This week’s theme is: smart women retire rich. Here’s the reality: Women tend to outlive their husbands and they are already inheriting money at staggering rates. Women who are single later in life, through choice, divorce, or widowhood have a lot of important choices to make about money. 

So this week, I’m focusing on some core principles for women when it comes to managing money. 

Yesterday I talked about how feminine qualities that most women possess actually set us up to be very savvy investors...dare I say better than the menfolk.

Today, I’m talking about why you should count on managing your finances and investments on your own someday: most married women will outlive their husbands. 

In fact, according to the US census bureau, 80% of wives will outlive their husbands. On average, women outlive men by about 5-6 years. 

The problem with this when it comes to your finances as a couple is pretty clear: in practice with my own clients, I would estimate that for the vast majority of my married clients, the husband is the primary contact when it comes to the couple’s finances and investments, and he is also the primary and often the sole decision-maker. In many cases, the wife really doesn’t have an interest in being involved and prefers to outsource the money management in the relationship to the husband. 

But as we’ve seen today, when the money decisions are shifted too far in the direction of the husband, women are often thrust into managing their money completely on their own with very little experience making important money decisions. 

And to make matters worse, many women also end up making financial decisions for the family if their husband becomes incapacitated due to dementia or Alzheimer's or some other health issue. Not exactly an ideal time to learn how to manage money when you have the additional stress of caring for your spouse. 

But there is hope, and all it requires is being a little more proactive and involved when it comes to the money decisions in your household. My goal for today is to confront my married women listeners of the likelihood that you will outlive your husband. Tomorrow, I’m going to continue on this topic by talking about 3 things that every woman can do to better understand money. 

That’s it for today. Thanks for listening! My name is Ashley Micciche and this is the One Minute Retirement Tip. 

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