A recent article in CNN/Money stated this about women dealing with retirement.
“As it turns out, women probably aren’t saving enough to bankroll those extra years in style. They invest more conservatively, start saving later and are more likely to be in and out of the work force, according to a study released by Hewitt Associates, a human resources consulting firm”.
The article makes me wonder, because I see and know so many woman who are excelling in the job force. The article goes on to say:
“Women live an average of 22 years after retirement versus 19 years for men and medical costs are rising, so women will need to save 2% more than men every year over 30 years to maintain their standard of living upon retirement, the study found.”
The study states some of the factors that women are not saving have to do with their inherent characteristics. Typically, women are more conservative when it comes to money, which causes them to start investing at a later age than men do. Also women tend to in be and out of the work force to have babies and raise our children.
Here are more factors the states why women tend save less than their counterparts for retirement…
- Women tend to be a little more risk averse.
- Tend to fear the loss of money more.
- Women do not contribute at a high enough level to take advantage of the company match
- On average, women earned significantly less than men($84,000 for men compared to 57,000 for women)
A good example is my wife,in her 401K she don’t want to put a lot of money in the stock market instead opting for the stable money funds.She also don’t like me vinvesting in the stock market.
I agree that women are saving less, but I doubt this has anything to do with “inherent” characteristics. Rather, the emergence of women in the regularly-paid, retirement-eligible workforce is a pretty recent thing — only in the last 30 years or so. If we want to change this gender gap in retirement savings, we need to starting educating women now about the importance of such savings and give them tools to begin saving successfully.
I have always had as much money as possible put into my 401k, ever since I entered the work-force full-time after college when I was 22, but the last several quarters it’s been losing money due to the economy. And being vested doesn’t help if you get laid off before the vesting is full. Having it happen twice in the last ten years doesn’t help either! I think that’s something happening to both men & women right now; most of the women I know have paid leave & return full-time within 2-3 months of giving birth.
I enjoyed the interesting statistics about women and retirement. It’s hard for someone as young as me to be thinking about saving for retirement, as I don’t make much now and have good uses for that money. Plus, who’s to say I’ll live that long, or require the same standard of living?