Retirement Planning for Women

Retirement Planning for Women - as part of the expert series by GeoBeats.

Retirement planning is very different for women than it is for men and there are few reasons. First off, women live longer than their male counterparts. So our money has to last a lot longer than a man's money has to. Secondly, we tend to take time off from work, whether it is to raise our children or take care of some elderly parents. Our careers are often shorter than a man's career, and so we don't have as much in savings, our pensions tend to be lower and also security benefits tend to be lower.

So we need to really be mindful of the fact that we need to save more. And so it is just a tougher mathematical equation for women in general. The other thing about women that is a little different from men is that they tend to be a little bit more conservative. And so their investments tend to not grow as much as a man's investments. So there are lots of factors there that can make their chances of successive retirement much less than a man.

So what is the antidote to that? Well we want to make sure that we are becoming more financially educated because, once again, we fear the unknown, we fear these investments because we just don't know that much about them. The more we find out about investing the more we teach ourselves, the more comfortable we are with the investment landscape.

And so we will take a little more of that risk because we understand what we have invested in. And perhaps we will save more because now we realize these factors and we will put more way. So I think that those are very important things. Just being more educated, realizing that you have got to make your money last more, so you may have to take on more exposure to equities or stocks and mutual funds.

And I also suggest in addition that women continue to stay educated even when they are getting out of the work force temporarily, keep your skills current. Keep educated because you may have to go into the work force, you want to make sure that you can get the best job possible for whatever reason. Whether it is through a divorce or death, or you just want to go after having children.

The best thing for you to do is invest in yourself and your knowledge within your career as well as your finances. So that you can hit the ground running when you want to go back to your career and then with that you can save more for retirement.

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