After looking at various sources, including the Women’s Institute for a Secure Retirement and the National Council on Aging, here are the top retirement challenges for women:

1. Women live longer than men, often 3-6 years longer. Increased longevity increases all financial risks such as inflation, death of a spouse, and unexpected health costs.

2. Women earn an average of 21% less than men during working years.

3. Women receive significantly lower retirement benefits than men because they worked nine less years full-time than men to take care of children.

As a result, women have these concerns: 89% concerned about increasing cost of health care;75% about long-term care expenses; 71% about caregiving needs; 56% worried they will not have enough money to live comfortably in retirement.

Here are some solutions for women already retired. If you are single (either divorced or widowed), you have to stand on your own. One solution that is not common, but makes lots of common sense, is to rent out part of your house via Airbnb or a rental ad. I know one single client who arrived in America with nothing; became a nurse practitioner; and rented out an in-law unit of her big house for $1,500/month. If you have a smaller house, even one housemate typically will pay at least $600/month plus half the utilities, or a total of $800/month.

Another solution is to have a part-time job or to have a small side business. There are companies that specialize in offering tutoring to students K-12. If you are a great photographer or piano player, there are opportunities to shoot weddings or have long-term teaching of students.

If you are not yet retired, here are some practical strategies:

1. Plan to work until age 70 and don’t take Social Security (SS) until age 70, but only 4% make this decision. The average monthly SS for women is about $1,900, you would probably receive $3,000 or more at age 70. If you have no debt (meaning your house and car are free and clear ), it’s possible to live on $3,000/month of Social Security income.

2. Buy a private pension annuity. If you are age 65 when you buy that annuity and wait until age 70 to trigger your lifetime income, it’s often possible to get a 10% rate of cash flow. Example: buy a $250,000 annuity at age 65 and then receive a $25,000 annual income at age 70, guaranteed every year no matter how long you live. In contrast, the current interest rate for buying a 10-year US Treasury Bond is about 4.36% and 4.93% for a 30-year Treasury Bond. Since 2000, the average dividend yield for stocks in the S&P 500 Index has been 2%.

3. Choose a job, even if it’s for your last 10-20 years of your career, that has an old-fashioned pension.

Example: A client took a job as nurse with the State of AZ for the last 10 years of her career because it offered a pension. She waited until age 68 to start Social Security. At age 62-64, she deposited $300,000 in various private pension annuities and waited 9 years to start her lifetime income. Today she has a total $102,000 of steady income, not tied to the stock market. She pays about $9,000 of income tax and so has $93,000 annual spendable vs $40,000 of actual spending. She does NOT worry about her retirement security and has plenty of fun and travel money.

To RSVP for future seminars or schedule a free consultation, please contact Dr. Harold Wong at (480) 706-0177 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. His website is www.drharoldwong.com.

Dr. Wong earned his PhD in Economics at UC Berkeley in 1974 and passed the National CPA exam in 1979. He has appeared on over 400 TV/Radio programs.