By HTE Founder, Erin Hughes
There are some things we have become much better at talking about.
The difficult relationship. The career that isn’t working anymore. Burnout. Menopause. Mental health. Ambition.
Money, though, can still make a room go quiet.
Ask someone what they earn, how much debt they have, whether they’re worried about their mortgage or if they actually understand their superannuation and suddenly the conversation feels different. More personal. More exposing.
For Melissa Browne, that discomfort isn’t simply about numbers.
It is about what money represents.
Growing up in Sydney’s western suburbs, Melissa watched a financial dynamic that was common for many families at the time. Her father worked, her mother stayed home and was given money for housekeeping, while the larger financial decisions belonged to him.
Even as a child, Melissa noticed what that meant.
“I remember thinking that I didn’t want to be the one without control in a relationship,” she says. “That I wanted to make financial decisions for myself.”
Years later, her understanding of money has become remarkably simple.
Having money, she says, means having choice.
The choice of where to live. Whether to work. Whether to travel. The ability to support causes you care about. The freedom to make decisions about your own life.
And perhaps that is why our reluctance to talk about money matters so much.
The conversations we’re still not having
Melissa believes part of the silence begins much earlier than adulthood.
Many women, she says, were raised to be “nice girls”. Talking openly about wanting money or building wealth can still feel impolite, uncomfortable or even selfish.
She sees the double standard particularly clearly in business.
A woman can talk about starting a purpose-led business and receive enthusiastic support. Say she wants that business to make millions in profit and the reaction can change.
There is another layer too: shame.
Shame about having too little. Shame about having a lot. Shame about debt. Shame about a financial decision that didn’t work out. Shame about feeling as though everyone else understands something you don’t.
“We haven’t grown up with the language and the conversations that the blokes have,” Melissa says.
That lack of language matters because it can turn something practical into something deeply personal.
Instead of saying, I don’t understand this yet, we can start thinking, I’m bad with money.
Instead of asking a question, we stay quiet.
And instead of making a decision, we avoid it.
When everyone is tired of thinking about money
The conversations Melissa is hearing from women now are varied.
There is excitement around starting businesses and, increasingly, investing.
But there are also conversations about the cost of living, mortgage stress and the simple challenge of keeping up.
Underneath many of them, Melissa believes something else is happening: change fatigue.
Technology and AI are moving quickly. Financial markets shift. Interest rates move. Tax rules change. Global events arrive in our news feeds every day.
Eventually, even another sensible thing we are told we “should” be doing can feel like one thing too many.
That matters when we talk about financial confidence because the problem isn’t necessarily that women don’t care about their finances. Sometimes they’re simply overwhelmed by everything demanding their attention.
Melissa’s answer isn’t to become an expert overnight.
It is to make the next decision smaller.
What financial confidence actually looks like
Financial confidence can easily be mistaken for having plenty of money.
Melissa sees it differently.
Confidence can begin with understanding what you have, knowing what you’re working towards and believing you are capable of making the next decision.
“Once you have a plan, once you realise you can invest, once you figure out how to find more cash, it creates financial agency which creates confidence,” she says.
That word, agency, feels important.
Because financial confidence isn’t necessarily knowing everything.
It is knowing enough to participate in the decisions that shape your life.
Melissa also points to the history women are carrying with them. Australian women were excluded from aspects of the financial system that we now take for granted within relatively recent history, from accessing certain forms of finance independently to achieving legislated equal pay.
Even some of the language of finance can feel alienating. Melissa points to investment risk profiles described as “aggressive” or “highly aggressive” as one small example of a financial vocabulary that doesn’t necessarily connect with everyone it is supposed to serve.
Perhaps becoming financially confident, then, isn’t about learning to sound like the financial industry.
Perhaps it is about making money understandable enough to make decisions for yourself.
Start with one thing
For someone already overwhelmed by money, Melissa’s advice is refreshingly simple.
Don’t fix everything. Find one quick win.
It might be lodging a tax return. Working out your expenses. Finding the total balance of your credit card debt. Making an appointment with a financial counsellor or broker.
Then give money a small, regular place in your life.
Melissa suggests setting aside 30 minutes each week and choosing one financial area each month to work on.
Not a complete financial transformation.
Just one thing, chipped away at consistently.
Because the first goal isn’t perfection.
It is movement.
And movement can begin to replace avoidance with confidence.
A conversation worth having
There is another place Melissa thinks women could start, and it doesn’t require a spreadsheet, an investing app or a financial plan.
Talk to someone.
If every woman sat down with a friend this weekend and had one honest conversation about money, Melissa would like that conversation to begin with their goals and dreams.
What do you actually want?
What might it take financially to get there?
How could you support each other?
And, perhaps more challengingly, are there ways you might inadvertently be holding each other back?
It is a very different money conversation from comparing mortgage rates or swapping budgeting tips.
It makes money secondary to the life it is supposed to help create.
That philosophy sits behind Her Wealth, Her Way, the event Melissa created after a Friday-night conversation with her long-time colleague about the kind of financial conference they themselves would actually want to attend.
She imagined something created by women for women: practical rather than “fluffy”, useful rather than simply inspirational, and built around the kinds of conversations traditional financial events weren’t providing.
The first event, held in 2025, was supposed to be a one-off.
The response changed her mind.
This year, Melissa hopes women leave not simply inspired, but knowing the next step they can take.
Most importantly, she wants them to know they are not alone.
Because perhaps the biggest shift in the way we think about money begins when we stop treating wealth as the destination.
Melissa describes money much more simply: as a tool.
Like a car, its purpose is to help you get somewhere.
You don’t need to know everything about the engine before you’re allowed behind the wheel.
But you do need to be the person deciding where you’re going.
And for Melissa, that is ultimately what building wealth is about.
Not having more for the sake of having more.
Having more choice.
