Wealth With Sophia

This Wealth With Sophia column taps into the financial education platform’s expert network for tips and advice on how to form habits that will help build your wealth

Women control a third of the world’s wealth, adding $5 trillion to the wealth pool globally every year—a pool that is expected to reach $93 trillion globally by 2023. The fastest growing hub of wealth creation for women is in Asia, with a current growth rate of 10.4% per annum.

So, how can women make the most of their own growing wealth? At Sophia, we reached out to our network of female financial experts to find out what their key money habits are and how they use them for their own financial management. 

Read on to discover six habits to inspire you to grow your wealth.

1. Pay yourself first

It’s easy to think you can wait to save until you make more money and have clearer financial goals. However, starting to allocate money to savings early is critical to success. It gets you started planning for your own future regardless of how much you make.

– Jessica Cutrera, Leo Wealth

2. Keep learning and stay curious

It’s essential to gain exposure to a wide range of investment perspectives and ideas. I find time to do this by listening to podcasts when I'm on my commute, so it’s important to find ways to build learning into your regular routine. For me, ESG and sustainability is a top trend to keep tracking. 

– Katy Yung, Sustainable Finance Initiative 

3. Track your spending to paint a financial picture

My biggest money habit is tracking every expense I make, from my rent and utility bills to meals, snacks and even the bottle of water I buy at 7/11. It's so important because it gives me a clear picture of where my biggest expenses are as well as my habits, both social and financial. Additionally, I have a monthly autopay into a savings account for investment purposes only. From here it's very easy for me to see where I can cut down and put money aside to add into savings and investments. I take more pleasure in investing so saving to invest is to me what shopping is for others! 

– Melissa Gecolea, Pearl Magazine, Money Matters, TVB Pearl

4. Use all available resources

I make the most of tools to build a sustainable process that helps me understand our spending habits, and plan for savings, investments and liabilities if any. For example, I use budgeting apps (e.g. iXpenseIt Pro, and Buddy) to allocate and track funds for living expenses. Then each month I use Google sheets to analyse the app data to review actuals versus budget. I then allocate the remaining funding into (1) a savings “bucket” into a high interest fixed deposit account (for emergency, and anything near-term within the next six to 12 months), and (2) an investing "bucket" (for timelines beyond 12 months). Investing in and betting on ourselves to achieve our aspiration(s) should not be neglected. We only live once!

– Eliza Jiang, Pointer LLC

5. Invest often and regularly

You can never time the market so invest consistently and let the power of compounding do the work. Investing regularly creates good financial habits.

I would also suggest investing in index funds (a group of stocks) as opposed to single stocks. It’s always difficult to keep up with all the company news, earnings and changes that occur in single stocks so instead, invest in a broad based sector or index. It’s never too late to start building good money habits!  

– Rebecca Sin, Bloomberg 

6. Build a portfolio and have fun

My top money habit is consistently saving as early as possible. It doesn’t matter how much but always save something from each salary and as your income grows maintain that percentage or increase it. I also like to think about investing as a portfolio that forms the foundation of long term wealth. This savings and portfolio approach then gives me the knowledge and confidence to comfortably spend and enjoy life, which is important too.

– Nicole Denholder, Sophia

These practical and insightful money habits from women who not only manage their own money but are in the financial industry focus on regular budgeting, forming habits as part of an existing routine, using tools to automate and simplify as much as possible, and differentiating between saving and investing regardless of how much or what you invest in. 

Adopting these habits is a great first step in creating wealth for the life you want to live today and in the future.

Nicole is a co-founder of Sophia. She is also the founder of Next Chapter Raise, Asia’s leading fundraising and education platform for female founders. Nicole is a frequent guest on The Money Makers podcast, which interviews inspiring women in finance and female founders, and co-host of Raise the Bar podcast, which interviews female investors and founders.

This article is part of Front & Female’s Wealth With Sophia series, a collaboration with Sophia, a financial education platform built by women for women, to open up the conversation about money and help drive female financial literacy. The online series covers all things money and investing to enable women to gain the confidence to take control of their wealth creation.

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