Rewriting the Mind: How to Outsmart a System That Wasn’t Built for You

There’s a reason why so many of us feel like we’re constantly playing catch-up when it comes to money:
The financial system wasn’t designed for us.
Not for women. Not for the underpaid. Not for the emotionally intelligent. It was designed by men—for men—to maintain power.

And if we’re going to build wealth within it?
We need to stop blaming ourselves for not knowing the rules—and start learning how to bend them.

1. The Financial System was Built by Men to Control You.

Think this isn’t true? In his 2012 book, The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg discusses a Target data analyst’s journey to predicting spending habits. The task?

“Can your computers figure out which customers are pregnant, even if they don’t want us to know?”

Now, why would Target (or any other retailer) be so interested in focusing on a specific subset of women, such as expecting mothers?

Duhigg says it best: “[F]or companies, pregnant women are gold mines.” In fact, companies are so invested in predicting the spending habits of women, they design predictibilty models to track our most vulnerable life events as an opportunity to profit.

“Jenny Ward, a twenty-three-year-old in Atlanta who bought cocoa butter lotion, a purse large enough to double as a diaper bag, zinc, magenisum, and a bright blue rug? There’s an 87 percent change that she’s pregnant and that her delivery date is sometime in late August. Liz Alter in Brooklyn, a thirty-five-year-old who purchased five packs of washcloths, a bottle of “sensitive skin” laundry detergent, baggy jeans, vitamins containing DHA, and a slew of moisturizers? She’s got a 96 percent chance of pregnacy, and she’ll probably give birth in early May. Caitlin Pike, a thirty-nine-year-old in San Francisco who purchased a $250 stroller, but nothing else? She’s probably buying for a friend’s baby shower. Besides, her demographic data shows she got divorced two years ago.”
Scary? That’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Women are responsible for over 85% of consumer spending—yet women were denied access to credit until 1974. We weren’t even allowed to take out our own credit cards or mortgages without a husband’s signature. Now? We’re drowning in ads, influencer hauls, and pink tax markups. We are the financial backbone of most households and the #1 target for brands that want to drain us.

It’s not accidental.

• The system wants you to feel powerful when you spend, and guilty when you save.

• It wants you to feel deprived when you budget, and empowered when you impulse-buy.

But here’s the truth: Wealth doesn’t come from buying what everyone else is flaunting.
It comes from learning the rules of the game—and deciding to play smarter.

2. The Credit System Was Designed to Defeat You—So You’d Stay Dependent

Credit scores weren’t created to help you.
They were created to rank you.
They reward predictable borrowers—people who stay in just enough debt to be profitable to banks. If you don’t have credit, you’re punished. If you have too much credit, you’re punished. If you make a mistake? You’re punished for years.

This is not to scare you. It’s to free you.

Once you understand that your worth is not your score, you stop being afraid of it—and you start learning how to use it to your advantage.

Credit isn’t evil. It’s a lever.
When you know how to pull it with intention, it can open doors—homeownership, business funding, freedom.

But if you don’t learn the system? It’ll teach you the hard way.

3. Credit Cards Aren’t Bad. But You Have to Treat Them Like a Weapon.

Let’s make something clear: credit cards aren’t the enemy.
They are powerful tools. And just like any tool, they can help you build or destroy—depending on how you use them.

If you were never taught how to use them, it’s not your fault. But it is your responsibility to learn now.

The biggest mental shift?
You have to train your brain to treat credit like cash.
That means:

• If it’s not in your account, it’s not yours to swipe.

• If you don’t plan to pay it off in full, it’s not worth the “points.”

• Just because your limit is $5,000 doesn’t mean your budget is.

This isn’t about restriction. It’s about control.
Imagine having the benefits of credit—travel rewards, protections, credit building—without the stress spiral of debt. That’s what happens when you retrain your relationship with spending.

You can’t out-save your emotional spending. You have to unlearn the patterns that made you spend in the first place.

Final Thoughts: This Isn’t Just a Money Mindset. It’s a Revolution.

We’re not just learning to budget.

We’re learning to reclaim power in a world that profits from our confusion.

The financial system wasn’t designed for women to win.
So we’re rewriting the rules—one smart choice, one mindset shift, one quiet flex at a time.

Because being Net Worthy isn’t about being perfect.
It’s about being awake, aware, and absolutely unwilling to be underestimated any longer.


A note about The Power of Habit: I am a huge fan of this book. In fact, it is my favorite book of all-time. I highly recommend you read it. It is longer, and life is demanding, so if you cannot read the entire thing, read Chapter 7.