08/23/2026
I find these types of Facebook posts heartbreaking. 💔
Ten years goes by remarkably fast.
One of the reasons I’m so passionate about financial literacy is that it isn’t just about managing today’s money better. It’s about understanding where you are right now, so you can make informed choices about where you want, and need, to be in the future.
This becomes particularly important for women in their 50s.
If you’re 55 today, age 65 can sound comfortably far away. It isn’t. Think about how quickly the last ten years went by.
And if you arrive at retirement without savings, investments, a workplace pension or some other nest egg to draw from, government retirement benefits alone may not provide the lifestyle, or even the financial security, you’re imagining right now.
There’s another reality we don’t talk about enough: we don’t completely control how long we’ll be able to keep earning at our current level.
You can be excellent at your job. You can be loyal. You can have years of experience and a long tenure with your employer. But you don’t control restructuring, downsizing, changes in management or hiring practices.
And ageism remains a reality in the world of work. Finding another position at 58 or 62 can be a very different experience from finding one at 38 or 42.
That’s why retirement planning shouldn’t begin when we’re ready to retire.
Financial literacy gives us the opportunity to look at the numbers while we still have time to influence them.
What income can I reasonably expect at 65? What will my expenses look like? What am I saving (putting aside) now? What debt am I carrying? What could I change over the next five or ten years?
You don’t need to have done everything perfectly up until now.
You do need to know where you stand. And you need a plan.
The future arrives faster than we think. Understanding the present gives us more power to prepare for it.
