The Heinz Family Philanthropies, who along with the Women’s Institute for a Secure Retirement (WISER), is working to improve the financial futures of millions of women.
An innovative online book entitled, What Women Need to Understand About Retirement is available for free at www.womensretirement.org and provides the reader with a blueprint to both get started planning a retirement and to grow that investment. It contains seven easy-to-read chapters, each written by an expert on retirement security issues. The book was written as an acknowledgment of the fact that poverty in old age is most often the face of a woman. As you may know, women face a lot of financial difficulties in their senior years. Here are some scary statistics from the publication:
* Two-thirds of working women earn less than $30,000 a year.
* Nearly half of all women work in low-paying jobs that do not offer a pension or 401(k) plan.
* The median income in 2004 for retired women was $12,080, compared with men’s income of $21,102.
Clearly, it’s important to get this valuable information into the hands of as many women as possible.
