Most workers who aren’t saving for retirement through their employers aren’t saving at all, the study found
New data suggests the average American worker has under $1,000 saved for retirement.
A report from the National Institute on Retirement Security found that the median savings for all employed adults between the ages of 21 and 64 were approximately $955. The study includes workers with 401(k) and other retirement savings plans, as well as the approximately 56 million workers who do not have access to employer-sponsored retirement plans.
Workers with retirement savings plans have a median balance of approximately $40,000 saved, according to the report. That figure is nowhere near the $1.5 million that Americans say they need to feel comfortable fully retiring.
well the solution is simple: deport brown people, ban trans people and give more money and tax cuts to corporations and billionaires. it’ll all be over soon.
JFC this is depressing. Hopefully it forces some change though. I like that post about the French boyfriend asking why we don’t burn shit. Hunger will make people burn shit.
6 meals away from anarchy or sumthin
Real talk!
Fucking high rollers over there
My retirement plan is to die at work, that way my family is taken care of. (who am I kidding, my work will try to weasel out of paying them if that happens)
Learn from the French: burn shit before you get to the point of starvation.
Your family will be lucky to get a pizza party.
The pizza dough contains potassium bromate which may be carcinogenic
“He worked so hard, we loved him. Were like family here. KThxBye.”
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Lots of people saying it’s a skill issue that people aren’t saving more of their earnings. The problem is much deeper: it doesn’t make sense for the majority of Americans to save their money. This is the rational outcome of a political and economic system that does not offer hope, only cynicism.
I had several 401ks, I cashed them out fairly quickly because an emergency would come along and it was the only thing between me and homelessness, or not receiving medical care.
Now I have a 403(b) because I work for higher ed, and I am forbidden to cash it out, but I’ve taken a loan against it and paid off my credit cards, and am paying myself interest now.
So now I have my CCs freed up for the next time I have an emergency, which will be checks watch
I had almost completely strip-mined my 401k and post-tax investments by the time I was 56 due to a family member’s mental-health crisis and the downstream impact of that (it was worth it: the family member in question is now stable and thriving). I’m now 70 and should be able to retire next year if some other emegency doesn’t bite us on the ass before then. It took 14 years to rebuild, and that was with my wife and me both bringing in professional salaries and having additional investments.
I feel the “checking watch for next emergency”
I’m just about done paying off my last emergency so I’m right on time for the next big one. Fate seems to wait until I’m spitting distance from paying it off to taunt me or some shit.
The last time I was literally 1 month from having it paid off before BOOM $10k medical emergency and to not become homeless due to said medical emergency combined with being on FMLA for 12 weeks minus a day.
It don’t like like a lot to some but for me it’s been hell.
I’m not from USA so I don’t know what rates of interest your banks offer, but most here offer less than 4%, so there doesn’t seem much point for a few hundred quid.
In the retirement account front, just checked and for the past year it hit 19%, over the last 10 years, it’s been 15% a year. Generally those are biased toward stock and move to more conservative close to retirement. I think that’s generally the balance being considered, at least if you have any retirement account, it’s probably later than any other account in short order.
For “savings” account recently 4% has been available, but less so now as the central bank turns down interest rates to favor borrowers again. But I don’t think they are limiting to strict savings accounts here. I think money put into an index fund or bonds or CDs would absolutely count.
Most private workplaces offer retirement investment accounts, that seems to be more what they mean.
This is a terrible stat. Taking the people who are entering the workforce and averaging them with people who have spent a lifetime working. Not only that, but that’s just “retirement” savings. How many 20 year olds have retirement accounts?
The information would be far more realistic if it were grouped by decade of life.
Edit: Here. This is a little better
Savings
Retirement savings
If by “average,” they mean “mean,” that’s not a useful figure, since it’s skewed by the disproportionate rewards going to the rich. And that’s what that chart looks like. There’s no way that the median for US people in their 60s is anywhere near $200k unless that involves some bullshit like imputing an NPV to their social security entitlement.
OK, so I did some searching.
Here’s a more informative set of stats and charts: https://dqydj.com/retirement-savings-by-age/
The age 60-64 median according to their more rigorous methodology is $10,400, not $200k.
Still very bleak. Nobody is retiring comfortably on $60k, much less $10k.
Might be worth factoring in SS, as that’s the real practical retirement savings people rely upon.
The $60k represents remaining savings at age 80-89.
Look at the 60-69 column for what people have around the time they start retiring. But not that those are means, not median figures, so are skewed by the US’s vast levels of inequality.
Median, not average, so much better at showing this situation than mean but it’s still not great. I agree that it should be broken up, but the difficulty is how you define the grouping will have a significant impact on the results, especially in early and later years.
