Bruce Helmer and Peg Webb

As women continue to take increasingly active financial roles — whether in families, relationships, at work, or on their own — they are also confronting a retirement landscape full of both opportunity and challenge.

Despite controlling a growing share of personal wealth in the U.S., many women still feel unprepared for retirement. But with the right strategies, education, and support, a woman should feel empowered to shape your financial future and retire with confidence.

Mastering math over myth

The retirement journey is often more complex for women, despite much progress that’s been made over the past five decades. The reasons are multifaceted:

• Longevity risk: On average, American women live nearly six years longer than men. This benefit comes with a price. When starting with similar assets and investment strategies, a woman’s chances of outliving her retirement savings are more than double that of a man — 12.6% versus 5%. Those extra years can add up to a significant financial burden if not adequately planned for.

• Earnings disparity: Women working full-time, year-round earn just 83.7 cents for every dollar earned by men. This persistent gender wage gap not only means fewer dollars to save throughout a career but also contributes to a 20% reduction in average Social Security benefits compared with men.

• Career interruptions and part-time work: Many women take breaks from the workforce to care for children or aging parents. These interruptions affect their ability to contribute consistently to employer-sponsored retirement plans. In fact, women are more likely than men to work part-time, often without access to 401(k)s or similar retirement savings vehicles. When they do have access, lower earnings can lead to smaller employer matching contributions.

• Financial confidence: Studies show that women tend to be less confident than men when making long-term financial decisions. This can lead to overly cautious investment choices and missed opportunities for growth. However, there is a silver lining: Women often outperform men in investing by a modest but meaningful margin — about 0.40% per year — due to a more disciplined and risk-aware approach.

Your personal roadmap to a stronger financial future

Fortunately, these challenges can be met with smart planning and tailored strategies that speak directly to women’s financial realities.

• 1. Budget with purpose: Start by understanding your current expenses and estimating your future needs. Lay the groundwork by identifying your long-term goals and factoring in your family situation. Set a realistic savings rate — either as a percentage of income or a fixed dollar amount — and commit to it consistently.

• 2. Embrace strategic asset allocation: Diversifying your investments is key to balancing risk and reward. While many women are naturally risk-averse, it’s important not to avoid risk entirely. Instead, be strategic. Spread investments across asset classes, industries and geographies. Incorporate cost-effective hedging strategies to protect against market downturns. A well-diversified portfolio can help ensure a reliable stream of retirement income and guard against unexpected life events such as inflation, career breaks, or divorce.

• 3. Optimize for taxes: Take advantage of tax-deferred retirement accounts like Traditional IRAs and 401(k)s, which allow your investments to grow without immediate tax implications. Roth IRAs and Roth 401(k)s, while funded with after-tax dollars, offer tax-free withdrawals in retirement — ideal for long-term growth. Taxable investment accounts can offer liquidity and flexibility, and strategies like tax-loss harvesting can minimize tax liabilities over time.

• 4. Maximize Social Security benefits: When and how you claim Social Security can significantly impact your retirement income. Claiming benefits before full retirement age (FRA) leads to permanent reductions, while delaying until age 70 yields the maximum benefit. If you’re married, coordinating spousal benefits is another critical strategy. Because Social Security is adjusted for inflation, it serves as a valuable financial cushion over a long retirement.

• 5. Commit to continual learning: Empowerment comes with education. Take advantage of financial education resources tailored to women. Wealth Enhancement Group offers a free, on-demand webinar titled Retirement Planning for Women: 6 Critical Steps to a Confident Future. This session covers essential strategies for building financial confidence and security. You can find this webinar and more on the Insights section at wealthenhancement.com.

Finally, try to attend women-focused events to connect with other women navigating similar challenges. Speak with a qualified financial adviser who understands your unique needs. The more you learn, the more confident you’ll feel taking control of your financial destiny.

You’ve already made great strides in your education, career, and leadership. Now it’s time to translate that progress into lasting financial security for yourself. By drawing on your resolve and resources, you can redefine what retirement looks like — not just for yourself, but for generations of women who will follow in your footsteps.

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The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual.

