Personal Finance
Why some women opt out of work
If TikTok is any guide, more women are taking a traditional approach to romantic partnerships: Some say they are even opting out of the workforce entirely in favor of the so-called “soft life,” centered around their home, their family and their own wellbeing.
(Re-)enter the “tradwife,” one of social media’s growing trends. It shows a curated look at women embracing domesticity as the antithesis of what other young women are experiencing, who are “working hard and barely scraping by,” said Casey Lewis, a social media trend forecaster.
“The thing about tradwives is that it feels very different; it is an escape from a lot of people’s reality,” she said.
Experts say it’s a facade. Evidence shows this is something few women are actually doing, and it’s not a realistic lifestyle to aspire to.
When it comes to women and money, the data largely isn’t favorable.
Although women are achieving increasing levels of education and representation in senior leadership positions at work, they still earn just 84 cents for every dollar earned by men — a dynamic that has shown no significant signs of improvement in decades. As a result, women are more likely to be financially vulnerable and have less saved for retirement and other long-term goals.
Even as women’s economic standing improves, they still lag their male counterparts by almost every financial measure. “I can understand individuals that say it’s just too much,” said Stacy Francis, a certified financial planner and president and CEO of Francis Financial in New York.
‘There’s nothing new here’
These are old ideas with fresh taglines, “Fair Play” author Eve Rodsky says of tradwives and the related social media trend of stay-at-home girlfriends, or SAHGs: “That is the definition of patriarchy — there’s nothing new here.”
“Tradwives are pretending they have agency over their choices,” Rodsky said. But forgoing paid labor comes at an economic cost. “The tradwife or stay-at-home girlfriends are taking huge economic risks,” she added. “What that really means is that you don’t have economic security.”
Francis, who is a member of CNBC’s Financial Advisor Council, advises her female clients to consider that they “at some point in their life are going to be solely responsible for making financial decisions on their own.”
Social media portrays a glamorized view of what that life looks like but “that is not realistic,” Francis said. Financial dependence can also mean a loss of power or control, she added.
For SAHGs, creating an imbalance in a relationship at the outset is more troubling, said Heather Boneparth, co-author of The Joint Account, a money newsletter for couples. “For the stay-at-home girlfriend, the power dynamic is even more skewed in favor of their partner because they really have everything to lose.”
Staying at home also necessitates a degree of privilege that fewer young adults have these days. In reality, most people are living paycheck to paycheck. More than three-quarters, or 78%, of millennials in the U.S. are in a “dual career couple,” compared with baby boomers at 47%, according to the Berkeley Haas Center for Equity, Gender and Leadership.
Two partners working full-time is increasingly necessary to achieve the American dream — which for many people involves some combination of owning a home, getting married, having kids and making enough after expenses to save for retirement and spend on leisure.
Today’s young adults are having a harder time reaching those key milestones, at least compared with their parents a generation ago, according to a recent report by the Pew Research Center.
‘Step back and do less’
There is a disillusionment taking hold among younger Americans, studies show. Generation Z is increasingly less motivated by the daily grind and adopting a more relaxed approach to their long-term financial security, according to a recent Prosperity Index study by Intuit.
In the current climate, newly minted adults between the ages of 18 and 25 are more interested in experiences that promote personal growth and emotional well-being, the report found.
Young women, whether they’re married or not, are expressing a desire to “take a step out of the professional rat race,” Lewis said.
“There’s a lot of pressure on young women,” she said. Being a stay-at-home girlfriend or tradwife is “an excuse to step back and do less.”
But if anything, women are working more now, not less.
“Prime-age women, including mothers, are participating in the labor force more than ever before,” said Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter.
By 2023, women’s employment had recovered from pandemic-era losses. In 2024, the labor force participation rate for women ages 25-54 neared an all-time high, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
In other words, you can choose to be a tradwife if you have a tradhusband.
Julia Pollak
Chief economist at ZipRecruiter
Of course, even in households where both partners work, many marriages still adhere to traditional gender roles. In cases where men are the primary breadwinners, it’s more often women who take on the bulk of the caretaking responsibilities, experts say.
“In other words, you can choose to be a tradwife if you have a tradhusband,” Pollak said.
‘A big change happening’
In at least some marriages or partnerships, couples are reevaluating ideas about work and family and striking a balance between the two.
Recently, it’s actually men who are choosing to scale back at work, particularly high earners with higher levels of education, according to a 2023 working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
“The pandemic may have motivated people to re-evaluate their life priorities and also gotten them accustomed to more flexible work arrangements (e.g., work from home), leading them to choose to work fewer hours, especially if they can afford it,” the researchers wrote.
