**Written by: ****Jon Sabes**

U.S. News & World Report recently interviewed me as a source for an article on how men and women approach retirement differently. This piece expands on the ideas I shared with them.

Two people retire on the same day. Same age, same employer, same 401(k) plan. One of them has half as much money. The other has no idea what to do on Tuesday.

Both of those are retirement risks. Only one of them shows up on a statement.

I keep seeing this pattern, and it holds almost everywhere I look. Men and women walk into retirement carrying different problems. The financial industry has one set of tools for both, and those tools were built for the problem men have less of.

The money side is not subtle. Men and women sign up for their workplace retirement plans at about the same rate. Close to eight in ten participate. Both groups start contributing around age 26. Same discipline, same starting line.

Then look at the finish line. Baby boomer women have saved about $165,000. Boomer men have saved about $350,000. Same behavior, less than half the result.

So this is not a discipline gap. It is a wage gap, a match gap, and a caregiving gap compounding over forty years. Caregiving alone costs a person around $237,000 over a lifetime. Most of that is lost earnings, and the rest is lost Social Security and retirement plan benefits. Six in ten caregivers are women.

Then add the part that makes it worse. Women live about five years longer than men. The smaller number has to stretch across more years.

That is a compounding problem, not a parallel one. Less money, more time, same monthly bills.

Men arrive at 65 with more money and more confidence. Their confidence runs more than ten points ahead of women’s. Some of that is earned. Some of it is arithmetic they have never run.

Here is what men are not prepared for. A job does four things at once — it gives you a schedule, a purpose, a peer group, and something to be recognized for. Retirement takes all four away on a single afternoon.

There is no rollover for identity.

I have watched men with more than enough money get restless inside six months. Not depressed. Restless. They reorganize the garage. They start trading their own portfolio too much. They call their kids more than their kids want. The money was never the problem. The empty calendar was.

Women often arrive with the opposite balance sheet. Thinner savings, stronger networks. They have friendships they have kept for thirty years, family that already depends on them, and a clear picture of how they want to spend a day. What they lack is confidence that the money will last.

So the honest version is this. Men usually need to plan for the social side and the purpose side. Women usually need to plan for the financial side. Most retirement advice covers half of that sentence and calls it a plan.

The household version is harder. Couples do not retire as the average of two people. They retire as two people with different timelines, different health histories, and different definitions of a good day. One of them will outlive the other, usually by years. A plan built for the middle of that range fits neither person in it.

Which makes the survivor questions the important ones. When each spouse claims Social Security. Whether a pension carries a survivor benefit, and at what cost. What the day looks like for the person left behind, financially and otherwise. Those conversations are uncomfortable, and skipping them costs more than having them.

None of this means women need different investments than men. They do not. The market has no idea who owns the shares.

It means they need a different plan around the same investments. More years to fund means the income has to be more durable. It means a floor underneath the essentials, so a bad decade in the market does not become a bad decade of life.

And men need something no one sells them. A structure for the week. Something to be good at. People they see on purpose instead of by accident.

Two questions get you most of the way there, and you can ask them at any age. What does the money have to survive? What does the day have to look like? Most people answer one and skip the other. A plan that works answers both, for both people in the house.

Longevity handed us the extra years. It did not fund them, and it did not tell us what to do with them. That part we design ourselves.

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