When I was starting out and just trying to pay my bills, I tracked every expense to the dollar. On weekends, I would go to Sears Imported Autos and test-drive a BMW 320i I had no business driving, telling myself that one day I would own one. I noticed there were no other women in the dealership. It was mostly men driving the cars and negotiating prices—comfortable with the idea that they belonged there. It reinforced something I already believed: This kind of money, and the ease of spending it, belonged to men.
When I built my career in wealth management, a similar assumption underpinned nearly every planning conversation: Men accumulate more wealth than women. I have spent more than 30 years questioning that assumption and, in many ways, built a firm because I believed women deserved better than the financial industry’s assumptions about them.
Now, a generation of women may be showing us how outdated those assumptions have become.
Millennial women are not just closing the wealth gap.
A March 2026 RBC Wealth Management survey found that among high-net-worth Millennials surveyed, women reported higher total and investable assets than men. Even more interesting was how they built their wealth. Sixty-two percent of Millennial women cited business ownership and innovation as primary wealth drivers, compared with 20% of Gen X women and 10% of Boomer women. Forty-three percent pointed to executive roles, compared with 22% of Gen X women and 14% of Boomer women.
For decades, the conversation about women and money has focused on helping women catch up: save more, invest earlier, negotiate better and become more financially confident. Of course those things still matter. But the RBC study has made me wonder if we are measuring women against an old model of wealth creation when a growing number may be creating a different one.
Watching this shift from the other side of the table is fascinating.
I started my career in an industry that did not expect to see a woman running the firm. I built Olson Wealth Group from the ground up and learned to navigate a system largely designed before women were expected to become significant wealth creators themselves.
The women I meet today are founders, executives and equity owners. They receive stock compensation, sell companies and participate in liquidity events. Many are not waiting to inherit financial responsibility from a spouse. They are creating the balance sheet themselves.
I think that changes the conversation. The women I work with want to understand investment returns, but the discussion often moves to what the money allows them to build, the choices it gives their family, how they can help people they love without creating dependency and what they want their children to understand about wealth. These are sometimes called “softer” financial questions. I disagree. They are questions about where capital goes and what someone expects it to accomplish.
The traditional wealth management client is changing.
For generations, companies serving affluent households designed their businesses around an assumed primary customer: the man who earned, accumulated and controlled the wealth. Financial institutions built service models around him, professional firms directed the technical conversation toward him and advisors sometimes treated women as secondary participants without realizing it.
That customer profile is changing. Companies serving affluent families must now ask whether their business was built around the person who historically held the wealth or the person increasingly creating and controlling it.
I built my firm differently, on purpose, and there is a meaningful difference between understanding a female client and simply learning how to market to her. Women who have created their own wealth generally know the difference.
The upcoming wealth transfer could accelerate the shift.
An estimated $124 trillion is projected to change hands from older to younger generations by 2048. Because women tend to outlive their spouses, Boomer women are positioned to control significant family wealth before it transfers again.
The industry has discussed this primarily as an inheritance story. That may be too narrow. Millennial daughters building wealth through businesses and executive careers may eventually combine inherited capital with wealth they created themselves. Many will already be founders, executives, investors and family decision-makers before family wealth reaches them.
Watch the data.
One survey is not a permanent verdict on gender and wealth. The RBC findings describe a high-net-worth cohort, not the median household. Women’s retirement account balances remain roughly 30% lower than men’s on average, and women generally must make those assets last longer. Progress at the top should not be mistaken for progress across the broader population.
Still, I don’t think we should ignore what may be happening at the leading edge. Wealth building has always been shaped by access to opportunity, capital and confidence. I built my career and my firm on the belief that access and confidence could be built rather than inherited.
I still remember handing back the keys after those BMW test drives, and how it felt years later to drive one off the lot as my own. I realized the financial freedom I had associated almost exclusively with men was something I could create for myself.
We may now be watching a generation of women close that gap faster and on a much larger scale than my generation had the opportunity to do. Businesses, advisors and institutions paying attention will better understand where wealth is headed and who will be controlling it.
Sharon Olson, CFP, CEPA is Managing Principal of Olson Wealth Group and Inspired Life Family Office.