“There’s a great new set of men who are saying that overwork is not their first priority anymore,” Rodsky said of those men who may have already logged long hours and are now dialing back.
“The dark side of the pandemic was this ‘banana-bread-tradwife’ recycling of old ideas; the exciting side is this big change happening.”
Richard Stephen | Istock | Getty Images
As Congress scrambles to avoid a government shutdown, the Senate is also poised to consider another bill that would increase Social Security benefits for some public workers.
But the bill, the Social Security Fairness Act, may undergo changes if some Senators’ efforts to add amendments are successful.
Per the original proposal, the Social Security Fairness Act calls for eliminating Social Security provisions known as the Windfall Elimination Provision, or WEP, and Government Pension Offset, or GPO, that have been in place for decades.
The WEP reduces Social Security benefits for individuals who receive pension or disability benefits from employment where they did not pay Social Security payroll taxes. The GPO reduces Social Security for spouses, widows and widowers who also receive their own government pension income. Together, the provisions affect an estimated 3 million individuals.
The bill has enthusiastic support from organizations representing teachers, firefighters, police and other government workers who are affected by the benefit reductions.
“You shouldn’t penalize people for income outside of a system when you’ve paid into it and earn that benefit,” said John Hatton, vice president of policy and programs at the National Active and Retired Federal Employees Association. “It’s been 40 years trying to get this repealed.”
The bill has received overwhelming bipartisan support. The Social Security Fairness Act was passed by the House with a 327 majority in November.
Preliminary Senate votes this week have also shown a strong bipartisan support for moving the proposal forward. On Wednesday, the chamber voted with a 73 majority on a cloture for the motion to proceed. That was followed by a Thursday vote on a motion to proceed that also drew a 73-vote majority.
Experts say the Senate may soon hold a final vote. It could proceed in one of two ways — with amendments that alter the terms of the original bill or with a final vote without any changes.
Amendments may include raising the retirement age
The Social Security Fairness Act would cost an estimated $196 billion over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Those additional costs come as the trust funds Social Security relies on to help pay benefits already face looming depletion dates. Social Security’s trustees have projected the program’s trust fund used to pay retirement benefits may be depleted in nine years, when just 79% of benefits may be payable.
Some senators who oppose the Social Security Fairness Act have expressed concerns about the pressures the additional costs would put on the program.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, who this week voted against moving the current version of the bill forward in the Senate, said this week he plans to propose an amendment to offset those costs by gradually raising the retirement age to 70 while also adjusting for life expectancy. Social Security’s full retirement age — when beneficiaries receive 100% of the benefits they’ve earned — is currently age 67 for individuals born in 1960 or later.
“It is absurd to entertain a proposal that would make Social Security both less fair and financially weaker,” Paul said in a statement. “To undo the damage made by this legislation, my amendment to gradually raise the retirement age to reflect current life expectancies will strengthen Social Security by providing almost $400 billion in savings.”
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As of Friday morning, a total of six amendments to the bill had been introduced, according to Emerson Sprick, associate director of economic policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center.
Some amendments call for replacing the full repeal of the WEP and GPO provisions with other changes.
One amendment from Sens. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Joe Manchin, I-West Virginia, would instead put in place a more proportional formula to calculate benefits for affected individuals. That change, inspired by Texas Republican Rep. Jodey Arrington’s Equal Treatment of Public Servants Act, has a lot of support from policy experts and the Bipartisan Policy Center, Sprick said.
Social Security advocacy groups have pushed for larger comprehensive Social Security reform that would use tax increases to pay for making benefits more generous.
“We want to help in making this happen, but our preference was for it to be part of a much larger Social Security reform,” said Dan Adcock, director of government relations and policy at the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.
To be sure, if amendments are successfully added to the bill, it would have to go back to the House.
“We’re hoping that that doesn’t come to that, because that could complicate matters, depending on the timing of how what’s going on with the [continuing resolution]” to avoid a government shutdown, Adcock said.
Senate may proceed to final vote on original bill
Much of what happens next rests on Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, who could decide unilaterally not to allow amendments to be considered, according to Sprick.
Alternatively, Schumer could decide to allow for amendments in exchange for limiting the length of time spent on consideration of the bill, he said.
However, Sprick said he doubts Schumer will allow amendments at this point.
“The most likely scenario at this point is that Senator Schumer just runs out the clock, doesn’t allow consideration of any amendments, and they take a final vote either very late tonight or early tomorrow,” Sprick said.
