Years ago, I attended a retreat held by the Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership for twentysomething women. One of the discussions was on financial literacy, and I remember of the twenty women there, I was one of very few with a mutual fund, an IRA, and a sense of my credit rating. I got a gold star.
The National Women’s Law Center is hosting a webinar series on financial literacy, and it’s well worth checking out.
During this economic crisis — just about all of them. Women have a higher risk of poverty in retirement than men, particularly women of color and single women (whether widowed, divorced, or never-married), and Social Security is the most important part of many women’s retirement incomes.
As women think about retirement, they may take stock of their savings and realize they don’t have enough saved — and they don’t know what to do with the savings they do have. They may not know what benefits they can get from Social Security, and how their decisions about when to claim benefits (and their husband’s, if they are married) can affect the benefits they receive.
Don’t panic! The National Women’s Law Center is hosting a two-part series of free webinars to help women prepare for retirement, for service providers, advocates, and individuals. The first webinar is about women and Social Security; the second is about pensions and savings.
Register today! This online workshop is free to participants, but registration is required.
Planning for the Future: What Women Need to Know About Social Security
1:00 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday, June 23, 2009
I resent the perpetuation of the idea that people who are not legally married are single. Many of us are living with a partner whom we choose not to marry and/or cannot legally marry.
That said, the idea of my eventual retirement has terrified me ever since I worked at a food bank, helping elderly people sign up for food stamps. I very quickly realized that women had much lower social security incomes than men. I also worked with a lot of people who had immigrated into the US and their benefits were also way below those of non-immigrants. I seriously question the idea that our governmental retirement funds should be based on our lifetime over-the-table earnings.