What older women don’t know about retirement could certainly hurt them. Both men and women display startling low financial literacy, but women passed a simple test of financial knowledge at half the rate of men, according to a study focusing on Americans of retirement age.
It is unfortunate that the people who are likely to live the longest understand the least about how to make their money last a lifetime. Only 18% of retirement age women can pass a basic quiz about how to make a nest egg last in retirement.
Women at retirement age, those between the ages of 60 and 75, understand the components of retirement income far less well than men of the same age, although even men don’t grasp the topic very well, the RICP Retirement Income Literacy Survey from The American College of Financial Services found.
Only 18% of retirement-age women can pass a basic quiz on how to make a nest egg last in retirement. Nearly twice as many retirement-age men are able to pass, and although those numbers are still grim, this underscores the trouble women face in their own retirement knowledge.
News flash: Retired women and women nearing retirement have a financial literacy problem. In a survey released today, the 2017 RICP Retirement Income Literacy Gender Differences Report, from The American College of Financial Services, only 18 percent of women age 60 to 75 passed.
Women are living longer and gaining in assets when compared with their male counterparts, yet only 18 percent of those that are retirement-age can pass a basic quiz on how to make a portfolio last in retirement.
According to the report “The Real Effects of Unconscious Bias in the Workplace,” several unconscious biases present in the workplace are: affinity bias, halo effect, perception bias, confirmation bias, and group think.
The average adviser is a 50-plus white male, but there are concrete steps advisers and their firms can take to increase diversity, according to Jocelyn Wright, chair of the State Farm Center for Women and Financial Services at The American College.
If you don't have a lot of money to spare and want to get on the right track, focus on covering all of your bases instead of investing in the next hot startup or buying property. Clear your immediate financial hurdles out of the way before aspirational investments (those can come much later), through earning more and managing what you do have better, and you'll be a lot better off.
