Women are flunking retirement planning. But men aren’t doing much better.

There was a quiz conducted by The American College of Financial Services that tested both men and women’s financial literacy when it comes to retirement. There were some surprising results.

Of men and women aged 60 to 75, only 18% of women passed the quiz whereas 35% of the men did. Now neither result was a great achievement by either gender, but when you look further into the results, the situation for women was much worse.

• Women showed lower levels of self-perceived knowledge.
• Women were more likely to identify as cautious or risk averse than male respondents.
• Women showed more conservative answers to investment questions.
• Women were far more concerned about retirement risks than men, especially cuts to Social Security.
• Women respondents were less likely to do internet searches to look up financial information.
• There were low levels of literacy impacting decision making by women, which could be negatively impacting their retirement security.

So, along with many other gaps that may impact a women’s ability to save for retirement, there is now the additional challenge of financial literacy.

In the following video, Pattie Lovett-Reid further discusses the results of this survey.

• What Women Approaching Retirement Need to Know About Their Finances
• Financial Advice for Women in Their 50s

About the Author

Susan Williams is the Founder of Booming Encore, a website and social media network dedicated to providing information and inspiration to help Baby Boomers create and live their very best encore.