I’m a money mentor and an investment consultant passionate about helping women and couples achieve their dreams of financial security and wealth to have the best life possible.
But many women and couples have challenges. They’re overwhelmed, or at least they tell me they are overwhelmed by markets; they feel inadequate. They experience so much money anxiety; they even have arguments over money. And ultimately, that doom and gloom feeling that it’s just too big and maybe even too late. Well, if you think that way, you are in the right place because that’s why I teach financial workshops, and money mentoring programs, bringing my expertise from being a professional money manager for over 34 years, owning and operating not one but two investment advisory firms. Along the way, I have helped countless individuals, couples, and families transform their lives by creating lasting real wealth. And everyone has the power to do this when they know how.
It’s no big surprise to anyone that there is a wealth gap between men and women. It showed up in a recent study published by Bank of America with jarring headlines. Women have significantly saved less in their 401 Ks than men, and what to do about it? Well, of course, that’s no big surprise. What is a surprise is just how much less. The study shows that women have saved 50% Less. That’s one-half the amount that men have saved. That’s big enough to put us on notice, ladies, that we may need to start socking away additional money to prepare for retirement. This Bank of America study was released called the 2023 financial life benefits Impact Report. Bank of America reviewed its retirement plan accounts nationwide. They serve more than 25,000 companies and over 6 million employees. This is a broad-based study.
Now 50% is a big gap. What’s causing that gap? Why are women saving for their retirement at a rate of 50% less than men? What’s causing that? The study points to some rather obvious reasons that women know about; we’ve experienced the gender pay gap. It’s still true today that women earn only 82% of what men earn in similar jobs. That means we don’t have as much to sock away as men do. But number two, it’s career interruption over the years. And of course, last time I checked, it’s the women who are the ones who have the babies and have to leave the workforce to raise families for at least a period of time, and sometimes for a couple of decades, they lose years of contribution. And that loss also means they lose the potential asset accumulation over time for their retirement. But number three, there’s an underlying problem here as well that we experience as women; we go into debt more readily to overcome shortfalls in our budgets. We pay down our debt first before contributing to our retirement. Why is that? I think that it’s because we, as women in general, are more sensitive to putting other people first; we put our family’s needs first, and we have to feed everyone else’s nutritional requirements before we nourish ourselves and our future selves. In other words, we’re not contributing to our future selves.
Your future financial well-being is at stake here.
- What about you?
- How are you doing with your savings for your retirement?
- This is a personal checking point. How are you doing? Are you contributing enough to your retirement?
- Have you been consistent?
- Do you have a plan?
- Are you socking away enough?
- Or do you need a pep talk on how to catch up?
I have found that our number one fear is that we won’t have enough money in our later years to take care of ourselves or that somehow we’ll end up destitute and that our money will not be sufficient. Is that you? What can we do about it? That is the ultimate question. Well, there’s plenty. Fortunately, there’s a lot that we can do about it. And if you begin now to recognize that you may have a problem, you can start fixing it. You may need to contribute more to your retirement. There are fixes.
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Reserve your seat at my next upcoming free online Money Talks workshop
at the end of July 2023