Retirement Planning Tips For Women

A lot of the attention to retirement planning lately has been spent on preparing men for retirement. It's devastating to see that since us women generally live longer than men, nothing is openly discussed about how those savings stretch further to compensate for the additional years women live as a comparative. 

But, if a majority of male baby boomers are having trouble saving for retirement, are female baby boomers in the same boat?

You don't have to answer. I'll pretend you nodded. 

This article will talk about how women can plan for their retirement and start saving for their retirement lives. 

Setting up a retirement plan and saving for your retirement may be many years away for you but, if you start early, especially in your twenties and thirties and do that until you retire in your fifties and sixties, you'll have a much more comfortable retirement than your female counterparts who didn't save anything and now are relying on the government to help them out. 

Planning for your retirement may seem too far in the future but it can be here before you know it and the sooner you start saving the better off you'll be when it sneaks up on you. 

Studies show that there are 60 million working women out there and a little less than half are enrolled in a retirement plan. It will be hard to have a retirement fund if there are no contributions to it. 

Women don't work as long as men do at the same job. This is due to taking time off to care for the family to raise the kids. So women don't build up the required years to qualify for a sizable pension or retirement plan, leaving them with little or no savings from the companies they are working for. 

Women live longer than men. If you retire at 55, you can expect to live another 27 years on average. Men can expect to live another 23 years on average. If you're married and your husband was the bread winner and you have no retirement savings of your own, where will the income come from for those extra 4 years? 

Women also are risk averse when it comes to investing, choosing to invest in conservative investments and bonds which have guaranteed returns but lower overall returns. You'll preserve your capital but you won't have much to show for it when you retire and start drawing on those savings. So the choice is either have more money working for you in low, but safe, investment vehicles as you near retirement or invest more aggressively. 

Either way, women need to read about retirement planning as much or even more so than men because we will be spending more of our life in retirement. Talk to a financial advisor, read retirement planning books and check out all the free resources out there to help you save for your retirement. Most people have less than $USD60,000 saved in a 401k or IRA. The average Australian superfund is $A180k and average UK Pension is 80K GBP. There is no way this will last men or women for 20+ years of retirement. Government are not going to be able to supplement everyone... 

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Chris_Campos/110750