Sharing Their Stories: The Challenges of Preparing for Retirement

It can be difficult to save for retirement when we have bills to pay and people to care for. In these stories, Jackie, Christine, and Tineaka talk about their challenges to planning retirement.

They highlight how expenses like food, rent, and healthcare can be a barrier to saving for retirement. They also address how caring for children and elderly parents on top of working can be difficult. While Jackie and Tineaka both have employer-provided retirement plans, they, like Christine, are concerned about saving enough to live on.

Right now, I can’t really focus on retirement. I’m just trying to get through day by day, just getting by with bills. Everything has gone up, and it’s so expensive to live: food is expensive, rent has gone up, gas has gone up. It would help if I got paid a little more, so I could pay my bills and have a little bit of money that I could save.

SOURCE: National Women's Law Center • AUTHOR: Jacqueline Aparicio-Noyola, Christine Matthews, and Tineaka Robinson •