Future Returns: Why Women Need to Participate in Financial Planning

It sounds hopelessly antiquated: A female spouse cedes control of the family’s finances, either willingly or unwillingly, to her male partner, only to be caught by surprise when her husband dies.

Yet financial advisors say it’s true—and problematic. Data is spotty, but a 2019 UBS survey of high-net-worth women found that 56% of American women aged 20-34 deferred long-term financial decisions to their spouse, as did 54% of women 51 and older.

Vance Barse is the founder of Your Dedicated Fiduciary, an investment advisor firm based in San Diego, Calif., that has made centring women a bedrock of its practice: two-thirds of its clients are female-headed households.

In a conversation with Penta, Barse says that if women aren’t part of the financial-planning conversation already, they should be. And if they lose their spouse before that can happen, they should be deliberate, not hasty, in finding a trusted advisor.

‘A Little Resentful’

No one wants to think about losing a spouse, but it will happen at some point—and as all the statistics show, it’s far more likely for a woman to outlive her male partner. That’s why Barse tries to centre female-headed households in his business model, but also why it’s wise for couples to make sure the wife has a say in the family finances before she’s all alone.

Barse describes the scenario he and other advisors see far too often with new widows: “After that initial shock, there is acceptance of the reality, which is that she is the one in charge of estate administration, she is the one who receives the estate, and now she is front and centre in her own financial life. There’s a transition where these women may become a little resentful or realise that they don’t have a trusting relationship with the person who was the husband’s—not the family’s—advisor.”

That’s when many widows fire the family’s existing advisor, and go in search of someone they can trust, Barse says.

But Barse says women usually turn to friends and family members for recommendations. Far too often those people aren’t right for the new widow, and may even take advantage of her.

High-net-worth women don’t need a retail advisor selling them whatever mutual fund the home office is hawking, Barse points out—they need what he calls an “in-house, right-hand person” to manage all aspects of the household’s financial life, even if that’s not what the husband’s expectations were while he was alive.

Look Before It’s Too Late

Women with male spouses—even happily married ones—may want to take a more active role in the family’s finances sooner rather than later, even if their husbands are content with the way things have always been, and especially if they feel left out of the conversation.

“When a new client couple first comes in, I ask, in a social situation, which one of you typically talks first,” Barse says. “Whichever of the spouses raises the hand and says I do, I turn to the other spouse. That means we’re giving the less-vocal spouse more of a voice right out of the gate.”

That’s critical, he says, not only because both voices should be heard, but because men and women often bring different perspectives to financial planning. With high-net-worth women, Barse says, “the conversation focuses more on how to make an impact and how to keep as much money in the estate as possible and prevent the heirs from fighting over the assets.”

For Widows

Women who have lost a spouse are in a difficult position. The recent loss may make it difficult to think about vetting someone analytically. Still, Barse offers a few considerations, starting with approaching the existing advisor as if he or she were any other candidate for the job.

“It’s highly appropriate to interview different financial advisors and their firms to determine which one feels like the best long-term fit,” he says. “There is no such thing as too much due diligence.”

Ask the advisor to detail in writing what products and strategies are in your best interest, what value they will bring to your estate, and how much that will cost you

Ask the advisor to outline any potential conflicts of interest in writing. Barse recalls one client whose family advisor had put almost 100% of the household assets in expensive financial products such as mutual funds managed by the advisor’s parent company—but one that just happened to have a different name.

Ask the financial advisor to outline how he or she will work alongside other estate advisors such as the CPA, the estate planner, the insurance agent, the realtor, and so on. You need someone to be sure all the professionals are communicating with each other and that there are no gaps.

A sharp technology sell-off has exposed a new anxiety on global markets: whether the enormous borrowing behind the artificial-intelligence infrastructure boom can generate sufficient returns as interest rates rise and Chinese competition intensifies.

The artificial-intelligence investment boom has powered technology shares, semiconductor manufacturers and data-centre operators to extraordinary heights. Last week, investors were given a reminder that much of this expansion is being built with borrowed money.

The technology-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell 4.5 per cent over the week ended October 16, its weakest performance since late June. Semiconductor shares suffered an even deeper correction, with the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index losing about 11.4 per cent.

The selling spread quickly through global markets. Micron Technology fell 14.6 per cent over the week, while South Korea’s Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix dropped approximately 18 per cent and 24 per cent respectively.

This was more than a routine bout of profit-taking. Investors were reassessing three interconnected risks: higher interest rates, the rapidly expanding debt burden attached to AI infrastructure and the prospect of stronger competition from Chinese memory-chip manufacturers.