Bruce Helmer and Peg Webb are financial advisers at Wealth Enhancement Group and co-hosts of “Your Money” on WCCO 830 AM on Sunday mornings. Email Bruce and Peg at yourmoney@wealthenhancement.com. Securities offered through LPL Financial, member FINRA/SIPC. Advisory services offered through Wealth Enhancement Advisory Services, LLC, a registered investment advisor. Wealth Enhancement Group and Wealth Enhancement Advisory Services are separate entities from LPL Financial.

Amy Lindgren

Second Sunday Series – Editor’s Note: This is the ninth of 12 columns on AI and work, appearing the second Sunday of each month, from September through August. Last month’s column described AI tools for organizing or conducting the job search, while previous columns looked at interview prep; résumés and cover letters; best practices for companies using AI; tips for using ChatGPT; work opportunities with artificial intelligence; AI use in the hiring process; and an overview of artificial intelligence in general. 

We’re three quarters of the way through this series about artificial intelligence and careers and it’s still not clear to me whether AI is a worker’s friend or foe. It’s simplistic to say “Both!” as if that closes the case. Of course it’s both, but how much of both? What’s the balance of friend vs. foe and is it shifting?

Since I understand the writing profession more than any other (because it’s been part of my career path for decades), I’m going to consider the question from that lens — and I can say already, the picture isn’t rosy.

We’ve all seen the articles about artificial intelligence taking over jobs; in the case of writers, the threat is distressingly real. Already I’ve received press releases clearly written by AI. Is the campaign being masterminded by a press agent, or was that person laid off?

How about novels? Some “authors” have been bragging for years about writing several novels a week by turning the process over to artificial intelligence. What happens when publishers learn that trick too, voting to eliminate authors altogether?

Journalists, technical writers, advertising copywriters, textbook authors, song writers … I could name a dozen or more types of writers and they’d all be vulnerable to the threat of artificial intelligence taking their jobs.

Which brings me to ask: Does it matter? Assuming these individuals can find other work, does it really matter who writes the press release or novel? As long as the recipient is informed or entertained or both, what’s the difference how it was produced?

As a society, we’d likely never come to agreement on the answer. But while we were (and are) arguing the point, AI would still be marching forward.

Perhaps the real question is whether we want to march along, or resist and take the risk of being marched over. With reluctance, I’ll vote for the first choice but only with this caveat: I still want to know that writers are being trained to write, regardless of how they’ll integrate their work with technology.

I have any number of reasons for this, ranging from the need to keep unique, human voices in the writing lexicon to the acknowledgment that without the unique voices AI will become nothing but a loop feeding on itself.

For me, however, the most convincing reason for humans to continue writing is the neural pathway argument: Science suggests that writing strengthens cognitive function and critical thinking, and even increases dopamine. And, because writing uses so many aspects of our brain function — memory, empathy, logic — it may helps us stay lucid longer in our lives.

This chain of thinking always reminds me of “Wax on, wax off,” from the Karate Kid movies. The phrase comes from karate master Mr. Miyagi (actor Pat Morita) training young Daniel (Ralph Macchio) by making him repeatedly wax and unwax a car. As Daniel learns later, the motions are teaching him muscle memory, not to mention patience, which become critical assets in his karate practice.

I’ve seen the same thing happen with writing students I’ve taught: Writers who try a variety of exercises eventually develop confidence and muscle memory of their own. They write quickly, develop a voice that “sounds” like them, and learn to anticipate responses from their readers.

Nothing I’ve experienced with AI so far tells me that it builds that kind of foundation for the person using it. I don’t think this gap occurs only in the writing profession. Anyone may find that their job can be conducted by artificial intelligence or robots or both. We won’t be able to out-run this trend, or legislate it away.

But that doesn’t mean we should forget how to do those jobs either. Wax on, wax off. Becoming better at core skills such as writing isn’t ignoring the inevitable –it’s preparing for it.

Come back next month and I’ll continue this discussion with a look at how the pairing of AI with core skills can be a winning alternative in the workplace and in life overall.

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Amy Lindgren owns a career consulting firm in St. Paul. She can be reached at alindgren@prototypecareerservice.com.

