Rice Krispies & Toys for Tots: Treats 4 Toys
One of my favorite morning cereals to buy for my kids is Rice Krispies. They love ever flavor made and it is the one cereal they always ask for by name. We also love...
How to Own Your Future
This How to Own Your Future #OwnMyFuture post is a sponsored post for SheSpeaks and Prudential.
How to Own Your Future #OwnMyFuture
Did you know that on average, women have 30% lower retirement balances than men?1 This is 100% true in my house.
Did you also know that 44% of women have no life insurance?2 Even among the ones that do own life insurance, most are underinsured. I know that I am.
These statistics are scary, aren't they? At this point in my life, I fear that I may never be able to retire and that is most certainly not what I planned. As a woman, I am always ready to take on new roles in pretty much any area of my life. However, that doesn't really apply to my finances because for some reason it just seems so scary, so I do nothing instead. We had some big financial setbacks after our third child was born with a congenital heart defect. She had open heart surgery at just four months old and the medical bills definitely took their toll on our finances.
Prudential is researching the financial challenges that women face. Since women tend to live 5-6 years longer than men3, I fully expect to be single later in life. I need to face my financial challenges now.
Prudential’s Financial Experience study tracks women’s outlook towards financial planning. Women do care about financial security (their most important goal is having enough money to maintain their lifestyle through retirement). Prudential has learned that many women don’t care for the financial services jargon and they feel time-starved and cash-strapped. So even though they take care of day-to-day budgeting, they leave out some of the important pieces of long-term financial planning such as insurance and saving for retirement. We characterize this behavior as lower engagement.
My Financial Challenges
Wage and Income Gap
On average, women earn only 79% of the income earned by their male counterparts, for many reasons4. This has been my experience and when getting copies of my social security report versus my husband's, I could see that he would be getting a lot more money. This means that I need to invest in my retirement right now.
Investment Gap5
My husband has a few different retirement accounts and his balances are four times higher than mine. By investing in my retirement now, I can close that investment gap and take care of myself later in life.
Women Are Living Longer and Living Alone6
Like I said above, I need to prepare myself for whatever happens which may include being single and living alone later in life.
Time Gap
Did you know that women in the U.S. spend 28 hours per week on household chores?7 This is uncompensated work that doesn't figure into women’s financial planning. Prudential has created a tool called the “Value of all you do” that lets you very quickly quantify the value of all the household chores you do on a daily basis. What you would need to pay someone to do those for you.
Want to own your future? Join the conversation and act on your financial future today! Prudential believes that women should AND can take control of their finances. Find a Prudential advisor to help get you started on this journey.
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This How to Own Your Future #OwnMyFuture post is a sponsored post for SheSpeaks/Prudential.
- Prudential Retirement analysis reflecting defined contribution plan balances of Prudential record-kept plans as of December 31, 2015.
- Source: LIMRA study, Life Insurance Ownership in Focus, U.S. Person-Level Trends: 2016
- Prudential Retirement analysis; National Center for Health Statistics, Health, United States, 2015: With Special Feature on Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities. Hyattsville, MD. 2016.
- U.S. Census Bureau, Historical Income Tables Table P-40: Women’s Earnings as a Percentage of Men’s Earnings by Race and Hispanic Origin, 2016
- http://fortune.com/2016/05/11/sallie-krawcheck-ellevest-launch
- Prudential Retirement analysis; National Center for Health Statistics, Health, United States, 2015: With Special Feature on Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities. Hyattsville, MD. 2016.
- Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, October 2016, http://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?queryid=54757.
