Years ago I used to follow Farnoosh Torabi on instagram and hoped someday I would meet her in person. If you don’t know Farnoosh, think multiple best selling books, financial journalist, and one of the most respected voices in personal finance.
Today, I’m endlessly grateful to know her personally and last week I had the opportunity to once again join the Farnoosh Torabi on her award-winning So Money podcast.
Usually when I join her show we talk a lot about investing: why every woman needs to learn the basics of investing even if they have a financial advisor, why it’s a genuinely non-negotiable if you ever want to retire, and how to set up a simple investing system that builds wealth on auto-pilot.
*If you are ready to learn how to invest stay tuned: this month I’ll be releasing a brand new free beginner investing workshop on demand. And if you need a place to start learning how to invest, this free investing 101 guide will walk you through the basics step-by-step (no gatekeeping).
This time when I joined the So Money podcast, we dove straight into women’s sports. As a former athlete (springboard diver) myself, it’s a topic I’m incredibly passionate about.
Women’s sports might be one of the most underrated wealth-building opportunities for women — on and off the field.
Even if you're not a sports fan, this moment in women's professional sports is worth paying attention to and we had one of the most optimistic conversations I've had in a long time regarding women's place in the world today.
Because there’s a lot of bad news right now about women in the workplace depending on where you look and I’m not going to pretend otherwise:
In 2025, the share of S&P 500 companies disclosing how many women they actually have in leadership dropped by 30 percentage points in a single year. Source: 2025 Corporate Diversity Disclosure Trends — Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance (August 2025)
Policies that took decades to build are being dismantled. Roe v. Wade was overturned. Many ambitious women are still paying a price in and outside of the workplace, doing more work at home even when they are making just as much or more money (source: pew research 2023).
I could go on and on with examples there but I’m also not going to ignore some of the good news surrounding women and money.
For starters, women are investing more than ever before and according to Fidelity’s 2024 Women & Investing Study, 7-in-10 women own investments in the stock market, an 18% increase compared to 2023.
More women are also realizing that financial literacy isn’t optional if you want security, safety, and optionality.
Women are taking money more seriously and in some places we are also seeing them finally get paid more and my favorite example of this, is in women’s professional sports.
After a very long negotiation, the WNBA salary cap (the amount a team can pay it’s players) went from $1.5 million to $7 million. That’s a 367% increase in one year. The league minimum salary went from $66k to $270k.
And it’s not just women’s basketball. Since 2024 alone we’ve seen the launch of the Professional Women’s Hockey League, Unrivaled basketball, League One Volleyball, the Women’s Lacrosse League, a Professional Softball League, and the first Women’s Pro Baseball League since 1954. Six new professional women’s leagues in roughly two years.
You don’t have to be a sports fan to care about this. You just have to be a person who wants to see other people win. Who knows that money equals power. And who understands that in this particular moment in history, financial independence isn’t a nice-to-have, it’s required.
The women winning in sports right now aren’t just winning games. They’re negotiating contracts, building equity, demanding what they’re worth and that’s the model I want for every woman reading this.
We got into all of it — the economics of women’s sports, the Eileen Gu controversy, the cost of youth access to sports, and what this moment actually means for our financial future.
👉 Listen Here on Spotify or HERE on Apple.
Cheering you on always,
Tess
The greatest gift you can give is to share my work with 1 person you think would benefit.
Sources:
DEI in Transition: 2025 Corporate Diversity Disclosure Trends — Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance (August 2025) https://corpgov.law.harvard.edu/2025/08/20/dei-in-transition-2025-corporate-diversity-disclosure-trends/
WNBA and WNBPA Reach Tentative Deal on Historic CBA — WNBA official press release (March 2026) https://www.wnba.com/news/wnba-wnbpa-tentative-cba-deal-2026
WNBA 2026 Pay Raise Tracker — RotoWire (April 2026) https://www.rotowire.com/wnba/article/wnba-2026-pay-raise-tracker-111144
Emerging Women’s Sports Leagues Kept Expanding in 2025 — Front Office Sports (December 2025) https://frontofficesports.com/womens-sports-leagues-expansion-2025/
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