By KELVIN CHAN, Associated Press

LONDON (AP) — Skype is dead. What now?

Microsoft’s shutdown of Skype on May 5 sent millions of users scrambling to find an alternative to the pioneering internet phone service.

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Skype, which Microsoft bought in 2011, was beloved by a dwindling group of users who appreciated how it let them make cheap long-distance calls as well as communicate with other users through chat messages, voice or video calls.

Some liked its simplicity and ease of use — an advantage, for example, when setting up a communications app for an elderly parent living far away.

Or they just used it out of habit.

Skype was founded in 2003 and was among the first in a wave of communication services that used voice over internet protocol technology (VoIP), which converts audio into a digital signal.

Skype’s disappearance also inconveniences Americans and other expatriates living overseas who signed up because they needed an U.S.-based number to receive text authentication codes from, say, a bank back home. It was also handy for calling 800 numbers for free even if you weren’t living in North America.

Here is a guide for life after Skype:

What’s happening

Microsoft announced in late February that it was shutting down Skype on May 5 and shifting some of its services to Microsoft Teams, its flagship office videoconferencing and group collaboration platform.

Skype users can use their existing accounts to log into Teams and have the option to automatically migrate their contacts and chats.

If you had a Skype number or a calling subscription, it stopped automatically renewing on April 3.

If your account still has credit, you can access Skype’s dial pad from the web portal or Teams to make calls.

Skype numbers won’t immediately expire on May 5 so you’ll still be able to receive calls until your subscription expires. But you’ll have to use Teams or keep the Skype dial pad open on the web portal to receive them.

Porting your number(s)

If your Skype number hasn’t expired and you don’t want to lose it, you should transfer it to another provider.

Skype numbers can be ported to a phone carrier or any number of other VoIP services. But you’ll have to start the process through the new provider, not Skype.

Google Voice

Google users can access the online search giant’s internet phone service to make calls from a smartphone or a desktop web browser. You can get your own Google Voice phone number and use features like call forwarding and voicemail. Or you can port your number from another service like Skype, but it will cost $20.

Calls to U.S., Canadian or Puerto Rican numbers are free. Rates for other countries vary.

The free version of Google Voice is only available to U.S. residents physically located in the 48 contiguous states, so that means expatriate Americans can only use it if they registered before they moved overseas.

“You cannot sign up for a Google Voice number while outside the USA,” according to a help page. “Do not try to circumvent this by using a VPN.”

Viber

Owned by Japan’s Rakuten, Viber was long considered one of the closest competitors to Skype. One key difference is that Skype users don’t need a phone number and are identified by their usernames, while Viber users need a number to register for service.

Similar to Skype, Viber users can buy credit or packages to call phone numbers around the world but it’s no longer possible to get a Viber number to receive calls.

Zoom

The videoconferencing service that’s become a byword for online company meetings offers a calling service, Zoom Phone, and features like number porting and the ability to send and receive SMS text messages.

Take note that Zoom Phone isn’t free. There are various calling plans that involve a monthly subscription cost and extra fees for international calls.

Teams

Microsoft users have the option of making calls on Teams, dubbed Teams Phone. Like Zoom Phone, you’ll need to buy a subscription and pay extra for international calls.

But it’s not an option for regular people because Microsoft says Teams Phone isn’t for consumer use and is only available to small and medium-sized businesses.

Wireless Carriers

If you absolutely need a U.S. number but live overseas, sign up for service with a low-cost virtual wireless carrier that offers cheap cellphone plans or pay-as-you-go rates.

One provider, Tello, offers monthly plans for as little as $5 and says users can activate its service even if they’re living outside the U.S.

Because mobile virtual network operators like Tello are essentially wireless phone companies that piggyback off a bigger carrier’s physical network, you can’t use it to make calls on a computer or an app.

VoIP it

There are a slew of Skype pretenders offering phone calls over the internet, such as Zoiper, VoIP.ms, CallCentric, Mytello, and Virtual Landline. Many are aimed at business users.

Some are capitalizing on Skype’s disappearance. Hushed, which started as an anonymous calling app, bills itself as a Skype alternative. Users can buy a phone number from the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom or Puerto Rico or port their own number.

