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The original rules were written in the 1930s,” said Dr. Rutledge. “They do not recognize the increased employment of women. They don’t believe that people don’t marry for good.” The Mandatory Retirement Savings Program (Australia has one) will also help workers whose employers don’t offer them.
There needs to be an update in the rules, but personally, knowing the speed at which Congress moves, it'll be 10-20 years to fix, even then, not very well.
Men and women both pay into S.S. at the same rate. The same percentage of their income goes into S.S. [assuming that they have asked for an S.S. policy]
Hold the effin phone. You've got to be kidding me.
1. Our society tells women that they are less intelligent than men. Girls in school are told to never look like they are smarter than the boys.
2. Our society tells women that they are not as strong as men. I'm talking more than physical strength.
3. Our society shames women for wanting careers. If a woman prioritizes career and making money over being a wife and mother, she gets called a "feminazi."
4. Women are paid a fraction of what men are paid. No, this isn't because women don't know how to negotiate. There is still the cultural belief that women can depend on their husbands to support them. So they can be paid less.
5. Women are told that they are less able to do math so that many (but not all) become intimidated by finances.
6. Many men are intimidated by high earning women. Many married men go out of their way to control family finances.
Basically, there is a cultural issue where women are taught to be dependent on men. Women would pick higher paying career if men weren't intimidated by women and make it hard for them in the workplace. You all remember the Google incident from a few years ago where a male employee sent out a companywide manifesto declaring that women were notbiologically made for high paying jobs. It's this type of BS that still permeates our society.
SO, if we are so concerned with women and their financial security, the best thing we can do is to tell women to get all the education they can get, prioritize their career, earn the largest salary possible, reduce the number of children or have no children at all. This will make more women financially secure.
As a single woman, I made it a priority to make a six figure salary.
Another thing I might add is that women aren't willing to do those higher paying jobs that are difficult, demanding, and dirty. I worked a very difficult, dirty and dangerous job in a male dominated environment for many years and made a much higher salary than my female peers because I was willing to do this type of work. I worked shift work and I put in long hours. I worked night shift and weekends and holidays. I have financial security now as I approach retirement. How many women are willing to do this? Not many. They'd rather work in a nice office where they can't chip their nail polish.
Not everyone can be a lawyer, accountant or doctor. Women who don't go to college invariably choose jobs like grocery stores, waitressing or retail. My goodness. Don't they have any ambitions outside of getting married? There are a lot of better paying jobs out there.
"Invariably" is a very specific word that means ALWAYS. All non-college educated women do not invariably choose anything. We're not a uniform block of people that can't or won't think for ourselves. As a female military veteran, I know there are many thousands of women in the armed forces, most of whom did not go to college. As a retired municipal civil servant, I personally have known thousands of women who choose civil service jobs doing everything from EMTs to correctional officers. I've worked shift work, I've worked weekends, I've been on-call 24/7, I've signed up for aircrew in combat support missions. Some of my job descriptions over the years included working flat on my back wedged under a 27,000 volt power amplifier, and climbing rigging in an underground hydro-electric plant. Please don't label people as "women" and then assume to know anything about them.
Last edited by TheShadow; 01-01-2022 at 12:38 PM..
"Invariably" is a very specific word that means ALWAYS. All non-college educated women do not invariably choose anything. We're not a uniform block of people that can't or won't think for ourselves. As a female military veteran, I know there are many thousands of women in the armed forces, most of whom did not go to college. As a retired municipal civil servant, I personally have known thousands of women who choose civil service jobs doing everything from EMTs to correctional officers. I've worked shift work, I've worked weekends, I've been on-call 24/7, I've signed up for aircrew in combat support missions. Please don't label people as "women" and then assume to know anything about them.
He didn't mention the low life jobs men do (gas station attendants, retail, waiter, window washer's and other service jobs that if you don't own the business you don't make squat). I guess those are all respectable jobs as long as men do them.
I realize there are certain jobs that men will do that women are far less likely to do (mainly because for a long time those jobs were not really open to women). Underwater welding comes to mind; marine salvage; etc., etc. However, like the poster said those are high paid jobs. If women had not been systematically discriminated against for so long who knows what the landscape would look like. It's not like the bias and discrimination has totally ended yet either.
It starts early with Cinderella and GI Joe and how boys and girls play and are socialized.
Some women can be pretty lethal and competent in historically male fields. In the past, they had to act like men to get to participate. Usually they have to be far more competent than an equal male counterpart. Younger women are getting more opportunities and that can only be a good thing.
