Why Retirement Planning is Harder for Women than for Men
Women, money, and all the reasons we need to be paying more attention
“I had a spending plan and a retirement plan... sort of. Kinda. Not really,” Hana admitted to me over email.
Hana is a research oncologist. By nature of her work, she has to be precise and data-driven. So, decades ago, when she felt “huge” amounts of stress managing money with her young family, she experimented with every tool she could find, all the usual suspects: Excel, Mint, even the tagging feature inside her banking app.
But each software had the same blind spot: they “focused mostly on forecasting,” which meant she could put off hard decisions and avoid making trade-offs.
She wasn’t learning how to be intentional with her money.
For a long time she just managed cash-flow, keeping enough in the accounts and making sure nothing bounced.
Hana grew up in a home shaped by Depression-era frugality. Saving was common, but planning how to actually spend your money was never taught. For decades she would struggle with understanding how to spend with intentionality.
While in academia, managing research grants felt surprisingly like managing a small business… which she had absolutely no training in. But, she said, “With time, I got better at managing the money side of research.”
Then she left academia, and literally doubled her paycheck overnight.
“I know that sounds awesome,” she says, “But we seriously, seriously underpay academics.” (No argument here.)
Suddenly, she was stretched in a new direction, learning to manage her new cash flow. With two young children, it was chaos.
One thing she did do right was maxing out retirement accounts every year without fail. And she’s proud of this, but at some point she went back and did the math on those years where her income jumped after leaving academia.
If she had actually been proactively directing her money, there would be an additional million dollars in her portfolio today.
That’s a lot more dollars.
“That one I very, very much kick myself for,” she said. “It’s a lesson I share with mentees and young people whenever this topic arises… don’t make my mistakes.”
Which is why Hana reached out to the Budget Nerds after a recent episode, so she could share what she’s learned about the unique financial challenges facing women.
She said it felt like many women she knew were burying their heads in the sand about their financial future. Maybe they have a good income or life seems stable, but what they don’t have is a spending plan.
“And every financial advisor will tell you, the biggest impact on the viability of your retirement plan is your spending plan.”
Here’s an example of one of those financial challenges unique to women that rarely get discussed:
“I realized that my husband was planning for a retirement through his lifetime, not for whichever of us lived longer... which, based on family medical history, was statistically going to be me.“
Women live longer1 and yet they retire, on average, with 25 to 30% fewer financial resources than their male peers2.
Many of the other statistics are equally as stark:
Women earn on average 15% less than male counterparts3.
They’re 14% more likely to be single parents4.
Over their lifetimes, they’re 43% more likely to take career breaks to care for family (children, aging parents—sometimes both)5 which has compounding effects on Social Security6 benefits that most people don’t fully understand.
More than 43% of women in single-parent households live below the poverty line.9
“I don’t believe women today have it harder than men with managing finances,” she told me. “But I do believe we have it different. And the shame element makes us stick our heads in the sand. We can’t address what we don’t see.”
It’s only been a few years since she started YNAB, which helped her see the full picture. She’s been able to make a plan both for lots of family travel and a strong financial future.
“It has made a great difference,” she said. “As I built a sense of where I stood, I started to feel like I was taking control. It was empowering! And that feeling of empowerment, it was exciting. That’s where we start. Figuring out the actual, accurate, state of affairs. And then using that to build a plan.”
Peace, presence, and joy— that’s what she wants from retirement. And while she hasn’t entered that stage of life yet, for the first time, she told me, she can actually see the path.
I’d love to hear from you:
What's one vision for your future that gets you out of bed and taking action, even when it's hard?
Until next time,
Dan
Harvard School of Public Health 2024_Apr_22. Why the longevity gap between men and women is widening.
US Treasury, 2024_Sep_20. Spotlighting Women’s Retirement Security.
Pew Research Center. 2025_Mar_04. Gender Pay Gap in US has Narrowed Slightly over 2 Decades.
US Census Bureau. 2024_Mar_21. Single Parent Day.
LinkedIn Research. 2024_Nov_06. Global Gender Gaps in Career Breaks.
Principal. Breaks in your Career?
Wiley Online Library. The Gender Gap in Lifetime Earnings.
Harvard School of Public Health 2024_Apr_22. Why the longevity gap between men and women is widening.
Status of Women Data, based on U.S. Department of Commerce 2014a. Women’s Poverty and Economic Security.
Hana’s line about her husband planning for his retirement lifetime stopped me cold. Not because it’s unusual — because it’s so common that most couples never even name it out loud. The planning just quietly assumes a shared endpoint. What I see, over and over, is that the gap isn’t always between what women earn and what men earn. It’s between the life being planned for and the life that’s actually most likely. That’s the conversation that changes everything — and it almost never happens until something forces it. Thank you for writing this one.
Definitely like to hear more about this subject!