It warns that some of its numbers aren’t guaranteed to work with third-party verification text messages.

“We do not intentionally block anyone from receiving these codes, but it’s common that some services will prevent verification texts from being sent to certain phone numbers due to their own security policies,” Hushed says on its website.

Park your number

Maybe you can’t decide which calling service you want to switch to. If you want to save your current number, there are services to just park your number like NumberBarn.com and Parkmyphone.com.

They let you store a phone number for a monthly fee while relaying any text messages sent to that number. You can port the number to another service whenever you want.

Beware, you can only port in U.S. or Canadian phone numbers.

eSIMs

What about an international eSIM? They’re the virtual version of the mobile phone SIM card that you can buy and add to your phone when you’re on a trip to save on roaming fees.

They offer cheap data access rates so you can use the internet without worrying about racking up a huge bill when you get home.

Unfortunately, you can’t port a Skype number to an international eSIM because of “the fundamental differences” between VoIP services and traditional mobile networks, said Pedro Maiquez, co-founder of eSIM provider Holafly. “Skype numbers are not tied to a mobile carrier’s physical infrastructure, making them incompatible with mobile eSIM solutions.”

Is there a tech topic that you think needs explaining? Write to us at onetechtip@ap.org with your suggestions for future editions of One Tech Tip.

By Robbie Sequeira, Stateline.org

As states rush to address falling literacy scores, a new kind of education debate in state legislatures is taking hold: not whether reading instruction needs fixing, but how to fix it.

More than a dozen states have enacted laws banning public school educators from teaching youngsters to read using an approach that’s been popular for decades. The method, known as “three-cueing,” encourages kids to figure out unfamiliar words using context clues such as meaning, sentence structure and visual hints.

In the past two years, several states have instead embraced instruction rooted in what’s known as the “science of reading.” That approach leans heavily on phonics — relying on letter and rhyming sounds to read words such as cat, hat and rat.

The policy discussions on early literacy are unfolding against a backdrop of alarming national reading proficiency levels. The 2024 Nation’s Report Card revealed that 40% of fourth graders and 33% of eighth graders scored below the basic reading level — the highest percentages in decades.

No state improved in fourth- or eighth-grade reading in 2024. Eight states — Alaska, Arizona, Delaware, Florida, Nebraska, Nevada, Utah and Vermont — scored worse than they did a year or two prior in eighth-grade reading.

Five — Arizona, Florida, Nebraska, South Dakota and Vermont — saw dips in their fourth-grade reading scores.

In response to these troubling trends, a growing number of states are moving beyond localized efforts and tackling literacy through statewide legislation.

New Jersey last year mandated universal K-3 literacy screenings. Indiana lawmakers this month passed a bill that would allow some students to retake required reading tests before being held back in third grade; that bill is en route to the governor’s desk.

Oregon and Washington are weighing statewide literacy coaching and training models, while lawmakers in Montana introduced a bill to allow literacy interventions to cover broader reading and academic skills, not just early reading basics.

Mississippi, a state seen as a model for turnaround in literacy rates over the past decade, seeks to expand and require evidence-based reading interventions, mandatory literacy screenings and targeted teacher training, and to explicitly ban the use of three-cueing methods in reading instruction in grades 4-8.

Together, these efforts signal a national shift: States are treating literacy not as a local initiative, but as the foundation of public education policy.

“Literacy is the lever,” said Tafshier Cosby, the senior director of the Center for Organizing and Partnerships at the National Parents Union, an advocacy group. “If states focus on that, we see bipartisan wins. But the challenge is making that a statewide priority, not just a district-by-district hope.”

‘It’s the system that needs fixing’

Before he was even sworn in, first-term Georgia Democratic state Sen. RaShaun Kemp, a former teacher and principal, had already drafted a bill to end the use of the three-cueing system in Georgia classrooms.

This month, the final version passed the state legislature without a single “no” vote. GOP Gov. Brian Kemp signed it into law Monday.

Sen. Kemp said his passion for literacy reform stretches back decades, shaped by experiences tutoring children at a local church as a college student in the early 2000s. It was there, he said, that he began noticing patterns in how students struggled with foundational reading.

