HerMoney Podcast Episode 259: Find Your Confidence (2026)

Saving money on hermoney podcast episode 259 does not have to be complicated. We rounded up the essentials so you can spend less and skip the guesswork.

Key Takeaways

• How women of all ages can accomplish their goals with the confidence that’s already inside us.
• We just need to tap into it.  In honor of the last day of Women’s History Month and the millions of women who are working tirelessly to...
• Between their tween and teen years, girls’ confidence that other people like them falls from 71% to 38% , a 46% drop.

How women of all ages can accomplish their goals with the confidence that’s already inside us. We just need to tap into it. 

In honor of the last day of Women’s History Month and the millions of women who are working tirelessly to close the gender wage gap, the gender confidence gap, and every other gap we can think of, we wanted to share a few numbers:  

• Between ages 8 and 14, girls’ confidence levels drop by 30%.
• Between their tween and teen years, girls’ confidence that other people like them falls from 71% to 38% , a 46% drop.
• Girls are 22% less likely than boys to describe themselves as confident.
• 1 in 3 girls believe that boys will make more money in life.

These are scary numbers, and as girls and boys move through their teen years and into early adulthood, girls never catch up to their male peers when it comes to finding confidence… At least those were the disheartening statistics as of 2020 , statistics that will hopefully be a thing of the past very soon. Our guests on this week’s episode are working to change those numbers and give girls the confidence they so richly deserve. Writers Katty Kay and Claire Shipman are both award-winning journalists and authors of the book, “Living The Confidence Code: Real Girls. Real Stories. Real Confidence,” which just debuted on the New York Times Best Seller List at #1 in the Middle Grade Books category. Listen in as they share details on their mission to empower the next generation of young women to make a difference in the world.

The pair discuss their book, and how the girls profiled are not “perfect” girls. On the contrary, a lot of their stories start with massive failures, and all incorporate details of their fears, their insecurities, and their inabilities to find confidence. That’s all by design, Katty and Claire say , girls don’t need more role models who seem flawless. Instead, they need role models who are real, who are “work in progress” models. 

We also talk about the pivotal cultural moment we’re in now for women’s leadership and representation. We talk about Kamala, Meghan Markle, and more women who are showing us that it’s okay to face setbacks, to be told no, and to live a life with countless ups and downs. 

Katty and Claire acknowledge that it’s not just younger women who struggle with finding confidence, and they share some of their favorite ways that we can all give ourselves (and the women around us) a boost. 

In Mailbag, Jean advises a listener who is concerned about identity theft after a data breach, and we speak to a woman who is concerned that she and her boyfriend have vastly different levels of savings as they head into retirement. Lastly, in Thrive, we talk about how to escape your work-from-home productivity slump.

We’ll leave you with a line from Katty and Claire’s book that we hope you’ll think about this week, and reflect on after you listen:  What would you like to do once you tap into your confidence? How will you write your story? 

Transcript

Katty Kay: (00:01) One of the things that really strikes me is how teenage girls become obsessed with this notion of whether they’re pleasing people - whether people like them. You color in the lines. You obey all the rules. You’re really well behaved in class. You raise your hand only when you’ve got the answer really right. And I think as a society then, as parents and educators, what we tend to do is we inadvertently reward that behavior.

Jean Chatzky: (00:29) HerMoney is supported by Fidelity Investments. Whether you want to get your savings back on track or you’re working toward a brand new goal, Fidelity has tips and tools to help you meet your short and long-term savings goals. Visit Fidelity.com/HerMoney to learn more.

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Jean Chatzky: (00:44) Hey everyone. I’m Jean Chatzky. Thank you so much for joining me on HerMoney today. If you are listening to this podcast the day that we publish it, it is Wednesday, March 31st. It’s the last day of Women’s History Month. And as we close out this month together, I just want to start with a few numbers. Between the ages of eight and 14, girls confidence levels drop by 30%. Between their tween years and their teen years, which is a phrase that is really hard to say, girls confidence that other people like them, falls from 71% to 38% - a 46% drop. And I think that is just a fact that every middle school girl, or every woman who has ever gone to middle school, can totally attest to. Girls are 22% less likely than boys to describe themselves as confident. And one in three girls believe that boys will make more money in life. And as girls and boys move through their teen years and into adulthood, girls never catch up. They never catch up to their male peers. At least those were the disheartening statistics as of 2020. Stats that we hope will be a thing of the past very soon as we, all of you and my team here at HerMoney and my guests today, are working to change them as we speak. Writers, Katty Kay, and Claire Shipman are with us today. They are joining us from their homes in Washington, where they both work as award-winning journalists. They are the authors of the book, “Living The Confidence Code: Real Girls. Real Stories. Real Confidence,” which just debuted on the New York Times bestseller list at number one in middle school books. And they are on a mission to empower the next generation of young women to make a difference in the world. Katty, Claire, welcome.

Katty Kay: (02:58) Jean, excellent to be with you.

Claire Shipman: (03:00) Yeah. Thank you, Jean.

