Women feel less confident about retirement savings: BlackRock
A new "Read on Retirement" report from BlackRock shows that while confidence about retirement savings among Americans is up, women are more likely than their male counterparts to be worried about staying on track financially. Yahoo Finance Senior Columnist Kerry Hannon joins Wealth! to discuss the study and share three of her top tips when saving for retirement. Hannon explains that women feel like they're going to outlive their money. On average, women tend to live about six years longer than men, so they should have a larger-funded retirement account. In addition, they tend to be out of the workplace at some point during their lives to focus on caregiving if they have children. This may put retirement savings on hold, especially as women still grapple with the wage gap. Lastly, women usually pay higher healthcare costs than men — another factor that eats into the money that could be saved for retirement. Her top tip is to save enough. She explains, "If you have an employer-provided retirement plan, try to save enough to meet that employer match, which is usually about 4-6% of your salary. So if you can bump up your total, the combo of yours and theirs to a 15% a year savings rate, that would be amazing." Hannon also encourages using retirement calculators to establish a general overview and timeline when it comes to retirement. Finally, she stresses the importance of looking at your entire wealth picture. "That might make you feel just a little bit better because you may have home equity, you may have savings outside of your retirement accounts. And of course, you hopefully, if all goes well, you're still going to have your Social Security. So it's not all loss, but there are other ways to build your confidence by looking at the whole picture," she says. For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Wealth! This post was written by Melanie Riehl