I’d prefer median by age graphed by age. Average by any grouping will skew heavily if there is a lot of variance, and I absolutely expect there is in the US. A box-and-whisker plot could also be ideal here, but you still have the grouping problem.
Still seems scarily low, especially for the USA.
Also skewed by those that will have millions.
Garbage.
Tell me the average of all people who have more than zero (and the number that represents), then tell me how many have zero.
This number 955 doesn’t mean shit.
Social Security was the single greatest transfer of wealth from employers to employees in US history
Sounds like a good thing
That’s why the Repulicans hate it so much.
If your employer offers a 401(k) match, not trying to take advantage of that is one of the absolute dumbest financial moves you can make. Yes, I understand people sometimes can’t that’s why I said “try”.
Another move is not investing early. The biggest boost to wealth in retirement is start saving early to take advantage of compounding interest.
I’ll upvote for the “try”. Most people I know in tight spots need the money NOW. They are barely thinking 1 year ahead let alone 40.
I know people like that too. Those same people don’t know how much they spend on anything, don’t know where their money is going, and waste money on entertainment (subscriptions), drugs/alcohol, it other stupid shit. I wish they were more aware of their personal finance because I’d hate to see them when they’re 55 trying to figure it out at the last minute.
I’m pretty broke all the time, i absolutely know where all of it’s going:
- bills
- groceries
- paying off debts from my young and dumb days.
6 more months and i get to have a clothing and sundries budget again
Honestly, comparing my finances to most of the people who have complained to me in person about living “paycheck to paycheck” the majority of people are trying to live middle class on working class incomes. I was guilty of it too, lifestyle creep happened.
I shake my head every time I see people overspending on consumer bullshit while complaining about cost of living like their $20/day for energy drinks is reasonable.
I will say this. It annoys me when I see stuff like. Well these folks are stupid so they deserve it. I have definately known folks who can’t do whats necessary to not be messed up in the us and its part of the reason we need real social democratic systems and safety nets. The us has this thing expecting everyone to be a jack of all trades for everything and being smart about every aspect of life. Everyone can’t be a doctor, a lawyers, an accountant, a mechanic, and a all the various trades needed to properly handle property. I mean look whats expected with our taxes. Its nuts. Any society should run such that people can work a job and blow their paycheck every week and still do fine. Maybe not high on the hog but have food and shelter and healthcare and transportation and education if they need it. Because if we don’t we are going to just create a bunch of problems that then get duct tape type solutions which is pretty much what you see in the us.
Without universal healthcare, even if you save millions, it can all be wiped out with a single illness.
The rest of the world cannot comprehend such freedom
Would they like to?
Comprehend yes, have no.
I’m sure the situation is dire, but I’m not sure it communicates an accurate picture by lumping in 21 year olds with people who’ve been in the workforce for decades.
21 yr olds who are just entering the workforce or are in college aren’t expected to have much, if any, retirement savings at that stage in their lives.
A better picture would be to break it down by age group. Still not a pretty picture, I’m sure.
They’ve done that in the research, it’s just a clickbait headline with very, very light details. After following a few clicks I found the PDF [1] in which they break it apart by many groups and factors (age, race, savings plan, income, student loan debt, all sorts of stuff) and that $955 figure falls under the “workers who do not have $1 in a DC” (meaning workers with no access to a savings plan). For those with access, the number is $40,000 average.
[1] https://www.nirsonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/NIRS_2026-Retirement-in-America-FINAL.pdf
For those with access, the number is $40,000 average.
Which is both in the article and OP summary.
$40,000 still approaches zero. Its one or 2 years of expenses at best.
Why, you’re welcome for the link to the PDF! I’m glad you enjoyed reading it and appreciate your insightful and loquacious feedback on the matter at hand. You are a true gem of the lemmyverse, evenglow.
Evenglow, thoughts arrive like butterflies Oh, he don’t know, so he chases them away
Median and average are not the same. Median is going to be skewed very low compared to average in this case.
This is still a shockingly low number. If you graduate with a bachelors and get a job our of college and contribute to a 401k, you should easily hit 1k saved within a year. If you didn’t go to college and started working at 18, you’ll be making less, but should still be able to save 1k by 22. Even shitty employers have retirement programs, it’s just that most hourly workers won’t take the time to sign up. There’s only one way the median can be 1k, and that’s because at least 40% have $0 saved and the whole system is completely broken for them.
This also seriously depends on the employer. One of the first things that gets slashed during benefit cuts is reitrement accounts, because they’re an easy target and you’re not “losing” the money.
