independent women

[littlenothing]

This article regarding women and retirement is slightly disturbing. Some alarming statistics include:

# Women, on average, earn 76% of what men earn, resulting in an average lifetime earnings differential of $250,000

Comments

[kalanna]

Retirement scares me. I know I'm on my own and I've researched and discovered I should have an extra 10k in my 401k at my age. Yeah - not gonna happen.

Do you have a Roth IRA? I started one of those but I usually have difficulty depositing money into accounts. Having the 401k plan auto-deduct from my paycheck means I never miss the money..

[littlenothing]

I just have the state pension plan and the 401(b). At this point, I'd like to focus on the 401(b) rather than have money all over the place. Some financial minds recommend adding whatever work raises you get to your retirement plan, so like if you get a 3% raise, increase your IRA or 401 contributions by the same percentage.

[kalanna]

Yeah - Phil and I just found out we owe Uncle Same again, even though we paid 10k in taxes for our house. The government for some reason took less from us in 2009 even though we both claimed zero.

We've decided that instead of electing to withhold more from our paychecks for the government to take - we will have more contributed to our 401k.