“In my experience, I saw kids struggle to identify the word they were reading. I saw how some kids were guessing what the word was instead of decoding,” Kemp recalled. “And it’s not technology or screens that’s the problem. It’s what teachers are being instructed on how to teach reading. It’s the system that needs fixing, not the teachers.”

The new law requires the Professional Standards Commission — a state agency that oversees teacher prep and certification— to adopt rules mandating evidence-based reading instruction aligned with the science of reading, a set of practices rooted in decades of cognitive research on how children best learn to read.

“Current strategies used to teach literacy include methods that teach students to guess rather than read, preventing them from reaching their full potential,” Sen. Kemp said in a public statement following the bill’s legislative passage. “I know we can be better, and I’m proud to see our legislative body take much-needed steps to help make Georgia the number one state for literacy.”

In West Virginia, lawmakers have introduced similar bills that would require the state’s teachers to be certified in the science of reading.

Cosby, of the National Parents Union, said local policy changes can be driven by parents even before legislatures act.

“All politics are local,” Cosby said. “Parents don’t need to wait for statewide mandates — they can ask school boards for universal screeners and structured literacy now.”

Still, some parents worry their states are simply funding more studies on early literacy rather than taking direct action to address it.

A Portland, Oregon, parent of three — one of whom has dyslexia — sent written testimony this year urging lawmakers to skip further studies and immediately implement structured literacy statewide.

“We do not need another study to tell us what we already know — structured literacy is the most effective way to teach all children to read, particularly those with dyslexia and other reading challenges,” wrote Katherine Hoffman.

Opposition to ‘science of reading’

Unlike in Georgia, the “science of reading” has met resistance in other states.

In California, legislation that would require phonics-based reading instruction statewide has faced opposition from English learner advocates who argue that a one-size-fits-all approach may not effectively serve multilingual students.

In opposition to the bill, the California Teachers Association argued that by codifying a rigid definition of the “science of reading,” lawmakers ignore the evolving nature of reading research and undermine teachers’ ability to meet the diverse needs of their students.

“Placing a definition for ‘science of reading’ in statute is problematic,” wrote Seth Bramble, a legislative advocate for the California Teachers Association in a March letter addressed to the state’s Assembly Education Committee. “This bill would carve into stone scientific knowledge that by its very nature is constantly being tested, validated, refuted, revised, and improved.”

Similarly, in Wisconsin, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers in March vetoed a bill that would have reversed changes to the state’s scoring system to align the state’s benchmarks with the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a federal assessment tool that has recently been hit with funding cuts and layoffs under the Trump administration. Evers said in his veto that Republican lawmakers were stepping on the state superintendent’s independence.

That veto is another step in the evolution of a broader constitutional fight over literacy policy and how literacy funds are appropriated and released. In 2023, Wisconsin lawmakers set aside$50 million for a new statewide literacy initiative, but disagreements over legislative versus executive control have stalled its disbursement.

Indiana’s legislature faced criticism from educators over a 2024 mandate requiring 80 hours of literacy training for pre-K to sixth-grade teachers before they can renew their licenses. Teachers argued that the additional requirements were burdensome and did not account for their professional expertise.

In Illinois, literacy struggles have been building for more than a decade, according to Mailee Smith, senior director of policy at the Illinois Policy Institute. Today, only 3 in 10 Illinois third- and fourth-graders can read at grade level, based on state and national assessments.

Although Illinois lawmakers amended the school code in 2023 to create a state literacy plan, Smith noted the plan is only guidance and does not require districts to adopt evidence-based reading instruction. She urged local school boards to act on their own.

“If students can’t read by third grade, half of fourth-grade curriculum becomes incomprehensible,” she said. “A student’s likelihood to graduate high school can be predicted by their reading skill at the end of third grade.”

Despite the challenges, Smith said even small steps can make a real difference.

“Screening, intervention, parental notice, science-based instruction and thoughtful grade promotion — those are the five pillars, and Illinois and even local school districts can implement some of these steps right away,” she said.

“It doesn’t have to be daunting.”

Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org.

©2025 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.