Something has been true in every single Clever Girl Finance survey since we started running them in 2020: Black women make up the largest racial group in our community, consistently outpacing every other group we track — 45% of respondents in 2020, 46.1% in 2022, and 50.6% in our most recent 2025 survey. Meaning over half the women in our most recent survey identify as Black or African American. You can see this trend for yourself across our full Women & Money survey series.

That’s not a small detail. It means that when we talk about “what women told us about money,” we are, in large part, talking about what Black women specifically told us. And their financial reality deserves to be named directly, not folded quietly into an average.

The numbers behind why this matters

Black women are navigating a financial landscape shaped by compounding, well-documented gaps that don’t show up equally for every woman:

Black Women earn 63 cents for every dollar white men earn

Compared to white men’s earnings, white women earn 78 cents on the dollar, but Black women earn just 63 cents. That gap alone represents a massive amount of lost lifetime income before you even account for debt or investing. (Institute for Women’s Policy Research, 2025)

Black Women carry the highest student loan balances of any group

Black women graduate with the highest average student loan balances of any group, and more than half of Black female college graduates report real difficulty repaying that debt. Largely because interest compounds faster than the wage gap allows it to shrink. (American Association of University Women)

Black families hold just 10 cents of wealth for every dollar white families have

The median Black family in the U.S. holds roughly fifteen cents of wealth for every dollar held by the median white family. And that gap persists even among households with a bachelor’s degree or higher. (Brookings Institution, 2024)

The ‘Black Tax’: Supporting family members comes at a real financial cost

Many Black women supporting family members financially each month — sometimes called the “Black tax” — face an added drain on savings that isn’t factored into most standard financial advice. It’s money that has to go somewhere else before it can go toward your own goals, and it can be genuinely hard to build momentum around.

These aren’t abstract statistics. They’re the backdrop every Black woman in our community, and beyond it, is building her financial life against.

Expert tip: Plan for the Black tax

If you’re financially supporting family members each month — the “Black tax” — don’t treat it as a leak in your budget. Give it its own line item, just like rent or groceries, with an actual dollar amount attached. Naming it turns an invisible drain into a real, visible number you can plan around. And it makes it a lot easier to see what you actually have for your own goals, instead of feeling like your goals keep quietly losing to everyone else’s needs.

And yet, the data on resilience is just as real

Here’s what we want to sit with just as firmly: despite every one of those structural headwinds, the women in our community, the majority of whom are Black women, report actively investing, actively building emergency funds, and actively working toward becoming debt-free at meaningful, measurable rates, year after year. Explore the numbers behind that resilience in our Women & Money survey series.

That’s not a coincidence, and it’s not just individual grit either — though there’s plenty of that too. It’s what happens when financial education is actually built to be accessible, judgment-free, and relatable, instead of assuming a starting point (a wage gap-free one) that doesn’t reflect most women’s real lives.

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Want more of what our community’s data reveals? Keep exploring:

Why we built Clever Girl Finance the way we did

This is exactly the gap we set out to close from day one. Financial advice that assumes away the wage gap, the wealth gap, or the reality of supporting extended family isn’t advice that actually works for a huge share of the women who need it most.

We wanted a different starting point — one that says: here’s where you actually are, here’s what you’re actually up against, and here’s a real plan that works from there, not from some assumed blank slate.

If any of this resonates with you, here’s where to start:

• Our 30+ free courses cover budgeting, debt payoff, and investing; built to work regardless of your starting income or debt load.
• Our 1-on-1 coaching gives you a plan built specifically around your numbers, your family obligations, and your goals — not a generic template.
• Our debt payoff resources are built around real strategies for real balances, without shame attached to how you got there.

The wage gap and the wealth gap are structural problems, and no amount of individual budgeting fixes them on its own. That work matters too, and it’s bigger than any one of us. But building real financial confidence and real, tangible progress in the meantime? That’s absolutely still possible, and the women in our community are proving it every single day.

Sources: Clever Girl Finance Women & Money Survey Series, 2020–present; Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR), Black Women’s Equal Pay Day analysis; American Association of University Women (AAUW), student debt research; Brookings Institution, “Black wealth is increasing, but so is the racial wealth gap.”