Imagine working hard all or most of your adult life, and counting down the decades and years to retirement, only to find when the time comes that you can’t actually afford to retire.
Female pensions and the female wealth gap has been in the news this week, because many women born in the 1950s, couldn’t retire when they had planned to, because they could no longer access their state pensions.
It’s a shocking situation, and it’s increasingly becoming the norm for people – women in particular – who haven’t built up enough funds to retire in comfort – or at all! – when they thought they could.
This article from The Guardian highlights the issue brilliantly – women would have to work for an extra 19 years to retire with the same pension as men! Long story short: women are seriously disadvantaged by the fact that we contribute less to our pensions than men do because we often:
- Earn less pay than men, even when doing the same job
- Take time out of full-time work to have and raise children
- Bear the financial brunt of childcare costs
- Tend to be primary carers far more frequently than men
Add to this the fact that women often live longer than men, so would ideally benefit from bigger pensions, and that the cost of living means our money covers less and less over time… and you have the beginnings of a crisis.
So what can we do to avoid being impacted?
As non-financial advisors, we can suggest three things you can do to take control of your situation, and (hopefully) retire as planned and in comfort:
- Educate yourself about the situation. Find out what your retirement pot looks like, what this will mean for you in real terms, and what your options are. If you need advice, get it from a qualified advisor.
- Take action – don’t procrastinate. Every day, week or month of inaction can be seen as wealth-building opportunity wasted. The sooner you take action, the more time you have to create real impact.
- Don’t panic, don’t despair. Sometimes the numbers can seem and feel overwhelming but every little helps – it really does. If you have to start small, then start small – that’s how we get oak trees.
If you want more information about the gender pension gap and what to do about it, you can start by joining The Black Network’s very first webinar tomorrow from 1pm to 1.45pm.
Register for Empower Her Wealth: Financial Mastery for Women.