While opponents of the bill may delay a vote, they won’t be able to stop a vote, Hatton said. Moreover, there’s reason to believe the leaders who have voted to advance the bill this week will also vote for it if and when it is put up for a final vote, he said.
“I’m still optimistic that this passes, and it’s more just a matter of when, not if,” Hatton said.
A few years ago, Wes Bellamy, 38, took stock of his investment accounts in preparation to buy a home in Charlottesville, Virginia. It was then that he noticed significant gains in his 401(k).
Although Bellamy, who is the chair of the political science department at Virginia State University, had been saving diligently for nearly a decade and making the most of his employer’s matching program, he said seeing his retirement account balance was “a pleasant surprise and a nice nest egg.”
Since then, his 401(k) balance has continued to grow. “I’m at $980,000 — I’m not at a million yet but I’m close.”
More millennials are 401(k) millionaires
Saving $1 million for retirement used to be considered the gold standard, although these days financial advisors may recommend putting away even more.
Millennial workers are still the most common generation to say they’ll need at least $1 million to retire comfortably, according to a recent report by Bankrate, and, for the first time, a larger share of younger retirement savers are reaching that key savings threshold.
The number of millennials with seven-figure balances has jumped 400% from one year ago, according to the data from Fidelity Investments prepared for CNBC.
Among this group, the number of 401(k) accounts with a balance of $1 million or more rose to about 10,000 as of Sept. 30, up from around 2,000 in the third quarter of 2023, according to Fidelity, the nation’s largest provider of 401(k) plans. The financial services firm handles more than 49 million retirement accounts altogether.
Generally, reaching 401(k) millionaire status only comes after decades of consistent contributions, making it a harder milestone for younger workers to achieve.
This year, positive market conditions helped boost those account balances to new highs. The Nasdaq is up 29% year to date, as of Dec. 19, while the S&P 500 notched a 23% gain and the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose more than 12%.
“Even shorter-term savers have done well because of significant market gains,” said Mike Shamrell, Fidelity’s vice president of thought leadership.
“If we continue to see positive market conditions, we could see not only the overall number of millionaires overall bump up over that threshold but also more millennials,” Shamrell said.
Whether savers benefit more from long-term savings efforts or a favorable investment environment, “the reality is, it’s a blend of both,” financial advisor Jordan Awoye, managing partner of Awoye Capital in New York, said.
Further, millennials — the oldest of whom will be 44 in 2025 — are nearing their peak earning years, he said, “which is making it more enticing to save for retirement.”
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Still, reaching the million-dollar mark “is not everything,” Awoye said.
Heading into a year of potential volatility, those balances will fluctuate, perhaps even dramatically. However, there is still plenty of time before millennial savers will need to access those funds in retirement. “You are likely not touching that money for 20 years. Even if [the market] goes up and down, stick to the script,” Awoye said.
“When you are retirement planning, you have to remember to tie it back to your North Star, which is your goal.”
How to become a 401(k) millionaire
Certified financial planner Chelsea Ransom-Cooper, chief financial planning officer of Zenith Wealth Partners in New Jersey, works with mostly millennial clients. She says she often encourages them to contribute more than what’s necessary to get the full employer match — even up to the maximum annual contribution limits for a 401(k) or IRA.
In 2023, only 14% of employees deferred the maximum annual amount into 401(k) plans, according to Vanguard’s 2024 How America Saves report. But that’s a missed opportunity, Ransom-Cooper said.
In 2025, employees can defer $23,500 into workplace plans, up from $23,000 in 2024. (The IRA contribution limit is $7,000 for 2025, unchanged from 2024.)
At the same time, employer contributions are climbing. Together, the average 401(k) savings rate, including employee deferrals and company contributions, rose to 12.7% in 2023, up from 12.1% the year before, according to the Plan Sponsor Council of America’s annual survey of 401(k) plans.
That’s made a big difference, Ransom-Cooper said. “There’s more money that can go into these accounts outside of the employee contribution, that can be really helpful to push these accounts higher and help people reach their retirement goals.”
While there is always the chance that a market downturn will take a toll on these balances in the year to come, the markets are up more than they are down, Ransom-Cooper said. “They can weather those tougher days in the shorter term.”
“Staying the course and keeping that longer term vision is really helpful,” she said.
Bellamy says his goal is to retire in another 20 years, before reaching 60. “Then, I’ll have another 15, 20 years to live my life freely as I want to.”
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