When investing, many women rely on paid programs like Madame Moneypenny’s. But is it worth it? Financial regulators and consumer advocates are skeptical.
For Nataschawegelin, the biggest problem is the “mindset”. Many women in her coaching already know a lot about investing, but still wouldn’t invest. This is due to beliefs like: “I can’t do it anyway. Finances are a man’s job. I was never good at math. All rich people are evil. Money stinks.” One week of the eight-week workshop is all about “belief work”. The financial influencer Wegenin, who goes by the name Madame Moneypenny, recently said this in the podcast.
Wegenin has turned this “mindset” work into a lucrative business. For several years now, her program has been aimed at women – and wants to get them to invest their money. She is a big name on social media: 265,000 people follow her on Instagram. Wegenin is better connected in social networks than many of the major financial brands, as an analysis by the Kemmler Kemmler agency for Finance Forward shows. She made almost two million euros in annual profit in 2022.
Thousands of euros for financial coaching
She discovered a gap in the market early on, because many of the big financial influencers are men. At the same time, there is a great need to address women more specifically: According to the stock institute, a total of 4.7 million women in Germany invest their money in stocks, while the figure for men is 7.6 million. Ignorance is not the reason, confirms Christian Hoffmann, who researches financial communication at the University of Leipzig: “Women are naturally more risk-averse.” Researchers don’t yet know exactly why. “One theory comes from biology: Men have more of the aggression hormone testosterone, which probably makes them more willing to take risks.”
The approach that finfluencers likewegelin have perfected in recent years has to be correspondingly different. Their formats are about real-life topics, about empowerment, about the pension gap caused by raising children. In doing so, they reach millions of women and inspire them to invest.
Influencers like , Femme Invest and Corinne Brecher grew up in the stock market boom and rely on a business model: financial coaching, especially for women. Cost: probably a few thousand euros.
Anyone who wants to learn from Nataschawegelin how “wealth creation for women” works can use her free content on social networks or podcasts, buy her book or complete her financial coaching for an undefined, “mid-four-digit amount” according to her homepage. A tidy sum for advocating “do it yourself” when it comes to finances. The comments under her posts seem to prove her right: the coaching was a wake-up call for many people to finally deal with the issue of money.
Former customers are annoyed with Madame Moneypenny
On other platforms, however, the tone is harsher – and more dissatisfied. A user writes on Reddit: “You have to see her for what she is: a motivational coach, not a financial coach. She doesn’t even really know anything about finances and even says that more or less openly (…) Basically she just tells people that they should read it themselves and also gives contradictory recommendations.” Another graduate writes on Trustpilot: “The video course was ok to get your butt off. There wasn’t any new information. (…) The videos are amateurishly shot, the content is ok, but some are a bit older. Everyone should think for themselves whether The 5,000 euros are not better invested in ETFs.”
A third complained that she “expected for this price that the team would look at the contracts that you had concluded yourself, analyze them and give tips on whether and where you should change something. But you have to make another appointment for that Arrange a mentoring session and pay several hundred to 1,000 euros for individual advice.” And another wrote that she found the group course, which costs more than several individual sessions with a financial advisor, to be opaque and dubious.
It’s not just users on social networks who are critical of the business models – financial regulators and consumer advocates are too. Werner Bareis from the Baden-Württemberg Consumer Center judges: “Finances and retirement provision are not rocket science. Such basic knowledge coaching cannot offer any added value other than being worth a four-digit amount. Many participants end up in a spiral because they use follow-up offers , which cost money again.”
Publicly, even celebrity influencer Nataschawegelin feels the same way: “There is so much information out there for free.” For example on YouTube or in podcasts. “Access itself today doesn’t cost any money,” said Wegelin in the “Fast & Curious” podcast.
When asked about the allegations, an employee of Madame Moneypenny said: “We would like to emphasize that we offer a mentoring program and not financial advice. Our goal is to empower women not to remain passive, but to make informed financial decisions based on facts – also in future life situations. The experience of many of our participants shows that it was only through our program that the necessary self-confidence was created to act actively.” Before participation, two free personal discussions take place to clarify whether the mentoring program is suitable for the interested party.
Financial supervision provides a calculation example
It’s not just Madame Moneypenny who is criticized: Emilia Bolda, for example, is currently offering her ETF course on her website for around 699 euros. A graduate writes about its content: “I already knew everything that was explained and I gained this knowledge completely free of charge. (…) I am 500 euros poorer, not a bit smarter, and still have no idea how to do it choose the best possible ETFs for me (only the most popular ETFs that everyone buys were picked up) and how and where I explicitly carry out a precise analysis.” She did not respond to a request for comment from Finance Forward.
In the end, the expensive coaching sessions can contribute to the problem they actually want to combat: they massively affect the potential return on investment in retirement. The financial regulator Bafin has illustrated how strong the impact is: For a program that costs 2,700 euros, an additional 10,000 euros would have to be invested, which would then have to produce an annual return of almost five percent. Then the coaching costs would have been worth it – after five years.
This text first appeared on Finance Forward, the magazine for the new financial world, which is created in cooperation between Capital and OMR.
Source: Stern
