A Cure for a Woman’s Worry Lines
A new Bureau of Labor Statistics report states that 90% of the new jobs that were created during the last 12 months went to men, mainly because employers are more sympathetic to an unemployed man than an unemployed woman. Of course there are many, many qualified men and women who are looking for a job right now but it's primarily the older women who are in a precarious position.
This week in the Huffington Post, Barbara Hannah Grufferman, author of "The Best of Everything After 50" talks about a survey she conducted on Facebook and Twitter to find out what is really worrying women over 50. She discovered that the biggest concern of these women isn't about wrinkles, but about money. They are overwhelmingly fearful of being unable to financially survive in their 60's and beyond.
Women have good reason to be scared. Over 75% of our country's impoverished are elderly women, so this issue is serious.
More women are going through divorce and living longer than men and they are behind the eight ball when it comes to building decent retirement accounts or savings that will sustain them. It is true that divorced women who have been married for ten years or more and who do not remarry have the option to choose their husband's monthly Social Security payment if it's larger, but many experts are predicting that Social Security will likely run out of money in the near future.
So what's a woman to do? To start, obviously when she's younger - even in her 20's - she needs to think about her retirement and begin contributing to a retirement account at work if it's offered. In addition a woman needs to save for herself on a monthly and yearly basis. This takes priority over saving for a new house, (it’s better to rent for a few years), saving for a vacation or saving for her child's college education, (there are many other ways to pay for that).
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