EMPOWERING WOMEN

By Leslie Boyden-Coon | May 7, 2019

Many women feel these pressures:

As a woman, I have experienced my share of wage and employment battles. After all, I grew up in an era when men were the primary breadwinners. This meant that women didn’t have the time to really grow and save for their retirement. They depended on their spouse to provide for retirement. This was true with my mother and father. He went out every day and provided for the family. My mother stayed home to take care of the four children and this was a huge job, it came with no wage or retirement savings.

Today, much has changed, almost all women that I know and have met are working alongside of their spouse.

In fact, the National Institute on Retirement Security reports that women over the age of 65 are 80% more likely than men to live in poverty. That’s in part because people who dedicate their time to the care of children or a relative don’t just make less in their prime earning age, but receive less once they are eligible for federal benefits.

Women as caregivers…more than 43 million caregivers (60% of whom are women) which means they are not participating in the workforce and their average lifetime wages are $274,000. This also means that their social security benefits are impacted as well in order to take care of an older parent.

A women’s average monthly social security benefit is just 78% of the average monthly benefit of men. But women generally live longer than men and really need to have a greater benefit to live in retirement.

Providing women, a plan to supplement their lower social security benefit with a Tax- Free income is one of my primary objectives. In general, the cost of these such plans are less expensive than their counterpart. Afterall, like I previously stated, women are living longer than men and this plays a key role in the amount of asset growth she can accumulate during her working years, which will provide her a greater Tax-Free income.

Women Empowerment can be defined as

The ability for women to enjoy their right to control and benefit from the resources, assets, income and their own time, as well as the ability to manage risk and improve their economic status and well-being.