The debt behind the AI build-out

Artificial intelligence requires a physical infrastructure network of enormous scale. Data centres must be built, advanced processors purchased, power supplies secured and cooling systems installed before customers begin generating meaningful revenue from them.

Technology companies are increasingly supplementing their own cash with corporate bonds, syndicated loans, equipment leases, private credit and project-level financing.

JPMorgan describes the emerging funding model as a combination of conventional corporate borrowing and project finance tied to individual data-centre assets. In Australia, the Reserve Bank estimates that syndicated loans accounted for approximately three-quarters of data-centre financing during 2025 and 2026 to date.

The numbers are becoming large enough to affect broader credit markets. The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas has cited Wall Street estimates suggesting AI-related investment-grade bond issuance could approach US$300 billion in 2026 alone.

That borrowing is not automatically problematic. Debt can be an efficient way to finance long-lived infrastructure when future revenue is sufficiently predictable. The concern is that AI technology, customer demand and computing economics are changing much faster than the repayment schedules attached to the assets.

A data centre financed today may carry debt for years. Investors must therefore make assumptions about future utilisation rates, electricity prices, chip performance, customer concentration and the amount businesses will ultimately pay for AI computing.

When interest rates rise, those assumptions become less forgiving.

Inflation changes the calculation

September’s US inflation data intensified the pressure. Consumer prices increased 3.7 per cent over the year, ahead of market expectations and up from 3.4 per cent in August.

The hotter reading reduced confidence that interest rates would fall quickly and pushed bond yields higher. That matters particularly for companies whose valuations depend on profits expected well into the future, as well as highly leveraged infrastructure operators that may need to refinance.

CoreWeave has emerged as a closely watched test case. The specialist cloud-computing company has accumulated substantial debt and lease obligations to build AI capacity, while relying on a concentrated group of large technology customers.

Its shares fell sharply during the sell-off, while the cost of insuring its debt against default climbed. CoreWeave has argued that its contracted backlog more than covers its obligations and that financial markets do not always understand its business model. Nevertheless, its securities have become a proxy for investor confidence in debt-funded AI infrastructure.

Oracle, another major investor in AI computing capacity, fell 8.8 per cent in Friday trading, while CoreWeave dropped 15.5 per cent.

The question is shifting from how much AI infrastructure can be built to how profitably it can be operated.

China adds another source of pressure

Interest rates were not the only catalyst. Reports of advances by Chinese memory-chip producer ChangXin Memory Technologies raised concerns that lower-cost Chinese products could increase competition across the global semiconductor industry.

Memory chips are essential to AI systems, but the industry is historically cyclical. Periods of tight supply and high pricing can encourage rapid investment, eventually producing oversupply and falling margins.

The prospect of a well-funded Chinese competitor expanding its technological capabilities unsettled investors in Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron. It also demonstrated that AI-related demand does not insulate chipmakers from conventional competitive pressures.

That combination—slower rate cuts, more expensive financing and potentially cheaper supply—challenged the assumption that every company exposed to AI would enjoy continually expanding margins.

A reset rather than the end of the boom

The sell-off does not establish that the AI boom is ending. Demand for computing power remains strong, the largest technology companies continue to generate formidable cash flows and many infrastructure projects are backed by long-term customer contracts.

What has changed is the market’s willingness to overlook the price and financing structure of that growth.

The most resilient companies are likely to be those able to fund investment from operating cash flow, secure long-duration customers and demonstrate that new capacity will earn returns comfortably above its financing costs.

More speculative operators may face greater scrutiny, particularly where debt is expensive, customers are concentrated or expected revenue depends on demand that has not yet materialised.

For Australian investors, the lesson extends beyond US technology shares. Local data-centre operators, infrastructure funds, electricity suppliers and property groups are increasingly exposed to the same investment cycle.

Artificial intelligence may remain one of the defining growth themes of the decade. But last week’s correction showed that enthusiasm for the technology does not eliminate financial discipline.

The next stage of the AI boom will be judged not only by computing power, model performance or demand for chips, but by something more traditional: whether the assets being financed can generate enough cash to repay the money borrowed to build them.

Fact box

Nasdaq Composite: Down 4.5 per cent for the week ended October 16, 2026

Philadelphia Semiconductor Index: Down approximately 11.4 per cent

Micron Technology: Down approximately 14.6 per cent

Samsung Electronics: Down approximately 18 per cent

SK Hynix: Down approximately 24 per cent

US September inflation: 3.7 per cent annually

Estimated 2026 AI-related investment-grade issuance: Approximately US$300 billion