If you’ve ever wondered, “Is it too late for me to...” the answer’s NO and The Uplifters are about to show you why. This space is for purpose-driven women who want to do big, brave things in the second half of their lives. I’m your host, Aransas Savas, and I’ve spent the last 20 years at the intersection of behavior change research and coaching.
May is for mothers, money, and menopause
This month’s stories:
Four very different takes on motherhood from Ruthie Ackerman, Katie Horwitch, Sarah Gormley, and Shayla Martin. Listen HERE
Dr. Kimberly Derezil, MD, a doctor and certified wealth manager, discusses how to avoid massive financial losses during menopause.
Women’s health advocate Rebecca Bloom on what happens when women get sick.
And Jacquelyn Fletcher Johnson and Christy Kercheville on finding renewed purpose in the wake of cancer.
The last few years of my corporate career were tough. I had trouble concentrating. I couldn’t remember anything. I relied on solving new problems with old solutions because my groggy brain couldn’t dig into data for very long without dazing off. I stopped raising my hand for more responsibility, and people stopped seeing me as someone to promote. More than once, on Zooms with a chronic mansplainer, I felt a boiling rage so intense that I had to turn off my camera and audio mid-sentence to avoid saying to him what I then screamed into the void of my apartment (small blessings of a pandemic). I took all of this as a sign that my career had run its course, that it was time to graduate from that chapter and explore what was next, and to spend less time under fluorescent overhead lights, which were surely the underlying cause of my inability to concentrate.
I’ve been at the center of conversations about menopause and hormone shifts for five years, and it never once dawned on me until talking to Karissa Pfeffer and Dr. Kimberly Derezil, MD, that my 18-year corporate career probably actually ended because of undiagnosed perimenopause symptoms.
It turns out I paid a very, very high Menopause Tax.
In today’s episode, you’ll meet Dr. Kimberly Derezil, MD, a double board-certified physician, certified wealth manager, and founder of Meno & Money. She has spent her career caring for women through the menopause transition, listening as they described at visit after visit how their symptoms affect their work and their financial decisions. In this episode, you’ll learn about the Menopause Tax, the cumulative financial toll women, usually unknowingly, pay in midlife. It breaks out into 3 main segments:
The care costs, like increased doctor visits, co-pays, supplements, acupuncture, fitness solutions, psychiatric care, and so-called pink taxes (the well-documented markup women pay for the same products and services men get for less), are the ones that are often easiest to see.
The career costs sneak up on us. Turning down contracts. Cutting back on clients. Quietly stepping out of the leadership pipeline. Every one of these decisions feels responsible in the moment. There is a research-backed 10% decline in earnings approximately four years after a menopause diagnosis, combined with an average loss of 10 productive workdays per year for symptomatic women. For salaried employees, that adds up to roughly 20% of annual income. For self-employed women and independent contractors, it’s closer to 25%.
The compounding costs, which Kim calls the silent part of the equation. These are the small yeses and nos we say now that accumulate into six and seven-figure losses later. Most financial advisors are not trained to factor in this phase of life at all.
In this episode, we talk about the three costs of the Menopause Tax in detail, how to calculate your own number, what to do with this information at any age, and what companies need to hear about the talent they are quietly losing every single day.
What the Research Says
Research from the Menopause Society and peer-reviewed studies on midlife women in the workforce shows that symptomatic menopause has measurable effects on work performance, earnings trajectory, and retirement savings, particularly in the years surrounding diagnosis. A 2023 Mayo Clinic study found that menopause symptoms cost U.S. women an estimated $1.8 billion in lost working time annually. The women most impacted are those in peak earning years, the same women most critical to their organizations and most vulnerable to compounding retirement losses if they step back now.
Listen to this episode if...
You’ve been wondering if you’ve lost your ambition, or if something else might be going on
You’ve never thought about menopause as a financial planning issue and want to know what you might be missing
You’re an HR leader or company executive who wants to understand the real cost of ignoring this
You’re 20 or 40 or 50 or 60 and wondering whether it’s too early or too late to start thinking about this (it is not)
Lift Her Up
Visit menoandmoney.com to sign up for Kim’s upcoming live, small-group working sessions to help you actually tackle these costs. Only 10 spots. Register here with code UPLIFTERS2026 to save 10%.
Follow her on Instagram and Facebook at @menoandmoney and connect with her on LinkedIn, where she posts actionable strategies for mitigating the menopause tax.
If you loved this story...
You’ll also want to hear from Julie Gordon White, CEO of MenoWell, on building a menopause wellness company from personal experience, and Denise Pines, founder of WisePause Wellness and the FemAging Project, on why midlife women deserve research designed specifically for them, and Karissa Pfeffer, who shares even more specific guidance for company’s to better support women through midlife.
