Women Are Becoming 401(k) Millionaires Earlier Than Men

Could women's tendency to avoid risk actually be an asset when it comes to saving for retirement? LearnVest, a women-led financial planning company, discussed the recent finding that more women are hitting $1 million in their 401(k) accounts. LearnVest explores how the stereotype about women being more risk-averse when it comes to investing is challenged by this picture, and also provides readers with tips to make the most of their own 401(k) savings. Click through to read all their advice and more.

By Julia Chang

Ladies, you’ve got this.

Usually when you hear the words “retirement” and “women” in the same sentence, the news is grim. But finally, there’s some positive news: The number of women who’ve reached the $1 million-plus mark in their 401(k) accounts has doubled over the last 12 years, according to Fidelity figures provided to The New York Times.

Even more impressive? Women actually reach the milestone faster than men do, at an average age of 58½ versus 59.3.

Stereotypes about women being more risk averse than men didn’t ring true in the research. Among Fidelity’s 401(k) millionaires who earn less than $150,000, the sexes had similar investing habits; women hold about 77% of their nest egg in stocks, versus 76% for men. And both had similar rates of return and had saved for approximately the same amount of time, about 30 years.

So what’s behind these women’s retirement success? They’re putting away a higher percentage of their pay. Women in that same income demographic are saving an average of 18.1% of their salaries and receiving a 6.8% employer match, which means that the equivalent of nearly a quarter of their income is going toward retirement each year. That total for men, including the match, is at 22.8%. (This, despite the fact that these women earn a lower average salary than men — $117,000 versus $118,800.)

These stats should give us all some motivation to kick up a notch that 401(k) contribution we may have put on the back burner. What baby steps can you take now that could make a big difference down the line? Here are a few suggestions.

Read more

Women and Cryptocurrency: How Steemit Can Attract Women to the Crypto World

The social media platform Steemit reflects on how the company can bring more women to the growing industry of blockchain and cryptocurrency. A conversation prompted by a post by a Steemit blogger highlighting the under-representation of women in cryptocurrency led to a discussion encompassing the influences of assumption and social pressure on who joins the crypto world, financial hurdles that disproportionately affect women, and some leading female voices and communities in the field.

Read below and click through to learn more about the advantages women can bring to the industry, the role of blogging and social media, and how socially focused companies and initiatives like Steemit are positioned to help promote women in this dynamic industry.

A few day ago, @gavvet shared a post about some interesting demographic data about Steemit that showed how male presence is still highly dominant on Steemit. I wasn't surprised. When I first started my journey on Steemit and learning more about the crypto world I knew I was getting into a male territory since, similarly to other tech-powered communities, anything related to cryptocurrency is still predominantly male.

The reason to that can be attributed to the social mindset that lean some fields to the male or female side. Men get interested in the crypto world because other men are starting to invest on it. Women don't because it's not an area they feel women should step their feet into. In addition, the lack of women in the crypto world is due to the fact that in many places, like Brazil and India, a big part of women are still not financially independent and still rely on the males of their family for money-related decision making.

The Female Representation on the Cryptocurrency World

Although women, in general, haven't been attracted to cryptocurrency subjects, there are some important names representing the gender, such as Michele Seven. Known as Bitcoin Belle, she participates in discussions and podcasts about the future of Bitcoin and together with Pua Pyland, the author of the blog The Bitcoin Wife hosts a chat where 130 women from all around the world discuss cryptocurrencies and blockchain.

The forum led to the creation of the London Women in Bitcoin meetups, organized by Rhian Lewis - a digital journalist at thetimes.co.uk, co-developer of CountMyCrypto, a cryptocurrency calculator, and altcoin monitor - and Magdalena, also known as Bitcoin Mama.

The advantage of these meetups comparing to any other similar to them are that women feel more comfortable to participate and learn since general crypto meetups are regularly perceived as directed towards men. Where women perhaps would never have courage or the desire to participate in discussions with men whom they would perceive as being intimidatingly knowledgeable to address beginner questions. So it's important to remark that the question of the inclusion of women in the crypto community is directly related to how its promoters address the wider community.

