of intersectional issues for decades.

Want to learn about money in a different way? Join me! www.moneymoveswithmelissa.com

03/06/2024

A new report by the showed that the global gender gap is far wider than previously thought — in fact, it shows that there is no equality for working women in any of the 190 countries in the world.

The bank investigated many factors impacting women’s participation in the workforce, including childcare and safety policies — and it found that we only have 64% of the legal protections men do.

I’m guessing that approximately zero women will find it surprising to learn that that report showed that women spend an average of 2.4 hours more per day than men on caregiving or that childcare costs, tax relief for parents, and safety standards for childcare keep us out of the workforce.

The report showed that closing the gap could raise global gross domestic product by over 20%. Groovy. But what it doesn’t mention is that closing the gap is simply the right thing to do. It’s 2024. It’s about fu***ng time women are afforded the same opportunities as men — and that laws are not only passed to ensure these opportunities, but that the laws are actually implemented.

What do you think? Are you surprised by the findings in the World Bank’s report?

03/05/2024

Work hard, pay your dues, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, and you’ll eventually have a great retirement. Was this the story you were told? It sure was the narrative fed to me by my parents, teachers, employers, and the media when I was growing up.

What I didn’t know, yet, was that there were some nasty forces working against me. The patriarchy had built a system wherein even mediocre men are rewarded handsomely for their labor while women — even the most exceptional among us — are not. The gender wage gap, which is the difference between the earnings of women and men, is vast (American women earn 82 cents for every dollar earned by men). And according to , this gap barely closed in the US in the last two decades.

Less income over the course of our careers means we have less money to save and invest for retirement. Less income also means we get less Social Security retirement benefits – and many women, including those of us who are unpaid caregivers – don’t get a dime of Social Security at all. And don’t get me started (OK… get me started!) on the enormous impact caregiving has on our careers.

These, among a multitude of other factors, means that women in retirement are 80% more likely than men to live in poverty. Clearly, working hard, paying our dues, and pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps doesn’t amount to much except for stress, anxiety, and poverty in a system made for men, by men.

So, we need to do things differently. What works for men does not always work for women. While we still have to work hard, we do NOT have to “pay our dues” or “pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.”

On March 11, I’m launching a space to learn ways to change our relationship with money, address the gender wage gap, work smarter, increase income, and save and invest for our future. It’s about time we flip the narrative about money on its head.

Join me by subscribing to the new Money Moves with Melissa website — www.moneymoveswithmelissa.com

03/04/2024

During Women’s History Month, let’s not forget Muriel Siebert, a total powerhouse of an American businesswoman who in 1967 was the first woman to buy a seat on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). She also established Murial Siebert & Company, the first woman-owned brokerage firm.

Pictured with Siebert is her chihuahua Monster Girl, who Siebert said wasn’t “intimidated by the big dogs.” Siebert wasn’t intimidated by them, either. For 20 years, she asked for a women’s bathroom to be installed on the seven floor of the NYSE, which was where the exchange’s lunch club was located. And for 20 years, she was denied. So, she visited a men’s room with Monster Girl and threatened to have a Porta-potty delivered to the exchange. Finally, the “big dogs” yielded — a woman’s bathroom was installed soon thereafter.

Siebert was a philanthropist who supported many financial literacy endeavors for women and minorities. She said, “men at the top of industry and government should be more willing to risk sharing leadership with women and minority members who are not merely clones of their white male buddies. In these fast-changing times, we need different viewpoints and experiences, we need an enlarged talent bank. The real risk [to American competitiveness] lies in continuing to do things the way they’ve always been done.”

03/03/2024

Common advice given to women who want to take charge of their financial future includes setting financial goals, starting an emergency fund, paying off high-interest debt, and investing in a Roth IRA. All of this is solid advice, but I think it skips six key steps:

1️⃣ Women have more stress related to our finances than men. Until we address where this stress comes from (and how to mitigate it), it’s hard to change our relationship with money.

2️⃣ From a young age, girls aren’t taught as much about investing as boys. This understandably causes us to either avoid investing or make investment decisions that don’t serve us. Increasing our financial literacy is key.

3️⃣ How do we know which steps we should prioritize? The advice given to men doesn’t work for women – for example, some financial experts believe that women need wayyyyyy more in their emergency funds than men (at least 12 months to cover monthly expenses, rather than 3-6).

4️⃣ The gender pay gap increases by age, with women over 35-40 earning WAY less than men. Addressing this gap is crucial.

5️⃣ More women than men live paycheck-to-paycheck. How the hell are we supposed to save if we can barely afford rent or a mortgage? Increasing income, asking for what you deserve, and adding side hustles so that you actually have enough money to save/invest is essential.

6️⃣ Women live longer than men, which means we need to come up with more money to live on during our elder years. Planning ahead is essential so that we don’t outlive our money.

Over the next many months, I’m going to talk about how to address each of these factors on the website – make sure to subscribe (link in bio)!

03/03/2024

Much of the investing and retirement savings advice offered online, even by financial professionals, doesn’t take into account the unique needs women over 40 have. We’re paid less than men over our careers, and for those of us who become mothers, we pay a “motherhood penalty” that men do not pay when we transition to part-time paid work or step out of the workforce to care for our kids. A quarter of us are unpaid caregivers for kids, parents, or other family members, friends, or neighbors.

On top of this disparity, we receive a very different education about money from the time we’re young girls – in fact, millions of American women are never taught about personal finance and investing, rendering us financially illiterate.

In the same way we wouldn’t expect someone to start speaking French who had never studied the language, we shouldn’t expect someone to successfully manage money if they haven’t studied finance. But society blames women, deeming us “bad at money.”

The gender wage and finance gaps and our financial illiteracy mean we have substantially less emergency and retirement savings than men – and many more of us live in poverty during our retirement years.

It’s time to change the narrative. was founded by me, Melissa Banigan, as a space to document my financial education as well as share my learnings with other women over 40 who are striving to increase their financial literacy. I’m not an expert. Until just a few years ago, I was underpaid, had zero dollars in savings and retirement, and lived in poverty. But I’m learning... and today, I’ve quintupled my income and I’m financially on track to retire.

On March 11th, I’m launching Money with Melissa, a website that will host articles, a podcast, interviews with experts (who actually focus on women!), and classes. Will you join me? Click the link to subscribe!

https://www.moneymoveswithmelissa.com/

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