Women worry more than men about outliving their retirement savings. Should they?
Women live longer, on the whole, and earn less. That requires some different strategies.
Chelsi Rhoades worries about whether she will have enough saved for her retirement.
And she’s just getting started.
The 23-year-old public policy and advocacy specialist from Washington, D.C., is contributing a portion of every paycheck to a 403(b) offered by the nonprofit where she works. An incentive: She receives a 6% matching contribution from her employer.
“That match is what encouraged me to take that step and start saving now,” she told me.
Even so, she stresses over her retirement savings. “It's hard to know if I'm on track,” Rhoades said. “I save a small portion of my income, and it's unclear how much that will be by the time I get older.”
Rhoades’s uneasiness aligns with a new retirement survey from BlackRock. When it comes to retirement confidence, the biggest gap in the findings wasn’t between generations, which many surveys trumpet. It was gender.
“I’ve often said that the retirement crisis is a women’s crisis,” Anne Ackerley, BlackRock’s senior adviser on retirement, told Yahoo Finance.
Only 59% of women surveyed report they feel on track for retirement, versus 75% of men. And 65% of women worry they will outlive their retirement savings, compared to 57% of men.
“I recognize that I’m young, and I have a lot more time than others to prepare,” Rhoades said, “but I feel like I'm already behind because I don't know how that's going to translate to cover monthly expenses and how long it would last.”
She’s right to worry that it might not be long enough.
Read more: Retirement planning: A step-by-step guide
Longer lifespans, higher costs
Consider this: Women generally live almost six years longer than men — a life expectancy gap that has widened from a low of 4.8 years in 2010. Meanwhile, 85% of centenarians are women.
So women have to fund longer retirements on lower lifetime earnings due to factors such as gender pay disparities and breaks from their careers for caregiving.
Women are also more likely to work part time or for smaller firms. This often means they don’t have access to an employer-sponsored, tax-deferred retirement plan even when they are working.
The fallout: There’s typically a 30% to 40% gap in savings at retirement between men and women, Ackerley said.
Mind the gap
Biting healthcare costs will be a big factor for women who haven’t planned for living a long life.
Even pre-retirement, women’s healthcare costs top men’s. Across all age groups from 19 to 64, women spend 20% more per year for out-of-pocket medical expenses, even when excluding pregnancy-related services.
In retirement, there’s no relief. An average man enrolled in Medicare Advantage would need $96,000 to cover his health spending needs in retirement, while a woman would need $113,000, according to the Employee Benefits Research Institute.
While few, if any, retirees would know such specific numbers, women, on the whole, have a lower understanding of personal finances, which only exacerbates their worries about living in retirement.
Yet there might be something else at play.
“I have to believe part of this is overconfidence on men’s part,” Stephanie McCullough, founder and chief executive of Sofia Financial, told me. “Behavioral finance research has shown that men are more prone to overconfidence and that women tend to underestimate their knowledge and abilities.”
Or maybe women are “simply more realistic here,” she said. “We know we live longer, that we earn less and have the chance to save less than men.”
What women can do
So if we know what we're facing, here’s how to tackle it.
“Women need to start in their 20s to make saving a high priority, plan for career breaks for caregiving, and generally approach saving for retirement as a long-term investment in their future,” Cindy Hounsell, founder and president of the Women's Institute for a Secure Retirement (WISER), told me.
One way to boost retirement savings is to put enough of your income in your employer-provided plan to get full matching funds, as Rhoades is doing.
Employers contribute on par with what you contribute up to a certain percentage. Most match 4% to 6% of your salary, so save at least that amount.
If you can save 15% for retirement every year — the combination of your employer's contribution and yours — that’s a goal.
Read more: How much money should I have saved by 50?
Start small, then automatically set that amount to increase a percentage point or two each year. Many people underestimate the long-term effect of small amounts of saving and investing, McCullough said.
“See if you can find $100 a month to direct into a low-cost diversified investment account, set it up on auto, and then add in extra whenever possible, and increase your monthly amount when you can,” she said. “It will do way more than throwing up your hands and saying you can’t do anything.”
Chances are you will have more than your employer-provided retirement account to lean on. Look up your Social Security estimated benefit and any pension plans you may have coming to you. Will you have other sources of income, from rental properties, working part time, or anything else?
Read more: What is the retirement age for Social Security, 401(k), and IRA withdrawals?
Finally, run your numbers on a retirement calculator such as one from AARP, Fidelity, or Vanguard.
“I have had clients, more than you’d expect, come away pleasantly surprised, even amazed at their retirement prospects once they do that,” McCullough said.
You might just find that things are better than they seem when you look at your entire wealth picture with an educated eye. Knowledge is power.
Kerry Hannon is a Senior Columnist at Yahoo Finance. She is a career and retirement strategist, and the author of 14 books, including "In Control at 50+: How to Succeed in The New World of Work" and "Never Too Old To Get Rich." Follow her on X @kerryhannon.
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