Read more

Want to receive early-bird invitations to our global events, custom-tailored content we think you'll love, and get exclusive access to "The World Women Report"?

Join Us by Subscribing NOW!

Women in Blockchain: Shroog Al Saquabi @ IBM

Digital Currency Group sits down with Shroog Al Saquabi, a senior digital consultant and blockchain champion at IBM, to discuss the wide-ranging and sometimes complicated world of blockchain. She talks about learning about blockchain from the ground up, the power and transformative potential of blockchain technology, and how the complexity behind the industry and technology poses some of the biggest challenges in terms of education—but also presents some amazing opportunities. Click through to read all of her insights.

By Meltem Demirors

Shroog Al Saqaubi is a Senior Digital Consultant and Blockchain Champion at IBM. She’s spent the last 5 years in IT industry, and has been focused on blockchain technology for nearly a year.

How did you first get introduced to the idea of blockchain technology?

I got introduced to Blockchain late 2015, I had heard the hype about this mysterious technology and I didn’t understand exactly what all the hype was about.

Early in 2016, I had a discussion with one of our IBM Middle East and Africa blockchain experts about what blockchain technology is and how it works. The first thing I understood was “it’s like a linked list data structure built on top of distributed database” and he gave me an example about how we can use it to track the provenance of luxury goods.

Then in Aug 2016, there were business and technical training courses held by IBM in Dubai, which were the first of its kind in the region as it was going very deep into the technology and included a day focused just on the writing of smart contracts. I was lucky enough to get a chance to attend them. These courses made things much clearer and understandable, but for some reason, I wasn’t convinced enough that we don’t have yet a technology that can provide the same solution and I started comparing it with some existing technologies. Since then, I’ve dedicated a lot of time learning about this technology and I’ve worked hard to understand it more and more and to differentiate it from existing technologies. Blockchain encompasses a broad category of technologies, every day I find myself discovering something new that makes me believe more that it has a critical role to play in the future of the business world. However, I have to remind myself we are still in its early stages.

At the beginning of 2017, I was appointed as IBM’s Blockchain Champion for Saudi Arabia, and have started teaching the local team about blockchain as well as engaging with IBM clients to help them understand how blockchain can transform their businesses.

Read more

How More Women Are Stepping Up To Fund Women Entrepreneurs In 2018

We love to see women truly investing in women, and this article from Forbes makes a case that 2018 can be a stellar year for women with capital funding women entrepreneurs. Read on to discover how a growing movement to stand up to sexism and reduced opportunities for women has been galvanized by diverse funding models, a focus on underrepresented entrepreneurs, angel investors, efforts to bridge the gap in venture capital and elsewhere, and women putting their money to work for their causes—and for other women—to truly make a difference.

By Geri Stengel, WOMEN@FORBES

Evidence has found that women business owners start and raise less capital than their male counterparts. Yet, the credit risk of women-owned firms that are six or more years old are indistinguishable from their male counterparts, according to Small Business Credit Survey Report on Women-Owned Firms. The under-capitalization of women-owned firms places significant limits on their growth.

Women’s activism to correct this injustice has been building, as evidenced by the rising tide of financing options for women entrepreneurs. Now, the #MeToo movement could bring a tidal wave of funding as women are inspired to stand up and speak out against sexism.

Whether you have $25 or $25 million, here’s how women have made it possible for you to help create a tsunami of funding for women entrepreneurs.

1. Jessica Jackley cofounded Kiva so people could lend small amounts of money to entrepreneurs in the developing world. In 2009, Kiva brought its crowdfunding micro-lending model to the U.S. With a little help from friends, U.S. women entrepreneurs can raise up to a $10,000, interest-free loan through Kiva. Typically, five to 30 people you know can lend as little as $25. The rest comes from the Kiva lender community. It’s not just micro businesses which need small loans but scaling businesses too.
2. Catherine Berman and Yuliya Tarasava founded CNote. It enables savers to earn 40X greater return than a saving account by investing in women- and minority-owned businesses. It’s first product provides 2.5% interest versus the 0.06% traditional banks offer. CNote invests 100% of your dollars in Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs). These loans range from a few thousand dollars to $500,000.
3. Vicki Saunders created SheEO’s Radical Generosity to provide women entrepreneurs with larger interest-free loans. In the U.S., five hundred women (activators) make a tax-deductible contribution of $1,100, (including a $100 processing fee). Entrepreneurs compete to be one of five to divide the kitty. Activators not only become financiers but, similar to angel investors, share their expertise, connections and marketing support to help grow the companies they support.

