Study Highlights Women's Retirement Challenges

The Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies has released a report that generally finds that women face greater obstacles than men in achieving retirement security, in large measure due to the balancing act of meeting current and future needs. According to Transamerica, some of the contributing factors include:

• Greater likelihood of women being single parents
• Women taking more time off than men to care for children or aging parents
• Women being more likely to work part-time and thus have less access to a workplace retirement plan
• Women's income levels tending to be lower than men's, resulting in lower lifetime earnings, lifetime savings, and Social Security benefits
• Women's life expectancies are longer than men's, resulting in a need for greater savings

Almost  one third of the women surveyed expect to provide financial support for family members when retired. Current financial challenges, such as paying off credit card debt, are seen as getting in the way. Transamerica notes a concern that only one in five women have a backup plan if forced into retirement earlier due to job loss, health problems, or some other factor. Women estimate their retirement savings needs at a median of $500,000, versus men, who place the figure at $750,000. Both of these figures, however, are many times higher than the $77,300 average account balance recently reported by Fidelity or the  just under $60,000 average estimated by EBRI. Additional details and recommendations from the Transamerica report are available on its website.