Rural Appalachia Helps Some Women Save For Retirement

[theHandpuppet]

http://www.npr.org/2014/03/20/291912681/rural-appalachia-helps-some-women-save-for-retirement

Rural Appalachia Helps Some Women Save For Retirement
by Jennifer Ludden
March 20, 2014 4:26 PM

...As an in-home child care provider, Wallace is self-employed. She has no company 401(k). She gets generous tax deductions, and she says she's grateful for those. But it means she's paying Social Security on just a measly $5,000 of income and will have only that to draw from in retirement — plus a little in a savings account and some cash she hides in a sock. She knows she'll need more...

...The Appalachian Savings Project works exclusively with female child care workers, such as Wallace. It made her an offer: If she saved $600 in a year in U.S. savings bonds, it would match half of that.

"I thought it was great," Wallace says. "It's something that, if I don't have a lot of money one month to put in, I don't have to worry about it — $25 gets me in the door."...

...The program uses private money, but it's modeled after the little-known federal saver's tax credit, designed to reward low- and moderate-income families that save for retirement. Diane Browning, who runs the Appalachian Savings Project for the Women's Institute for a Secure Retirement, hopes to show that expanding that credit could help ease a retirement crisis. MORE

For more on the Appalachian Savings Project for the Women's Institute for a Secure Retirement, see: http://www.wiserwomen.org/index.php?id=1&page=Home
Also see West Virginia Rural Retirement Project at http://www.wiserwomen.org/index.php?id=39&page=West_Virginia_Rural_Retirement_Project

[Hoppy]

1. I have mixed feelings about this..

First of all, its good someone is doing something. But $1,000 $5,000 even $20,000 ain't going to do much in solving her long term expenses facing retirement. Especially if it comes with an illness.

Is this distracting from finding a real solution that consists of funding basic needs for everyone?

[theHandpuppet]

2. I don't see it as a long-term solution

To me this is at least a supplement or stop-gap measure but the ultimate goal must be providing basic needs for everyone.