Retirement Security for Mother's Day

As you look for the perfect card to get for Mother's Day, bear these facts in mind: 60% of mothers do not feel prepared for retirement and nearly half don't know how to achieve their retirement goals, according to a recent study on women's retirement.

America's looming retirement security crisis disproportionately affects women, including working mothers who tend to earn less and take on more family obligations than their male counterparts. In turn, they are more vulnerable to poverty in old age.

While retirement security is what Diane Taft of Warwick, Rhode Island most needs, it isn't something she wants to receive from her two daughters for Mother's Day.

"I taught my girls to be practical and compassionate so they may feel obligated to take care of me. However, their future is just as uncertain as my own since there are fewer opportunities for young people," says Taft.

Taft knows this reality all too well as a senior medical care specialist helping Rhode Island's elderly and disabled remain in their communities, while helping her disabled husband at home in her "spare" time. Most of her clients are women who worked hard for low wages, and struggle to make it as retirees.

Taft also shares the anxiety many working mothers feel in preparing for a decent retirement. In late 2011, Rhode Island lawmakers voted to switch most state employees from a traditional pension to a hybrid retirement savings plan effective July 1st that will cut her previously anticipated benefits by 20 percent.

She doesn't know if time or the economy will allow her make up the difference between those two plans or pay off her house in the next 10 years. But one thing Taft is determined not to do is place a financial burden on her children who currently attend college.

"I don't want my daughters' worlds to be turned upside down by the financial demands of caring for an elderly mother and disabled father," she says.

For working mothers, addressing America's looming retirement security crisis is a social and economic imperative; helping them achieve a secure retirement would be perhaps the greatest Mother's Day gift of all - it sure beats a store-bought card!