Common wisdom in retirement planning dictates that you should aim to save 10 times your annual salary, or reach a “magic number” well past $1 million in savings, to retire in comfort.
But research on actual retirees suggests that those savings targets may be way too high, at least for most of us.
The typical retiree has only $126,000 in household savings, according to a 2025 retirement survey by the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies. Other surveys suggest that only about half of retirees have any retirement savings.
And here’s the thing: Most retirees say they’re doing pretty well.
In an April Gallup poll, 82% of retirees said they have enough money to live in comfort.
In the 2025 federal Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking, 83% of over-60 Americans said they were either “living comfortably” or “doing okay” financially.
And in the Transamerica survey, 76% of retirees said they are confident they can maintain a comfortable lifestyle in retirement.
“If what you’re asking is, ‘Are we preparing sufficiently for retirement,’ all of these numbers say that we are,” said Andrew Biggs, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
Do You Really Need $1 Million to Retire in Comfort?
A few years ago, Biggs made a splash with a Wall Street Journal column under the provocative headline, “You Don’t Need to Be a Millionaire to Retire.”
His point: You can retire with a lot less than $1 million. Most Americans do. And, as surveys repeatedly suggest, most of them seem to be doing all right.
The financial stability of American retirees is a topic of endless debate.
Voices in the retirement industry and the news media overplay the notion of a retirement “crisis,” Biggs said, and overstate the need for every family to bank seven-figure savings for a shot at a comfortable retirement. He is not alone in that view.
“I do agree that not everyone needs a million dollars,” said Anqi Chen, associate director of savings and household finance at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. “That’s a very high number for some people, and not enough for others. That one number just doesn’t fit everyone.”
Most Americans Retire With a Lot Less Than $1 Million
Whatever the merits of a $1 million retirement account, most Americans retire with a lot less.
How well they are doing is a more nuanced question.
In the 2026 EBRI/Greenwald Retirement Confidence Survey, roughly three-quarters of retirees rated their financial wellbeing as good, very good or excellent. And 73% said they are confident they will have enough money in retirement.
“Most retirees do seem to be getting by,” said Craig Copeland, director of wealth benefits research at the Employee Benefit Research Institute. “But how we define ‘getting by’ becomes tricky.”
On the topic of savings, retirees are less confident.
In the Transamerica survey, only 56% of retirees said they believe they have built a sufficient retirement nest egg.
And that finding makes sense, given that only about half of the oldest Americans have retirement accounts.
“They’re doing okay financially,” said Catherine Collinson, CEO of the Transamerica Center. “But if they were hit with a major shock, like having to pay for major out-of-pocket long-term care, their savings would be depleted in a hurry.”
In the Transamerica report, nearly 50% of retirees said they would rely on family and friends to provide long-term care, rather than pay for professional caregivers.
The Center for Retirement Research maintains a National Retirement Risk Index, which estimates how many workers are at risk of not keeping up their standard of living in retirement.
In recent years, the risk index has ranged between about 40% and 50%. It stands now at 39%, meaning that roughly 2 in 5 workers may not be doing so well in retirement.
For Retirees, Financial Stability Can Be Fragile
Taken together, the retirement surveys suggest that most retirees are making ends meet, but their financial stability can be fragile.
The same is true, of course, for millions of younger Americans. One recent Bankrate survey found that only 47% of Americans have enough cash on hand to cover a $1,000 emergency.
Biggs said retirees are more financially stable than younger Americans, as evidenced by their responses on surveys.
In the Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking, for example, the share of Americans who say they are doing worse than “okay” financially declines with age, from roughly 32% at ages 35-44 to 12% at ages 75 and up.
“Only a tiny percentage of seniors say they’re really having a hard time, and those percentages are smaller than for working people,” Biggs said.
How Much Do You Really Need to Retire Comfortably?
If most of us won’t need $1 million in the bank to retire in comfort, how much will we need?
The answer depends on many factors, according to Biggs and other experts, starting with how much you earned in your working life.
America’s median household income is around $84,000, according to federal data. Even if you banked 10 times that amount, you wouldn’t have $1 million.
Lower-income households won’t need as much income to sustain their standard of living, retirement experts say: Those seven-figure retirement magic numbers are more appropriate for high earners.
Most Americans rely primarily on Social Security for retirement income. Those benefits are progressive. The lower your income, the more of it you get back in your Social Security checks. And that percentage impacts how much you need to save to supplement the benefits.
Social Security “replaces” 90% of your income up to $1,286 a month. The replacement rate drops to 32% for incomes between $1,286 and $7,749, and to 15% for incomes above $7,749.
In other words, lower-income households “shouldn’t be saving very much for retirement,” Biggs said, “and they’re not saving very much for retirement.”
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