Here’s What We CAN Control Right Now

Sallie Krawcheck

Chair

Ellevate Network

Here’s What We CAN Control Right Now

We live in a “Can you believe this headline? And this one? And this one?” world these days, where it can feel like so much is out of our control.

Shouldn’t we have had more women in Congress by now? Shouldn’t we have had more women in Fortune 500 CEO roles, rather than going backwards? Wasn’t the gender pay gap supposed to have long ago closed — and, by the way, wasn’t our boss supposed to have given us that raise that we 100% deserve?

We can only control what we can control.

There are parts of our future that we do have direct control over. So I was surprised when I recently spoke to a group of women lawyers, one more impressive than the next: When the moderator asked how many of them were actively investing for their futures, only about 10% of hands went up. When I spoke to some of them during the day, a number said their partners do the investing for the household, or that they simply invest in the retirement plan at work and have it on auto-pilot.

No, no, no, no, no. Please no.

Real talk:

Women live 6–8 years longer than men.
Nearly half of marriages end in divorce. (That includes marriages that you don’t think will end, like … well … yours.)
80% of women die single. That’s right: 80%.
Individual Retirement Accounts are called Individual Retirement Accounts for a reason: 90% of us manage money on our own at some point in our lives. And given those lifespan and marriage stats, it’s likely most of us will end up managing our money on our own during retirement.

There’s more:

You’re hurting Grandma You — awesome, fun, still-badass Grandma You — by not doing this now. Right now. Instead, you’re pretty much prioritizing Today You over Grandma You by putting this off. Which Grandma You would not like.

And getting yourself financially prepared for retirement doesn’t have to be as hard — or as time-consuming — as you think it’s going to be.

Of course, I want you to do this with Ellevest. And, of course, we’re the only ones who built a Retirement on Your Terms goal with the recognition that you won’t be retiring “like a man”:

We take into account that we women live longer and our salaries peak sooner than men’s.
We target getting you to 90% of your pre-retirement income (vs 70% or 80% for others that we’ve seen … so that you can live bigger in retirement).
We don’t have an investing minimum for Ellevest Digital (because we want to be accessible to as many women as possible … and because of the gender pay gap).

Also:

We have a team of Rollover Queens (and they’re amazing) to make rolling over your 401(k) or transferring your IRA as easy as we can.

OK, you get the point.

But even if you don’t want to invest with us, shoot on over and put together a (free) financial plan to see how much you’ll need for retirement, whether you’re on track, and how much you should be putting aside for it.

We can’t control everything. We’re all on the roller coaster that is our lives these days. Yes, we’ll all definitely vote … and keep killing it at work. And we also can control our actions on this. And it can make all the difference for Grandma You.

You can learn more here.

Have more questions? Follow up with the expert herself.

Sallie Krawcheck

Chair

Ellevate Network

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Sallie Krawcheck’s professional mission is to help women reach their financial and professional goals (or, put more bluntly, to get more money into the hands of women), thus enabling them to live better lives and unleashing a positive ripple effect for our families, our communities and our economy. To that end, Krawcheck is the Chair of the Ellevate Network, a 135K-strong global professional women’s network; she is also the CEO and co-founder of Ellevest, a... Continue Reading

Here’s What We CAN Control Right Now

Sallie Krawcheck

Here’s What We CAN Control Right Now

Have more questions? Follow up with the expert herself.

Sallie Krawcheck

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Here’s What We CAN Control Right Now

Sallie Krawcheck

Here’s What We CAN Control Right Now

Have more questions? Follow up with the expert herself.

Sallie Krawcheck

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Continue learning with this Ellevate Playbook:

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