Women and retirement planning
Here are two truths we’re widely familiar with when it comes to gender: Women are more likely to live longer than men. And women are more likely than men to control household finances. (Are these two truths coincidence…or causality? O, snap.)
Against this backdrop, let’s examine another truth: When it comes to retirement planning, American women lag behind men in a big way.
It’s a big gender gap and an even bigger disconnect: On a micro level, women are traditionally financial planners, managing day-to-day expenses and bookkeeping. But take a macro snapshot and it’s pretty obvious that women aren’t looking at the big picture and thus aren’t planning for the distant reality of life in retirement, a life that on average is three years longer than that of their male counterparts.
A few unsettling stats underscore this great retirement divide:
Of the 62 million wage and salaried women working in the United States, just 45 percent participated in a retirement plan. Women overall are 71% more likely than men to live below the poverty line in retirement. When you compare unmarried women to married couples, the statistics are more shocking: Single women are four times more likely than couples to live in poverty. A survey by the Employee Benefit Research Institute shows that whereas men say they need a million bucks or more for retirement, women say they don’t know how much they need. Our hope? That . . .
