Longevity risk, the risk of outliving your financial resources, is one of the most important challenges in retirement planning. Simply put, your money needs to last as long as you do. For women, however, this challenge is often especially pertinent.
According to the CDC, the average U.S. woman is expected to live to approximately 81.4 years, compared to 76.5 years for men, a gap of nearly five years.1 While five years may not sound substantial, financially it’s years of additional housing costs, healthcare expenses, inflation, taxes, and portfolio withdrawals.
Longevity alone is only part of the story. Women can arrive at retirement with financial disadvantages that make a longer retirement more difficult to fund. According to Pew Research Center, women in the United States earned approximately 85 cents for every dollar earned by men in 2024.2 Lower lifetime earnings can reduce the ability to save and invest consistently over time, particularly when combined with career interruptions related to caregiving. Many women step away from the workforce, or reduce working hours, to care for children, spouses, or aging parents. Those years outside the workforce can affect retirement contributions, Social Security benefits, pension accruals, and long-term compounding. Even highly successful professionals can experience gaps in retirement preparedness simply because their financial lives often involve caring for others before themselves.
This creates a unique challenge: women often need retirement assets to last longer while simultaneously having had fewer years to build them. This makes comprehensive longevity planning, extending beyond investment returns, critical. It requires a thoughtful, coordinated financial planning strategy through cash-flow modeling, tax-aware withdrawals, investment allocation, and contingency planning .
A portfolio without a financial plan is simply a collection of investments. When connected to a financial plan, it becomes a tool designed to support specific goals, spending needs, healthcare realities, and life transitions.
- Income planning helps determine how and when assets are distributed, including Social Security timing.
- Tax planning can extend portfolio longevity through strategies such as Roth conversions, asset location, charitable giving strategies, and tax-efficient withdrawal sequencing.
- Healthcare and long-term care planning become increasingly important as the likelihood of care needs rises over time.
- Estate planning ensures documents and decisions remain aligned with evolving family dynamics and longer life expectancies.
A strong plan assumes the possibility of a longer lifespan and stress-tests outcomes across scenarios such as early market downturns, rising healthcare costs, inflation, and shifting spending patterns. Spending itself evolves. Early retirement may include travel and activity, while later years may bring higher healthcare needs or reduced independence. A comprehensive plan should adapt across each phase of life.
Most importantly, living longer is a gift. The goal is not merely to preserve assets, but to create the confidence and flexibility needed to enjoy fully a longer life.
At Becker Capital Management, we believe longevity planning works best when investing, financial planning, tax strategy, and life transitions are coordinated together, not managed independently. A well-designed plan should evolve alongside your life and provide clarity not only for today, but for decades ahead.
If you are unsure whether your financial plan is built to support a potentially longer retirement, we are always happy to start that conversation. We have women-only teams that can help you at every step of the way.
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