A recent survey found that nearly 40% of women between the ages of 30 and 55 worry that they won't be able to save enough for retirement and will spend their retirement years at or near the poverty level.
The National Women's 2005 Retirement Survey found that women of colour are most worried about their ability to save for retirement. 53 percent of women of colour say they expect to live in poverty or close to it when they retire, but only 33 percent of all men say they expect the same thing.
Teresa Heinz, who started the Women's Institute for a Secure Retirement and is the chairman of the Heinz Family Philanthropies, was in charge of getting the survey done.
Here are some of the other most important things the survey found.
- When asked, "Do you think that you are saving enough money for retirement right now?" 62% of the women who were asked said "no." Seventy-four percent of African-American and Hispanic women said they don't save enough money.
- Fifty-two percent of women, and 57 percent of Hispanic women, plan to keep working after they reach retirement age.
- When asked what makes it hard for them to save for retirement, African-American women are more than twice as likely as white women to say that they have to pay for their adult children or grandchildren. 63 percent of the African-American women who help support their adult children or grandchildren say they spend between $100 and $1,000 each month on them.
- After paying their bills, 54% of women have little or no money left over to save for retirement. This number goes up to 62% for Hispanic and African-American women.
The Heinz Family Philanthropies asked the Christie Foundation, the Barbara Lee Foundation, and others to do this survey. The goal was to find out what women's biggest problems are when it comes to saving for retirement and to use the results to come up with ways to help women protect their financial futures.
The survey asked questions of 1,700 adults, and the survey results can be off by up to 2.4 percentage points.
