By Jodi Penn Rives
Business Development Officer
The first Women’s Retirement Security Day will be observed on July 14th. It was created to bring attention to something many of us find daunting: planning for our own retirement. More than that, it names what women rarely say out loud but care about deeply: security.
Not just the security we all crave in our relationships, friendships, and work, but financial security across the whole arc of our lives. And financial security means different things to different women. The real question is: how do we recognize what we each need, and build a solid plan around it?
Why Women Face a Steeper Climb
Before we talk about solutions, it helps to name the headwinds. They’re real, and they compound on one another.
Caregiver Breaks
Women are far more likely to step away from paid work to care for others: young children, aging parents, a sick family member. These pauses rarely feel like financial decisions in the moment. They feel like love. But every year out of the workforce is a year of missed earnings, missed raises, and, most importantly, missed saving and compounding.
I saw this play out just this week, meeting with a couple who had done a lot right. The husband had set up education funds for the children and had a strong retirement picture of his own: a 401(k), an IRA, and a pension, which is almost unheard of these days. Together, they’d decided that she would be the children’s primary caregiver while they were young.
Partway through the conversation, she said something I hear more often than you’d think: “But what about my retirement? I don’t have a nest egg for myself.”
She was right. He was building his future; hers had quietly stalled. So we fixed it. They set up a dedicated retirement account in her name and committed to a monthly contribution, funded jointly, because their decision was mutual and so should the saving be.
That’s one family, multiplied across the country. How many women, right when they’re hitting their stride, have to stop for an aging parent? Isn’t there a way to smooth out some of the “stop and start” that fractures a woman’s earning years and, ultimately, her savings?
The Pay Gap
Pay gaps are real, and they haven’t been closing. In 2024, women working full-time, year-round were paid about 81 cents for every dollar paid to men, and that figure has actually widened two years in a row, down from 83 cents in 2023. For women who are minorities, the gap is far larger. Less income each year means less to save and less to compound over a lifetime.
Longer Lives
Women also live longer. As of 2024, life expectancy at birth is about 81 years for women and 76 years for men. That’s a beautiful thing, but it also means our retirement savings have to stretch across more years, often including years of solo living and higher healthcare costs.
Put it all together- career interruptions, part-time stretches, a persistent pay gap, and longer lives- and women are genuinely in a bind. That’s exactly the bind Women’s Retirement Security Day exists to address. The goal isn’t to discourage anyone; it’s to ask honestly: how do we build a secure future while carrying the roles so many of us take on?
Compounding: A Woman’s Best Friend
Here’s the good news, and it’s a big one. If the headwinds above compound against us, there’s one force that compounds powerfully for us, and that’s compound interest.
Compounding means your money earns returns, and then those returns earn returns of their own. Given enough time, it snowballs. A modest, consistent monthly contribution, like the one the couple I mentioned just committed to, can grow into something substantial over the years, because you’re not just saving your contributions; you’re earning on all the growth they generate along the way.
Time is the essential ingredient. Which is why the most important step, for any woman reading this, is simply to start, even small, even now. The interruptions and gaps in our earning years make it all the more important to let time do its work whenever we can.
Building the Security: Where to Begin
At Argent, our goal is to help women build, protect, and ultimately distribute their wealth. It all starts with the building, setting yourself up for success. Here’s where I’d begin:
Educate yourself. Understand the basics of saving, investing, and compounding. Knowledge is what turns anxiety into action.
Make a plan and define your goals. Get specific about what financial security looks like for you, because it’s different for everyone.
Stick to the plan. Consistency beats perfection. Automatic monthly contributions make this easier than relying on willpower.
Build support around the plan. If you and a partner have made a mutual decision about caregiving, make saving for your retirement a mutual decision too, including contributions drawn from a partner’s earnings.
Take advantage of retirement plans at work. Especially any employer match. That’s free money and a compounding head start.
Tell your stories. Share with other women how you’re making it work. Storytelling is how we normalize these conversations and lift each other up. It may be the most underrated tool we have.
Work with a team. Find advisors, like the team at Argent, who understand these challenges and can walk alongside you. We do this every day, and we’ve helped many women move from “what about my retirement?” to a plan they feel confident about.
Security is worth talking about. This July 14th, let’s start the conversation, and then let’s build.
