94% of women expect to be fully in charge of their finances at some point in their lives. Only 28% feel confident about it. That gap in women’s financial confidence is what this episode is about and Syama Bunten thinks she knows exactly where it comes from.

Women don’t give themselves credit for what they’ve already done. The student loans they paid off. The homes they bought. The kids they raised on their own. The aging parents they cared for. All of it is money. All of it counts. And reclaiming that is where women’s financial confidence actually begins.

In this solo episode, Syama introduces what she calls the Great Wealth Enlightenment. For the first time in history, inherited wealth and earned wealth are converging in women’s hands at the same time. Decades of overturned rules and regulations have allowed women to build businesses, get credit, and invest in ways that simply weren’t available before. By 2030, $30 trillion will be in women’s hands. The question Syama is asking is what women decide to do with it and whether they feel equipped to make that call on their own terms.

She gets personal. She talks about sending an email to 50 girlfriends just trying to find out what other women were doing with their money because nobody had ever shown her what was possible.

This episode is the invitation. Syama spent years looking for a room where women could talk honestly about money, learn from each other, and stop operating in silos. So she built it. Wealth Catalyst salons are gathering women in 32 cities this year. Or come find your people at the Wealth Catalyst Summit in New York on May 14th.