Jean Chatzky: (03:01) So nice to see you both. Katty, I have to say, it’s especially nice to say your name. We say it a lot in my house. Because whenever you show up on Morning Joe, it’s a lot more fun to say then that phrase that I just uttered. We’re like, oh, Katty Kay. Katty Kay is here. So I’m very happy that Katty Kay is here on the podcast. And Claire it’s been too long. It’s very nice to see you too.

Claire Shipman: (03:24) Likewise.

Jean Chatzky: (03:24) All right. So those numbers. They were the impetus behind your book. Is that right?

Claire Shipman: (03:32) That’s right. We saw something of this drop when we wrote a book for women years ago, “The Confidence Code,” and we were examining why women frequently feel less confident in the workplace. And we’re not, of course, as confident that people like us. And when we started to trace it back to its origin, it was puberty. And we became fairly obsessed with figuring out ways in which we could gerd against this process, starting in girls. And we realized that it involves risk and failure, because those are the ingredients for confidence building, and that girls weren’t getting enough of that in their diet. And so we wrote “The Confidence Code For Girls,” and then we realized girls learn better from other girls. As much as they really want to listen to us - we both have girls - they actually just want to listen to people their own age. And that stories are such an effective way to learn, we thought this would be a excellent next step.

Jean Chatzky: (04:26) And so Katty, you gathered stories from teen girls around the world. What made you decide that stories were actually the magic element here?

Katty Kay: (04:38) I think we all learn really well from stories, right? Adults, children, men, women, everybody loves a good story. And we were talking with our publishers about how we could take all of the science, because Claire and I have done a lot of research with neuroscientists and psychologists and school counselors. And all of our work is really based on science and on research. But we thought, how could we make this so that girls would get the science and the research, but in a form that really resonated with them. And we were talking with our publishers and we thought, well, they said, initially, why don’t we do, you know, 50 girls around the world. And Claire and I being journalists thought, 50 girls around the world. We will never find 50 girls. That is a monumental task. And then actually, of course, it turned out that we could have filled four books with girls’ stories from around the world, because there are so numerous girls doing incredible things. So this is a collection of 30 girls stories. These are girls who live in Indonesia, Nepal, Ethiopia, the United States, the UK. We really wanted this to be a global book. And numerous of the girls have challenges that girls in America would never know. There is a 12 year old girl, Yacaba, in Ethiopia, whose father comes home one day and says, you’re getting married. She’s being signed into a child marriage. That’s not a challenge that a girl in America will ever have. But the way that Yacaba gets out of this, and in the process grows her own confidence, the risks she takes in speaking up and building a team and letting adults know and getting her voice out there, that process of building her confidence is the same. And that’s what I think is amazing about this book is, the challenges and the cultures are different, but the way the girls expand their confidence, like Claire said, by taking risks and struggles and failing and overcoming that, it’s the same.

Jean Chatzky: (06:32) It’s interesting. It’s not just Yacaba, right? They are, numerous of them, if not most of them, not perfect girls. They fail. They climb back up. And that I think, as somebody who had a dreadful time in middle school, would have been incredibly helpful.

Claire Shipman: (06:52) That’s what we’re hoping. I mean, we were looking at this concept recently and we wrote a piece for the New York times about it. What makes a perfect role model. And it turns out actually being imperfect is the way to be as a role model. And that girls, sometimes when we point at these role models who look as though their journey has been so smooth and they’ve just sort of achieved without any kind of bumps, that has the opposite effect. That intimidates as opposed to encouraging. And so we really wanted to deconstruct the stories. And I think that’s one of the things we looked for in the girls, is girls who were willing to be honest with us about their struggles and their failures and their fears, their emotion. I mean, it’s just incredible how frequently you’d have a girl talk to you about, I was terrified to do this. I never thought it would work. I couldn’t even believe I was going to try this. And also just having really monumental failures right at the beginning. Anahib, one girl in Texas who started this incredible secondhand store in her high school, so that so numerous of the kids in our high school who have no means could suddenly feel they could get a winter coat and it wouldn’t be embarrassing, right? And it was this kind of amazing idea. When she first set out to do it, the first all call for goods was an utter failure, right? Nobody came. And you can imagine that most of us would just bury ourselves in bed and think we weren’t meant to do that. And just how she picked herself up. And I mean, we’re just hoping girls will connect to this.

Jean Chatzky: (08:25) I’m sure that they will. I’m wondering if, as you look back on your younger selves, you connect to it. I would never be 13 again, if you paid me all the money in the world. Like never ever. Katty, how was it for you? Was it a tough slog?

Katty Kay: (08:43) You know, I was listening to some of the research that you cited at the beginning Jean. And some of that is research that Claire and I have actually done ourselves. We conducted a survey on this. And one of the things that really strikes is how teenage girls become obsessed

Final Thoughts

The bottom line: a little research on hermoney podcast episode 259 goes a long way. Compare your options, watch for seasonal offers, and never pay full price when a better deal is one click away.

Originally published at savingswitch.com.