I didn’t start having meaningful savings until my mid 20s. When i bought a house paying off the mortgage became a priority over saving for retirement. I’ll be better off paying less interest and reducing my expenses faster than I would be collecting interest on that money. In theory i could out perform my mortgage interest rate by trading stocks, but that is a lot riskier than paying off the mortgage.
Trading stocks is probably the worst investment strategy any normal person with a market-unrelated job and life responsibilities could pursue, with almost guaranteed losses in the long term. Good on you for identifying the high risk early in life- never forget it. That being said, there’s very strong arguments for investing in stocks, but do it the boring way: large blended ETFs with a low expense ratio (like VTI, VTV, VOO, VXUS, or the Boglehead favorite: VT) or mutual funds. Don’t “trade,” buy and hold and try to forget you even have a brokerage account housing those blended, diversified funds. Try to use tax-advantaged vehicles as much as possible, like a Roth IRA or a Roth option in a 401k. Your mortgage APR is what? 4-7%? The market should definitely outperform that in the long term, and you can reduce your exposure to acute transient shifts even more by dollar cost averaging into your savings. I’m all for paying off debt as quickly as possible, for the psychological benefit, but there’s also the rate race of your investment’s probable APY vs your debt’s APR.
I’ve been diversifying into some long term stock options in some of my savings accounts. I live quite frugally so I am able to still save a bit while paying a bit extra to my mortgage. So far I’ve done pretty good in the markets but my trading accounts aren’t significant sums of money, when they do well I sometimes wish I invested more but when a stock is down bad I’m reminded why I keep those sums low.
People underestimate what even $50 a month can do over time. Sure it might not be down payment money but it could be enough to build a safety net so you can try a new job or move somewhere else with a bit more behind you.
Wouldn’t surprise me at all if the average retirement savings of those in their 50s is like $100,000
I’m slightly heartened to see the average is higher than I thought
And you guys don’t have a state pension either, right?
You guys really need to get on with a revolution. Work until you die is kinda supposed to be something we are moving away from
Life expectancy keeps lowering so no need to worry about retirement.
oh thank god. Freedom from this awful system.
There’s social security, which does give seniors enough to exist, but not much else.
Even SS is indexed by how much you earned as a wage-slave over your lifetime. If you’ve done something other than slaving for the Boss, or if your slaving has been for low pay, you get commensurately less in SS payments and the state will be happy to see you starve and freeze in old age.
That’s unbelievably backwards. I had no idea America designed a system to perpetuate class divide into retirement.
The actual formula is a bit complicated, but it boils down to a few key points:
- you “pay into” the system at a fixed tax rate relative to your income, subject to a maximum cap after which you do not get taxed anymore.
- in order to be eligible for benefits, you need to have 10 years of some amount of income. I think the threshold for that is extremely low, something like $8k/year.
- when you retire, your income from your 35 highest earning years are sort-of-averaged together, subject to that cap I mentioned, to determine a monthly payment.
- But, that value assumes you retire and take payments at 67. Take payments early, and you get less per month. Take payments later, and you get more.
- Of course, none of this is guaranteed for future retirees. Current payments from workers go towards payments to current retirees, with the excess either saved for later or not due to the whims of the current administration. If there is ever not enough money to make payments, everyone likely takes that haircut.
we have social security which has its own tax structure taken out and you get relative to your pay in and most people will have to spend most of it on their health expenses from the retirement universal healthcare we have that has you pay 20% unless you sign up for a scam corpo thing that doesn’t allow you to get proper healthcare so is cheaper. I worked for a company with european offices and when they went through the healthcare decuctible and out of pocket and savings accounts to pay for these things and such you could see some of the folks from over there were like. Wow. That is some shit.
I would say that is intended. Every day I’m more convinced that the US is the Billionaire playground where they can test out how to press the most money out of the population.
With the big police state and enormous prison capacity ready to counter the eventual revolution.
Perhaps they are suprised themselves that no one revolts as they suck more and more money out of the population and reveal more and more of the degenerate lifestyle of the elites.
“They know that we f*ck and kill children and still don’t revolt? What else do we need to do? We already take nearly all their money. Well, let’s destroy the pension funds, perhaps that does the trick…”
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They have never wanted us to retire. They want us to work until we die.
workers will not be allowed to work until they die unless its a really menial job. Every normal mundane mistake you make as an older worker, your bosses look at you trying to decide if you are too old to do the job.
Don’t tell the ultra wealthy! They’ll start the ploy to “recover” what they’re missing out on. Usually by funding systems to convince voters to elect someone who’ll get it for them the fastest
Soon there will be a critical mass of people who have nothing left to lose. Thats why the Democrats and Republicans need the military in the streets. Their wealthy benefactors cannot allow anything like the New Deal to happen again.
