Building financial independence often starts with earning more, and learning how to negotiate your salary.

In this episode of The Wallet, Emilie Bellet speaks with Nicole Michler, founder of Phase 20, a career strategy and negotiation platform that helps women navigate competitive corporate environments.

Nicole shares how she went from earning around £27,000 a year to building financial independence, and explains how salary negotiation, career strategy, and mindset shifts can help women ask for a pay rise and grow their income over time.

For years, the world of investing has felt like a closed club, historically dominated by men. The imagery surrounding stock markets—the shouting, the fast-paced trades, the risk-taking—has often alienated women from these financial conversations. Yet, despite this, recent research shows that women not only make great investors but often outperform their male counterparts. So why does the myth persist that women aren’t as savvy in the investing world?

We’ve all heard about the gender investment gap, and it rightly riles us up. But here’s the reality: this isn’t just a personal issue—it’s deeply systemic. It didn’t happen overnight; it’s the result of generations of inequality, where women have been shut out of financial conversations and opportunities.  The system wasn’t built with women in mind, and it shows.

“Mark Wahlberg was at No. 1 on the actors’ list with $68 million, while the highest-earning actress, Emma Stone, made a comparatively paltry $26 million” according to Vanity Fair.

We’ve all heard the term, but its subtleties are less well known. It doesn’t in fact mean that women doing identical jobs to men are always paid less (although sometimes that’s true, for sure) – it’s more about the overall picture in which women as a population are paid less than the male sector.

The even better news is that you can take steps now to protect yourself against this unfairness.

This week, we asked our friend Jess Rose Morley from the Vestpod community to contribute to our newsletter with some genuinely inspiring and practical tips on female empowerment in the workplace.