More Women Fear Retirement
Here is the beginning of a guest blog I wrote for MoneyWiseWoman.com:
Although more and more women are enjoying long careers and in some cases even making more than their spouses, a new study reveals that women in general fear retirement more than men – and there may be some basis for their fear.
According to a study by The Hartford Financial Services Group, women’s worries focus on three major areas: inflation, health and longevity. On average, women end up working 12 fewer years than men for various reasons, and thus tend to have less put away for retirement. Additionally, given that statistically men die younger than women, women have longer to worry about being alone and having to provide for themselves.
In the study, 83% of the women revealed they feared that their purchasing power would dwindle due to inflation, whereas 69% of men had this fear. Declining health had 75% of polled women saying that they were “very” or “somewhat” concerned.
The third issue builds off of the second fear – because of increased life spans, outliving partners, cost of retirement in general and cost of healthcare specifically, 87% of women expressed nervousness concerning retirement.
And that’s where these fears tend to be strongly rooted in reality. A study by Hewitt Associates found that women need to save more for retirement than men. Additionally, the study revealed that the gap between the amount women need to save and the amount they are actually saving is larger than the gap for men.
Read the rest of my guest post on MoneyWiseWoman here.