One of the biggest risks facing married couples is a persistent, and often unspoken, imbalance in who handles the family finances. Financial expert Suze Orman has pointed directly to this gap, citing a New York Life Wealth Watch survey conducted in February 2024 that found 61% of married men report making all or most of the financial decisions in their household. Only 38% of married women said the same. Tellingly, the same survey found that 43% of married women wish they had a larger role in those decisions.
Orman’s take on the data is characteristically direct: “Maybe some of that is bluster, but I think it is generally true.” Every household is different, and the division of financial labor varies widely. But the pattern Orman describes is consistent across multiple large research efforts, and the consequences of leaving it unaddressed are measurable.
The more pressing question is why Orman argues this pattern needs to change, and what the real-world consequences are for couples who let it continue. Married women, she contends, are far less likely to engage in the decisions that carry the greatest long-term weight: managing investment and retirement accounts, setting insurance coverage, and navigating mortgage decisions. Those are precisely the areas where disengagement carries the steepest cost.
Orman has put the stakes plainly: “To not engage in and understand your family’s finances is to embrace weakness. You can’t be financially secure if you don’t know what decisions are being made, and don’t understand the ramifications of those decisions.”
One detail from the New York Life survey adds a layer of irony to the imbalance. Both married men and women report spending an average of six hours per week managing household finances. The time commitment is essentially equal. The decision-making authority is not. That gap between effort and power is exactly what Orman argues makes the arrangement so risky for women.
The longevity dimension adds real urgency to the argument. According to CDC Data Brief No. 548, published January 2026 using final 2024 mortality data, American men have an average life expectancy of 76.5 years compared to 81.4 years for women. That 4.9-year gap means most wives will eventually manage household finances on their own, often for years. Orman framed the risk clearly: “Even if your husband has made fantastic choices and has left a detailed blueprint of your financial records, you are going to be miserable if you find yourself engaging with all of that for the first time as a widow.”
UBS: Only 1 in 5 Couples Make Long-Term Financial Decisions Together
The research behind this problem runs deeper than any single survey. A UBS “Own Your Worth” report surveyed 1,500 high-net-worth men and women in marriages or partnerships and found that only 20% of couples actually make long-term financial decisions together. This is despite the fact that virtually all respondents said both spouses should be equally involved. The gap between what couples say and what they actually do is stark.
Seven in 10 men reported taking the lead on those decisions, and nine in 10 of those same men said they wished their spouse was more involved. Among men who do take sole responsibility, the explanations are consistent: 95% feel they have greater financial knowledge than their spouse, 90% believe their spouse is simply disinterested, and 84% think their spouse is too occupied with household obligations. The trust deficit cuts even deeper, with 70% of men saying they do not trust their spouse to make sound financial choices. These perceptions may reflect real gaps in shared experience, but they also reinforce them.
The downstream consequences of that imbalance are coming into sharper focus. UBS’s 2025 “Own Your Worth” report, titled “Heir dynamics: Money in motion,” focused on the coming generational wealth transfer and surveyed 2,000 women with at least $1 million in investable assets. It found that 83% of recently widowed women encountered serious difficulties when they had to take sole control of their household finances. One in four of those women said they did not know where all of their partner’s wealth was before he passed.
The scale of what is coming makes those findings hard to ignore. An estimated $105 trillion is set to change hands by 2045. Baby Boomer women are expected to assume control of roughly $40 trillion of that total by outliving their spouses. UBS also notes that many women will experience two separate wealth transfer events: one when they inherit from parents, and again when they outlive a spouse. Arriving at either moment without financial fluency is a costly way to learn.
Women who have already navigated widowhood are now among the clearest voices on what others should do differently. According to the UBS 2025 report, 91% of widows who took over sole financial control recommend that women take an active role in understanding household finances while still married. The math of financial exclusion becomes clearest at the moment it can least be undone. Orman’s argument is not just about fairness in the present. It is about whether a surviving spouse will have the knowledge and confidence to protect what took a lifetime to build.
Editor’s note: This article was updated to include the New York Life 2024 survey finding that 43% of married women wish they had a larger role in household financial decisions, the detail that both spouses average six hours per week managing finances, and the UBS 2025 report finding that many women face two separate wealth transfer events across their lifetimes. The CDC life expectancy figures were also updated to reflect Data Brief No. 548 (January 2026), which contains final 2024 mortality data.
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