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Retirement planning is never one-size-fits-all, yet many women encounter similar challenges along the way. Between different health outcomes, greater caregiving expectations and smaller lifetime earnings in comparison with men, retirement planning for women presents a host of unique challenges for financial advisors.
Tackling those challenges involves far more than financial planning, but advisors can help address a great deal of those barriers to retirement if they educate themselves — and their clients — on the unique financial issues women face as they age, according to a webinar held this week by the North American Securities Administrators Association’s Senior Issues Committee.
On average, women have less than half the retirement savings of men — $44,000 compared to $91,000, according to a report from the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies.
As a result, a greater portion of women take Social Security before the full retirement age than men, leading to a loss in lifetime benefits, according to a report released by the Social Security Administration in December 2024. Research shows that women, on average, also work fewer years and have fewer lifetime earnings compared to men, resulting in smaller Social Security benefits in retirement.
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Among retired workers, monthly benefits averaged $1,714 for women and $2,106 for men in December 2023, a roughly 23% gap in benefits, according to the Social Security Administration.
Along with a persistent gender pay gap, women tend to contribute less to Social Security than men because of greater caretaking expectations, according to a report released in 2024 from Goldman Sachs. The report, which surveyed 5,261 individuals in July 2023, found that a larger portion of working women left the workforce to care for a family member compared to their male counterparts.
That same survey found that twice as many women retire from the workforce to take care of a family member, compared to men.
“The younger generations, think about Gen Zers and the millennials, we’re seeing an average of 36% of them opting out of the workforce or reducing their hours significantly in order to focus on caregiving,” said Vanessa Okwuraiwe, a principal on the strategic leadership team at Edward Jones, during the webinar. “So, it’s really important that we look at what solutions we, as the financial services industry, can proffer in the early stages in order to ensure that women have better outcomes financially.”
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Such financial challenges can lead to a bleak retirement outlook for many women. Among respondents in the Goldman Sachs study, working women reported being “very concerned” about their ability to meet their retirement goals at twice the rate as working men.
The study found one factor could drastically change that outlook: a retirement plan. Women with a personalized retirement plan reported being “very confident” in their ability to achieve their retirement goals at more than three times the rate of women without a plan.
Okwuraiwe said that advisors need to start working with women clients early to ensure they’re utilizing the available tools to set them up for retirement. Taking advantage of things like 401(k)s, 403(b)s and annuities early can help women be in a better position later in life if they decide to reduce their hours or leave the workforce to take care of a loved one, according to Okwuraiwe.
Advisors should also be mindful of different health outcomes for women, the webinar panelists said. Out of the roughly 6.9 million Americans age 65 and older who have Alzheimer’s, nearly two-thirds are women, according to the Alzheimer’s Association.
The leading contributor behind that statistic is longevity. Women have a higher likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s than men because on average they live longer. At 65, a woman in the U.S. is projected to live another 23 years, nearly three years longer than a man.
“If we see any kind of mental decline, we need to address that,” said Jackie Larson, senior vice president at The Westside Group in Minnetonka, Minnesota, during the webinar. “We need to know some of the things to look for when we’re dealing with some of our clients”
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It can be helpful for advisors to have a trusted contact on the account to help manage issues like cognitive decline, should they arise, Larson said.
“One of my clients who I’d been working with for years … she started displaying signs of cognitive decline,” Larson said. “But, fortunately, I was able to make a phone call to a trusted contact and … say, ‘I’m seeing some things that just aren’t necessarily in line with where your mother had been even a year ago,’ and sure enough she did some testing and came back that she was starting to have some early onset dementia.”
Advisors can help women clients later in life if they need to catch up on their retirement savings, but the most valuable thing an advisor can do is to start working with clients early, Larson said. Doing so can set the client up for a better retirement, but it can also educate them on the long-term financial consequences of decisions like leaving the workforce for caregiving responsibilities.
“I don’t know that any of us would say that financial education is the panacea for solving all financial issues, but it truly is a foundation for making sure that people have those basic skills and knowledge that they need to make financial decisions,” Okwuraiwe said.
