A few years ago, financial advisor Lynn Ballou gave a presentation to a group of Stanford University alumnae. When it was done, she had a conversation typical of many she’s had in her nearly 40-year career. A woman in her 50s approached Ballou and lamented that most of the money she and her husband had is hers from an inheritance—but their advisor only talked to her husband. “She said, ‘I have no voice,’” recalls Ballou, who is the former regional director of the Lafayette, California, offices of EP Wealth Advisors. It wasn’t that her husband was intentionally shutting her out. “He was ‘only trying to protect her,’” Ballou says.
It’s ironic: As of 2015, women controlled more collective wealth in the U.S. than men—the result of greater longevity, inheritance and increasing participation in the workforce. But while women control more money in name, in reality many women defer to their husbands when it comes to big-picture financial planning. In a survey of 1,700 couples, UBS found that 56% of women leave investment decisions to their husbands. And this isn’t just a hangover from bygone years. A surprising 61% of millennial women rely on their husbands to call the investing shots, more so than any other generation.
Although she cofounded a successful fashion company in her 40s, entrepreneur Jane Dailey says she fell squarely into that camp, abdicating financial decisions to her husband. After they divorced, “I kept the same financial planner and he would make the obligatory annual call and talk jargon,” says Dailey, now 60. The low point came a few years after her divorce, when she spotted her planner at an event. “I walked over and said ‘hello,’ and he had absolutely no idea who I was,”
