Why do women end up with so much less wealth than men by the time they retire?
According to Stephanie Gutmann, founder of Huntress Wealth, women arrive at retirement with roughly 60% of the wealth men have accumulated. Two compounding forces explain this gap: an 18% gender pay gap that shrinks lifetime earnings from the start, and — more critically in Gutmann's view — an investing gap driven by women's tendency to hold their savings in cash rather than putting that money to work in the market.
The pay gap is real and measurable, but Gutmann argues the investing gap is the more insidious problem — and the harder one to talk about. Women who earn less naturally have less to invest, but even when they do have capital, they disproportionately leave it sitting in cash accounts where it doesn't compound. Over a 30- or 40-year career, that behavioral difference alone creates a chasm. Career interruptions — often tied to caregiving — add another layer, reducing both total years of earned income and the number of years those contributions have to grow in vehicles like a 401k or IRA.
Huntress Wealth was built specifically to serve the women most affected by this gap: those who have accumulated around $200,000 in retirement savings — a segment Gutmann considers chronically underserved by traditional financial advisors. Gutmann's approach centers on reframing the conversation: instead of abstract wealth targets, she works with clients to connect real financial goals — a $40,000 family milestone in 20 years, for instance — to concrete, investable amounts today. Hear the full conversation on Listenly.
"I'm not going to wait until I die to use my money. And I also don't want to blow it all now."
— Stephanie Gutmann, Founder, Huntress WealthStephanie Gutmann's authority on women's wealth isn't theoretical — it's built on two decades of hands-on experience across every scale of finance. She studied finance as an undergraduate and went directly into corporate finance, where she handled SEC reporting including 10-K filings and managed a $30 million product line for a Fortune 500 company. That early exposure to institutional-grade financial operations gave her a fluency in capital structures that most wealth advisors simply don't have.
Seeking closer proximity to strategy and execution, she went to business school and emerged to lead an accelerator affiliated with her school, working directly with early-stage founders. She then moved into Series A startups, first in marketing, then in sales — a path that sharpened her understanding of how businesses are built and how equity actually creates wealth.
What makes her perspective on the retirement wealth gap especially credible is how early she internalized investing as a behavior rather than a privilege. She opened her first IRA at 18 using money earned from working three jobs in high school, and volunteered in tax preparation during her undergraduate years. She understands, from the inside, both the discipline required to invest early and the systemic barriers that prevent most women from doing so — which is precisely the gap Huntress Wealth was designed to close.