Orbelina Reyes spends much of her time watching television at home. The 67-year-old Salvadoran doesn't miss any episodes of her favorite novelas, or soap operas, now that she works only once a week.

But it's not because she wants it that way.

"I want to work. I can work," says Reyes, who lives in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of the nation's capital. "The problem is, I can't find work."

Because she has no savings, Reyes cannot afford to retire quite yet.

Ever since she was nine, she has toiled. First, working 13-hour days selling tortillas, chicken tamales and sweet breads made of yucca, corn and honey at her mother's side in an open-air market in San Francisco Gotera, a rural northeastern town in El Salvador. 

Then she ran a small business selling everything from soap to beer in San Pedro Sula and other coastal cities in Honduras, where she lived as a single mother in her 20s. 

In 1973, she migrated to the Washington, D.C., suburb of Kensington, Maryland, and found employment as a housekeeper. During the '80s, Reyes worked three jobs: cleaning houses in the morning, offices in the afternoon and, at night, stuffing advertising inserts into The Washington Post.

Now, in addition to a house-cleaning job that pays $90 a week, Reyes depends on her monthly Social Security pension of $728 to survive.

Although retirement did cross her mind at various points in her life, saving for it was never a priority. 

That is the case for a majority of Latinos in this country, say experts. The reasons are many. 

"It has a lot to do with family," says Roger E. A. Framer, chair of the Department of Economics at the University of California at Los Angeles. "Immigrant communities are forming here from societies where the elderly receive support from family."

Traditionally, children and grandchildren assume the responsibility to care for their elders.

In addition, Hispanics now have a longer life expectancy. It is greater than for blacks or whites, but this hasn't connected to the assumption by Latinos that "we will not live long," says Fernando Torres-Gil, director of the UCLA Center for Policy Research on Aging.

The professor highlights several points:

Latino families are beginning to realize they are going to live to a ripe old age as they are taking care of their parents.

Aging issues are important, but at same time Latinos are overwhelmed by care-giving and long-term care, so they push aside planning for retirement.

As a young, often immigrant population with few if any resources for savings, their focus is on surviving, instead. 

While saving is a problem for all groups, Latinos are more vulnerable to retirement insecurity.

The importance of investing for the long term – 30, 40, 50 years – has not taken hold.

Another obstacle is the lack of access to information about retirement planning and programs.

"The rest of the population tends to have better access to savings products," says Leticia Miranda, associate director of the Economic and Employment Policy Project at the National Council of La Raza. "We don't have the opportunity to save pretax dollars."

A 2009 study by Miranda shows that two out of three Latinos work for employers who don't offer a retirement plan to their workers. Many work in low-wage jobs and for small, private companies or in industries where retirement plans are not usually offered, such as construction, hospitality and maintenance.

Immigrants, in general, have even less access to information and products than do U.S.-born Latinos due to language and educational barriers, before and after they reach retirement age.

"Even when people are entitled to Social Security benefits, they don't know they have a right to claim them or how to go about it," says Raúl Rodríguez, a counselor at the Central American Resource Center in Washington, D.C., where he organizes financial literacy workshops.

Older Latinos tend to live in poverty.  Social Security benefit payments comprise more than half of the income for 76 percent of Hispanic beneficiaries versus 63 percent of white beneficiaries. 

Only 76 percent receive some benefits, compared with 91 percent of whites and 85 percent of blacks. This is due to work histories and eligibility issues pertaining to immigration. Almost half of older Latinos rely on it for 90 percent or more of their income. For 38 percent, it is the sole source. The average amount they do receive is lower than for other groups. 

Mario Cuéllar, a histology technician, is 47 years old. He migrated from El Salvador in 1984 after his university studies. He says he hadn't heard about retirement planning up to that point.

"Usually that doesn't exist in our country," says Cuéllar, a Centreville, Virginia, resident. "I didn't gain the concept of what retirement was until I arrived to this country."

At age 28, he entered the medical industry and his employer offered a 401(k) plan. He attended informational sessions and asked for investment advice. He started saving for retirement then and taught his wife, Sonia, about it, so she started saving, too.

The couple have three children. Each one of them is saving for retirement.

"We knew that our children would also have their own responsibilities, their own goals. I don't think it would be fair to depend on them later in life," Cuéllar says. "By having retirement accounts, I think we have taught them the same habit, the discipline to save for the future."

After decades of non-stop work, Orbelina Reyes at one point had saved $16,000, but she had to use the funds for a family emergency. That happens more with Latino families than with white ones, according to Miranda's study. 

During the '90s, she didn't have three jobs any more, so she had to stop saving. She did manage to send enough money to her home country to build two small houses. Moving back and living off her Social Security pension would be a last resort, she says.

Life in El Salvador is uncertain, she says, so she wants to keep working here to be near her only son, who lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, a $1.70 bus ride away.

"I'm broke… sometimes I don't even have enough to take a bus to visit my son," laments Reyes, who helps him with groceries when she can. He lost his electrician job almost two years ago. "But as long as I can walk, I tell my son I don't need his help. I've worked hard. I can still work."