As a little girl, I watched my mother budget religiously. One time we went to an extreme couponing event. The entire room was full of hundreds of, you guessed it, women.
Not one man was in attendance.
Extreme couponing was a hit in the early 2000s and eventually a show called Extreme Couponing hit the masses in 2011. To no ones surprise there were only few male participants on the show.
Couponing has historically been marketed toward women, especially to stay-at-home moms. According to Capital One Shopping Research women account for over 70% of coupon users and these numbers were last update July 2025.
Women have been taught since they were young to save and budget. Boys were told to be smart with money. Girl were trained to be careful with money.
From youth boys more often than girls hear words and phrases like “grow your money”, “investing wisely, wealth-build strategies”. On the other hand girls hear phrases like ” Money doesn’t grow on trees, “Put your money in your piggy bank”, and “Let’s make a budget”.
These roles traditionally have helped many families accumilate wealth. In The Millionairre Next Door, a best selling book by Thomas J Stanley, Ph.D. and William D. Danko, Ph. D. revealed how many American millionaires quietly build wealth through discipline, frugality, and strategy.
However, it specifically mentions that the wives were “planner and meticulous budgeters” only 18% of millionaire men disagreed with that statement.
It even notes that as a group, “we (millionaires) feel that our daughters are financially handicapped in comparison to our sons.” This book hit the shelves in 1996. At the time the typical American millionaire was a 57 yr old male.
However since the 1990s women’s median weekly pay in nominal terms has more than doubled! Us ladies of today get to receive 100-125% more than our mothers did. We are the first generations of women who have access to this kind of wealth, but so many of us were not taught in subtle and in large ways how to manage, grow, or invest.
We as a society could have the first leading group of millionaire women, but it all starts with reparenting those subconscious limiting beliefs we learned as little girls.