Vincenza Vicari-Bentley, AFC Congratulations! You’ve decided to put money for your retirement through an account offered by your employer. You’ve taken the first big step but now you may face a much tougher decision: how to invest your retirement savings? You might be overwhelmed with information from your employer and it might be several pages of instructions and advice about things like asset allocation, fund performance, and fees. You probably want a simple answer. However, when figuring out which investments are best for you, there are a few recommended steps:
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Jerevie Canlas, Ph.D., CFLE Historically, women are poised differently for retirement compared to men. Most significantly, women work fewer years and earn less. Women only earn .82 cents for every dollar a man makes, and the discrepancy is larger among women of color. Women spend an average of 9 years taking care of family members instead of being active in the workforce. Women leaving the workforce to take care of family members is very common, and more especially so in the COVID-19 era. A 2020 survey on the impacts of the pandemic showed that 45% of women have taken on a larger share of caregiving responsibilities since the pandemic and 39% are considering leaving their jobs so they can take on caregiving responsibilities. In the past year, about 3 million women have left the workforce and many are considering quitting their jobs or reducing hours. The phenomenon has been called different names - she-cession, pink recession, etc. 400,000 more women than men have left the workforce since the onset of this pandemic. Guest Contributor: KristiLyn Wilkinson, M.S. USU Extension Empowering Financial Wellness Program Manager Welcome to Part 3 of 3 in this series on financial health for women and “working out” your retirement! Did you miss Part 1 or Part 2? Don't miss them! ... Now that you have decided which IRA type is right for you, how do you go about opening one? There are multiple different kinds of accounts that can be designated an IRA; mutual funds, stocks, bonds, CDs, saving accounts, etc. Think about your IRA as being a cookie jar. You can put a variety of different cookies into the jar. The type of “cookies” or “investments” you put in the jar depends on what your long-term goals are. Then think about writing on the cookie jar either “traditional” or “Roth” and this will let you know what kind of tax benefit you are going to get on the cookies in your jar! Are you thinking about downing a package of Oreo’s yet? Because I am! Guest Contributor: KristiLyn Wilkinson, M.S. USU Extension Empowering Financial Wellness Program Manager Welcome back to Part 2 of 3 in this series of financial health for women and “working out” your retirement! If you read Part 1, I know you are anxiously waiting in your stretchy pants to jump right in, so here we go! What is an IRA? IRA stands for individual retirement account. There are two kinds of IRA’s, the traditional and Roth. I will break each of these down so you can decide which one is best for you. Click "Read More" below to keep reading! Guest Contributor: KristiLyn Wilkinson, M.S. USU Extension Empowering Financial Wellness Program Manager In honor of celebrating women and our financial health, I want to talk about one area of our budget that might be a little weaker than the rest, saving for retirement. It is so important but is something we often put aside thinking “I will deal with this later”. It doesn’t impact our immediate financial situation, so it can be easy to not give it the proper attention and strengthening that it needs. But what happens to our muscles if we don’t consistently use them? They aren’t in the healthy condition we need them to be in when we need to use them. You know what I am talking about…that time you suddenly decided to go on a five mile hike with friends, even though you regularly circle the parking lot waiting until the closest spot to the store becomes available so you don’t have to walk very far, and then lie in the fetal position for two days with legs on fire after said hike... |
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