Calming the Worst Fears of Women Retirees

“We focus almost exclusively on women in transition and their families,” Zohlen said of her firm. “The vast majority of our clients came to us when they are getting divorced or have lost a parent or a small business, so we do have particular expertise in helping women navigate through these transitions.”

“Most specifically, we deal with women facing a major live change that is going to have lasting impact on their financial future,” Zohlen said. “It’s not that the dollars are any different for women than they are for men. But how women communicate is completely different. How women want to be educated and empowered is very different.”

Zohlen cites all of the same circumstances noted by Sullivan that bring women into a retirement planner’s office. But she says there is an alarming new trend that is becoming too common – the older worker losing a job.

“A lot of what I see these last few years is what I call late life involuntary career changes,” Zohlen said.

“The scenario is that she’s 57-years-old and has been in senior management with a company. They’re doing some restructuring, some reorganizing, some downsizing, and she is thanked profusely for her decades of service and offered a nice fat severance package, but told her last day is going to be June 30,” Zohlen said. “She comes to me and says, ‘I think I’m going to be ok, but I’m not sure. So I need some help. Do I have the right kind of insurance? Do I have enough of it? Are my estate documents right for the legacy I want to leave?”

But most importantly, “they know in many cases they aren’t going to be able to get a job similar to the one they had. So they want to know, ‘can I do something else? Is it ok that I always wanted to be a chef? Is it ok if I go to the local community college and get a baker’s certificate and work in a bakery, because that is what my heart desires? Will I be ok if I do this instead? Can I volunteer? Am I going to be ok if I’m not making as much as I use to? Getting permission to pursue a passion that may have been on hold for decades is liberating for a lot of these ladies.”

This downsizing of a career obviously couldn’t come at a worse time for the soon-to-retire woman. And it makes the job of the retirement planners especially critical. This is where discussions about retirement age also get very important.

“A good financial planner is going to help her by saying, ‘let’s run some different scenarios and you tell me what choices you’d like to make,” Zohlen said. “Maybe you aren’t going to be able to retire at age 66. Maybe you’re going to need to work until you’re 70. How do you feel about that? Maybe 66 is ok, but you need to bring in $15,000 a year in supplemental income. So we’ll try to give them options so that they feel empowered that they have a choice in this.”

“It’s a combination of the iron-fisted velvet glove,” Sullivan said. “You need to be honest, especially with women transitioning from married to divorced, or married to widowed, if they are going to need to make lifestyle changes. You need to tell them that. But you’ve got to do that in a way that is nice. They’re going through a lot of emotional change.“

Which brings us back to the topic of the ‘silent partner’. Both Sullivan and Zohlen agree that too many women are unengaged in financial planning matters even while still married.

A recent study by financial research firm Hearts & Wallets referred to such women as the “uninvolved spouse,” and said that 80 percent of these uninvolved spouses are women.

“What I find to be very strongly the case is that in a couple one person runs the finances and the other person tunes out. I rarely get a couple where both people are deeply engaged in the process,” Sullivan explains. “In the majority of cases the person that doesn’t want to pay attention is the woman.”

“I tend to pay more attention to that person,” Sullivan said. “I look at them more. I try to engage more eye contact with them. I try to direct the conversation more to the less-engaged person. Also, I try to not use jargon that am using real people language and not financial planner language. I think that is something we all need to do more of, especially with an unengaged person.”