Susan Hartt is drawn to change and challenge. She had a successful career in marketing and public relations and had reason to be financially confident in her older years.
Three years ago, the bank foreclosed on her house. She said that she has never been as anxious in her life.
Ms. Hartt had encountered a lot of challenges. She had no retirement plan after her divorce because her husband had a 401(k) plan. She lost her lucrative jobs during the recession.
She was temporarily living in an apartment owned by her friends, and she was selling off her possessions to raise money.
A recent survey found that almost 30 percent of women over the age of 65 are very or somewhat worried about their finances, compared with 20 percent of men that age.
American women still face a harder road to retirement than men despite recent gains in education, employment and earnings. They live longer and are more likely to get sick and need long-term care. It is a troubling picture.
According to Richard Johnson, an economist at the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C., women are more likely to experience poverty in retirement than men.
According to an analysis by Dr. Johnson, 10 percent of women over 65 lived in poverty in 2020, compared with 8 percent of men. The poverty rate for unmarried Black women over 65 was over 20 percent.
Women who don't fall below the federal poverty line face economic precariousness. A quarter of working women over 55 are at risk of being among the working poor because they earn less than two-thirds of the median hourly wage. According to researchers at The New School in New York, only 15 percent of men fell into that category.
A quarter of women over the age of 65 think of an unexpected $1,000 expense as a major setback.
Anne Turley, a veteran film and video editor, is getting by after some scary years of underemployment. She relies 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217 800-273-3217
She needed a new hot-water heater and dental work. How do I pay this? is a question asked every month. She asked how she could find money for that.
The motherhood penalty is blamed for much of the retirement gender gap. Matthew Rutledge, a research fellow at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, said that women who raise children have fewer and lower-paid years in the work force than men or childless women.
He pointed out that Social Security calculates benefits based on workers' highest-earning years, and that mothers are more likely to have some zero-earning years that bring the average down. Part of the penalty is offset by Social Security.
Women are spending less of their adulthoods in marriages, which leads to a discrepancy in financial stability at older ages.
Women are marrying later or not at all. I-Fen Lin, a sociologist at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, said that divorces among people over 50 doubled between 1990 and 2010.
One in three U.S. divorces now involve gray divorce. As the population ages, the number of divorced older people increases.
Women initiate divorces more often than men in late middle age, but their financial health is often devastated.
Marriage reduces living costs and helps smooth out the fluctuations, the job losses, the periods of disability, and the years you took off to care for an elderly parent. It is almost like getting an insurance policy.
Losing that insurance takes a financial toll on women at any age, but after 50 there is less time to recover. It is difficult to get back into the labor force if you are not working. You don't have a lot of time left to work and recover. Older working women face discrimination.
Cynthia Palazzo lived in Ohio for most of her married life. She never opened a retirement account because she was paid for her work at the manufacturing company, but all of her money was going back into the business.
After divorce, Ms. Palazzo was lucky to land a $17-an-hour job in medical billing and then, after being laid off in June, was able to find another job. She said that she is okay now with the support of her husband.
She bought a condo, and it freaks her out that she will have a mortgage until she is 80. I started life over at 54.
Women's standard of living fell by 45 percent after gray divorce, while men's decreased by 21 percent, according to Dr. Lin and her co-author. Only 22 percent of women repartnered, compared with 37 percent of men, when they were divorced. In Ms. Palazzo's case, "Not going to happen."
Some inequity could be reduced by changes in Social Security eligibility. The benefit for a divorced spouse is half what a widowed spouse can claim. Years spent in child rearing or elder care could be partially compensated by caregiver credits.
The basic rules were written in the 1930s. They don't know that women have increased employment. They don't know that people don't stay married for long. Australia has a mandated retirement savings program.
It is possible to see progress in these patterns. Teresa Ghilarducci, an economist at The New School, said that it was good news that women were working and living independently.
Many women approaching retirement may struggle if they are single like Ms. Hartt. She gets a $2,500 monthly Social Security benefit. She will not be able to replace her 2001 Nissan when it dies. She said that she worried if she became disabled, physically or mentally because she had no family and no savings.
She moved into a Section 8 subsidized apartment in New Haven in September 2020 for seniors and people with disabilities. The rent is $670 a month.
She said she felt safe. I am at a kind of peace. She buys a few lottery tickets each week because she hasn't completely quashed her optimism.