Read more

Women in Blockchain: Carolyn Reckhow at ConsenSys

We've been following the series from Digital Currency Group highlighting women in Blockchain, and were inspired by this interview with Carolyn Reckhow, director of operations at ConsenSys. Reckhow discusses what interests and compels her about cryptocurrency, the applications and potential of Blockchain, her role at ConsenSys and what it means to be part of a burgeoning industry, her company's focus on consumer applications in the Blockchain industry, and more. Read an excerpt below, and click through to read more.

Connect with Reckhow on LinkedIn.

By Meltem Demirors

When did you get into bitcoin?

I never got into Bitcoin, though I followed it a bit on Reddit in 2011. What really captured my interest was the advent of Ethereum, in particular the way that it was presented to me from peers in law and social science academia — as a paradigm shifting technology with incredible social, economic, and political implications. I was getting a graduate degree in Boston in winter 2014/15 when I was introduced to some folks that quickly became friends. They were a melange of people working/studying at Harvard Law and the MIT Media Lab and had all been brought together by their interest in smart contracts and Ethereum. We formed an informal working group we called a “salon” where we gathered weekly and nerded out about DAOs, smart contracts, the sharing economy, and a variety of blockchain use cases. Primavera de Filippi (one of the salon members) invited me to attend the first COALA blockchain workshop in March 2015. I flew out to Palo Alto where I joined a hackathon team with two members of ConsenSys. We won the hackathon with Fabriq, a identity and reputation management app for communities built on Ethereum. Not long after working with the Fabriq team to launch a prototype in May 2015, I officially joined the ConsenSys team.

What did you do before you got into this?

I was in academia, specifically social sciences. Long before this I worked as a therapist/social worker….and I still definitely practice as a “therapist” everyday running Ops for ConsenSys.

What’s been the most interesting experience you’ve had in your role so far?

Just being a part of the “blockchain 2.0”/Ethereum industry as it has grown from a research project into helping Fortune 500 companies build production blockchain applications. That’s been exciting beyond belief.

Read more

Bitcoin: New Financial System or Same Old Boys' Club?

By VALENTINA ZARYA

December 15, 2017

As the price of Bitcoin soared to record highs this week—$10,000, $15,000, then $17,000—the meteoric rise that turned early investors into paper billionaires fueled talk of how the cryptocurrency and its underlying technology, blockchain, could wholly remake the banking system. As MIT researchers argued in a Harvard Business Review article earlier this year: “Blockchain will do to the banking system what the Internet did to media.”

Among the many questions about the future of Bitcoin and its peers—Is it a bubble? Will it pop?—is whether the cryptocurrency industry, like its traditional predecessor, will be molded mainly by men.

Like so many other aspects of the relatively new and purposefully cryptic assets, an answer is difficult to pin down. There’s little data on the gender makeup of investors and entrepreneurs, but to women already in the field, it feels like cryptocurrency is following in banking’s loafer-shaped footsteps.

Read more

Finances push half of women out of college

biz journals.com - Unexpected college expenses have an impact on where students choose to go to school and if they graduate, according to a new study.

Charles Schwab and 1,000 Dreams Fund, a scholarship program for young women, surveyed 1,092 men and women between the ages of 18 and 25 about how their financial knowledge affected their college experience.

Young women were more likely than young men to feel they weren't prepared to manage their money while in college – 51 percent versus 39 percent – and 52 percent of young women said they had to drop out because of finances, per the study. The majority of female students – 68 percent – said their financial standing also impacted their school choice.

About 74 percent of students said they couldn't afford extra college activities like study abroad programs and unpaid internships, even though the same percentage of students believe those are important to reaching professional goals.

A recent study from Thrivent Student Loan Resources found that 68 percent of college students believe they should be paying for all or most of their college education.

Read more

(Photo: zimmytws)