Perhaps there need to be more guarantees for women with respect to bearing and raising children because men are let off the hook and women are left holding the bag. It's going to be a problem moving forward and the birthrate is down and the country cannot grow without replacing the population.
Well this woman has 10 years of being a registered stock broker for a Wall Street firm under her belt.
I have done my own financial planning since Day 1.
While I got a BS and became a software engineer for my career I'd say that my Wall Street job was the best for learning a life skill...investing.
He didn't mention the low life jobs men do (gas station attendants, retail, waiter, window washer's and other service jobs that if you don't own the business you don't make squat). I guess those are all respectable jobs as long as men do them.
All jobs are respectable. Regardless of whether a male or a female is doing the job.
Every job today that earns Minimum-Wage or more is earning enough to support a couple and to keep them above the Poverty level.
Get an apartment that runs you 25% of your wages and you can start saving up to buy a house.
My Dw and I were both very active in our church for 30 years, in that denomination, they urge young men to become window-washers. Over the years we have known a lot of window-washers. It is possible to do very well for yourself in that profession.
Also keep in mind that here in the continental [or contiguous] US it is very common, no more than that, it has become culturally essential for each of us to volunteer to signup for a government-sponsored retirement plan. Every worker pays 6.2% of their income into their policy while our employers match us dollar for dollar.
Everyone working [who has volunteered for a policy] has a funded retirement plan.
I believe the issue is partly because most women don't start out in their 20's making financial decisions for future financial security as they tend to focus on getting married and assuming their financial security will be at least half provided by their husband. This is a mistake, as marriage isn't any guarantee. Many people get divorced. Also if the husband dies, she might still have a mortage on the house and might not have sufficient income to manage the household expenses. Many married women only work part time and if they do work full time, the job might be low paying. Many households require 2 incomes to get by let alone building up resources for retirement.
If a woman doesn't marry and makes it on her own but doesn't have a strong financial situation--job isn't high paying and she isn't saving or investing, then she isn't going to make it financially when she's elderly.
It all comes down to the fact that women don't prioritize their own financial security when they're young. They pick low paying careers and don't prioritize working at a high level through their adult lives. This isn't meant to ding them, it's just the facts.
I have an elderly friend right now who is struggling financially in retirement. As I see it, she made many financial mistakes, no one caused this issue but herself. Some of the mistakes she made were: 1) choosing a low paying teaching job because she "loved" it rather than considering a higher paying teaching job that might not be as much "fun" but would have provided a better financial picture for her as a single woman; 2) buying a house she couldn't afford and now refusing to move out of it despite the fact that she can't afford to maintain it; 3) not saving or investing for her future but spending her slim salary on travelling and decorating; 4) made bad decision to suddenly quit her job one day when she got lambasted about something (moral to story--don't quit job if you can't afford to); 5) taking SS too early.
There are a lot of kernels of wisdom in looking at someone else's mistakes and recognizing that there's no shortcut to financial security in retirement. It starts with smart decisions in one's 20's, willingness to work hard and save, not depending on others to provide for us, and other smart decisions.
I think some of this might have been more true when the women who are older now were younger, but probably won't be so true with the generations coming behind us.
Although I am obviously not representative of all the women of my generation, it was a time of change when I graduated from high school in the mid-1970s. Some of my friends were raised to go on to get a degree, but in my house, we girls were expected to get a job after high school and pay board and eventually we were going to get married and stay home like our mother. I remember hearing people talk about taking the SATS and I had no idea what that even meant except that it had something to do with college, so that didn't apply to me. Going to college was something other people did.
I did get the retail job and couldn't stand it. Absolutely hated working with a public that looks down at the person behind the counter or at the register. I started looking for something else, but it seemed that to get a better job, everybody wanted you to type, and I didn't know how. After a year and a half, I looked into going to secretarial school on my father's disabled vet benefits for dependents, and I asked my parents if it was OK if I took a year-long executive secretarial school course and didn't pay my $20 a week board during that time so that I could get a better job. I still worked part-time in a dry-cleaning store for spending money.
I did get married eventually, but I ended up being the main support and eventually had to get a divorce and then support my daughter as a single parent. That secretarial school job got me into a public agency, where I rose through the ranks over the next 37 years to a six-figure-salary management position despite my lack of education credentials, and I retired with a decent pension.
My 20-year-old self expected to be a SAHM and be supported by a man, and ironically, that not working out very well was the cause of my being successful in a career I never wanted.
You can bet your sweet bippy I raised my own daughter to get a degree and to expect to support herself.
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