Older Women Are in Worse Financial Shape Than Before, Data Says
Though the fact that women typically earn less money than men has always spelled trouble on the retirement front, recent data reveals that most women don't have the knowledge necessary to make long-term financial decisions. Specifically, only 18% of retirement-age women could pass a basic quiz on planning for the future, whereas 35% of men could do the same.
But that's not the only negative piece of data on women and retirement to come out lately. According to new research from the George Washington University Global Financial Literacy Excellence Center, women in their 50s are more financially fragile today than they were a generation ago. Not only has debt doubled for women in their 50s since the early 1990s, but twice as many 50-something females have less than $25,000 in savings. And that's a real problem, because women who are already in their 50s are generally looking at just 10 to 15 years to eliminate debt before retirement and catch up on building a nest egg. When we throw in the fact that women tend to live longer than men, and therefore require more savings, it becomes all the more critical for older female workers to clean up their finances while they still have an opportunity to do so.
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Source: Fool.com
