Introducing the Women & Wealth Masterclass for Financial Planners

Financial planning has a preparation problem. The profession does a great job preparing planners for the technical side of the work, with courses, exams, and credential requirements that are rigorous and well established. The gap is on the human side. We aren’t teaching planners how to build relational, psychological, and communication skills that determine whether a client trusts them enough to tell the truth. This is especially true of women clients, who have historically been underserved by advisors and wealth managers. 

Being prepared to serve all clients well is the difference between a client calling you during a life transition… and calling another advisor. 

Nobody teaches planners how to close the human gap in tangible, actionable ways. Most planners figure it out over years of practice, through trial and error, through client moments they wish they had handled differently.

The Women & Wealth Masterclass shortcuts that learning curve. This course, Amplified Planning’s first-ever spotlight course, taught by Cary Carbonaro, CFP®, MBA, is now available for enrollment.

The business case for serving women clients well has never been clearer. An estimated $40 trillion will pass through to widows by 2048. Women are expected to control more than half of U.S. personal wealth, and, according to Cerulli Associates, firms that provide direct support for women will have “a tailwind for decades to come.”

However… women leave their financial advisors in disproportionate numbers after a major life transition because they don’t have a relationship with their financial advisor. Many women report that they felt like they were stepping into someone else’s financial plan with an advisor who had never really spoken to them directly.

That’s a preparation problem for this generation of financial planners, and Cary is helping us bridge this major gap! 

Cary Carbonaro, CFP®, MBA, is one of the most recognized voices in women’s financial planning. She has spent 25 years working with women clients, studying what works, what doesn’t, and where the profession still needs to improve.

She is the author of Women and Wealth: A Playbook to Empower Clients and Unlock Their Fortune, ranked among WealthManagement.com’s Top 10 Books of 2025 for Financial Advisors, which inspired this course. She also authored The Money Queen’s Guide (2015), an Amazon #1 bestseller. She serves as Managing Wealth Advisor and Women & Wealth Ambassador at Ashton Thomas Private Wealth and is a CFP Board Ambassador. Cary won the 2025 InvestmentNews DEI Trailblazer of the Year, and the 2026 InvestmentNews Financial Education Champion. She has also been ranked among Investopedia’s Top 100 Financial Advisors, including a #4 national ranking.

She is not talking about how to serve women from a theoretical perspective, as you can tell by her long list of qualifications. She has built a career on it, and this course is how she’s bringing 25 years of that experience to every planner who wants to do this work better.

The Women & Wealth Masterclass is eight modules of frameworks, real client stories, and immediately applicable tools. Here’s what each module covers:

This is the full business case for why planners need to learn to serve women well. It’s grounded in Cary’s own story and the data behind the Great Wealth Transfer. She dives into what the profession is still getting wrong, and why the planners who figure this out now will still be winning in 30 years.

You cannot understand how women experience money today without understanding the history that shaped it. This module covers the legal and cultural context, from coverture to modern breadwinners, and how that history still shows up in client meetings whether anyone realizes it or not.

Cary dives into the psychology of women’s financial decision-making: confidence, time, emotional load, and what she calls the Designer Bag Lady Fear. She also talks about why “pink is not a strategy” and what actually works to build planning conversations that connect.

This is a direct look at what advisors get wrong before, during, and after major client transitions. This is the retention problem the industry doesn’t talk about enough, and exactly what to do differently.

Widows and divorcees are not the only women you can serve. This module covers the full spectrum: breadwinners, business owners, women in transition, caregivers, and more, with case examples and planning conversation starters for each.

Women’s health equals women’s wealth. This module broadens the planning conversation to include healthcare costs, longevity, caregiving, philanthropy, behavioral finance, and the values-driven conversations that women clients actually want to have.

Do you know the language and questions that will build an authentic connection with clients? Cary shows you exactly how to hone in on strategies that grow a practice without a single hard sell. You’ll get scripts, language substitutions, and real conversation examples from Cary’s own client work.

Before you end the course, you’ll do a full audit of your client experience, redesign your discovery process, and create a framework for transparent fee conversations. Plus, you’ll create your own 30-day implementation plan to put it all into practice immediately.

The Women & Wealth Masterclass is designed for practicing financial planners and CFP® professionals who are already working with clients and want to serve them better — or who are sitting in on client meetings and want to prepare for the day they’re leading these conversations. The exercises throughout the course assume prior client experience; this is immediately applicable, not theoretical.

With that said, it is valuable for planners at every stage: new advisors who want to build the right habits from day one, experienced advisors who want to improve retention and deepen relationships, and firm owners who want to build a more women-centered practice.

It’s also for planners of all genders. The skills this course develops — how to listen differently, ask the question underneath the question, and build trust with someone who has been underserved before — are not women’s skills. They are planner skills. Advisors who develop them get better with every client they serve, not just women.

This course offers 4.5 CFP Board CE credits and 2.5 IAR CE. It does not offer CFP Board standard pathway experience hours. For experience hours, please check out Amplified Planning CORE!

The Women & Wealth Masterclass is Amplified Planning’s first-ever spotlight course, a new category of content that brings recognized industry voices into Amplified Planning’s learning environment on specific topics of high professional relevance.

“We are extremely selective about the expertise we bring into the Amplified Planning community,” said Hannah Moore, CFP®, CeFT®, Founder of Amplified Planning. 

“I’ve followed Cary’s work for years, and what impressed me most is that she isn’t talking about this theoretically. She has built a highly successful career serving women, studying how they experience financial advice and pushing the profession to do better. These are exactly the kinds of voices and lessons we want to amplify.”

“The goal of this partnership is to change this industry and make it genuinely female-friendly for professionals and for clients,” said Cary. “There is no better place to do that than with the next generation of planners, changing how they engage from day one.”

The women in your client base (and the ones you haven't met yet) are navigating some of the most consequential financial moments of their lives. They need planners who know how to show up for them. 

That planner can be you.

The Women & Wealth Masterclass is available now. The course (and all of its modules) officially starts September 28, 2026 — and everyone who enrolls before that date gets access to four live calls with Cary throughout the fall, including a final unrecorded session where you can ask her anything without worrying about what lives on the internet forever.

The course is eight modules, earns 4.5 CFP Board CE credits and 2.5 IAR CE, and is priced at $397. It is best for practicing planners and CFP® professionals who are already working with clients, and it is built for every planner who wants to get better, regardless of gender or years of experience.

Cary spent 25 years figuring out how to do this work well. This course is how she passes that on. We can’t wait to hear what you think!