One of the biggest risks facing married couples is a persistent, and often unspoken, imbalance in who handles the family finances. Financial advisor Suze Orman has pointed directly to this gap, citing a New York Life Wealth Watch survey conducted in early 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.
Orman’s take on the data is characteristically direct: “Maybe some of that is bluster, but I think it is generally true.” Of course, 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. According to Orman, married women 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.”
The longevity dimension adds real urgency to the argument. According to 2024 final mortality data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 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. UBS’s 2021 “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 reasons 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 busy 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.
The downstream consequences of that imbalance are coming into sharper focus. UBS’s 2025 “Own Your Worth” report, titled “Heir dynamics: Money in motion” and focused on the coming generational wealth transfer, found that 83% of recently widowed women encountered serious difficulties when they had to take sole control of their household finances. Striking detail: one in four of those women said they did not know where all of their partner’s wealth was before he passed. With an estimated $105 trillion set to change hands by 2045, and Baby Boomer women expected to assume control of roughly $40 trillion of that total by outliving their spouses, the scale of unpreparedness is significant.
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 total $105 trillion Great Wealth Transfer figure from the UBS 2025 “Own Your Worth” report, the finding that one in four widowed women did not know where their partner’s assets were, and the statistic that 91% of widows recommend active financial engagement while still married.
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