Wealthy PotAverage Retirement Savings by Age: The Honest Numbers
Among US families that hold a retirement account, the median balance is $86,900 and the average is $334,000, according to the Federal Reserve's Survey of Consumer Finances. Those two numbers describe the same country and disagree by a factor of nearly four, which tells you most of what you need to know about using an average here. And both of them leave out the 45.7% of families who have no retirement account at all. Count everyone, and the median American family has about $4,300 in retirement accounts. This page gives every version of the number, by age, and says plainly which one describes a normal household.
Table of Contents
The Short Answer
- $86,900 is the median retirement account balance among families that have one; $334,000 is the average. Federal Reserve, 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances.
- Only 54.3% of US families hold a retirement account of any kind.
- Counting every family, including those with nothing, the median falls to about $4,300.
- Among families aged 55 to 64 who have an account, the median is $185,000 and the average is $537,700. About 71% of them hold less than that average.
- Under 35 and over 75, the median family has $0, because fewer than half of families in those bands own an account.
- These are 2022 figures, the most recent published wave. The 2025 survey was in the field from April 2025 to March 2026 and has not been released.
What This Page Measures
There are two honest ways to answer "how much do people have saved for retirement," and they produce different numbers because they count different things. Getting the two confused is the single most common error in coverage of this topic.
| This page | Average 401(k) balance by age | |
|---|---|---|
| Source | Federal Reserve, Survey of Consumer Finances | Vanguard, How America Saves |
| What is counted | Every retirement account a family holds: 401(k)s, 403(b)s, thrift savings plans, IRAs and Keoghs | One 401(k)-type account at one recordkeeper |
| Who is counted | All US families, nationally representative | People already enrolled in a Vanguard plan |
| Unit | A family, so a couple's two accounts add together | A participant account |
| Median | $86,900 among families holding an account | $44,115 |
The distinction matters in a practical way. A recordkeeper can only see people who already have an account with it, so its numbers answer "among savers, how much has accumulated." The Federal Reserve draws a sample of all US families, so its numbers can also answer "how many families have nothing," which turns out to be the more important question. If you specifically want the 401(k) view, the sister page on average 401(k) balance by age covers it in full.
What the Fed counts as a retirement account. In its own words, the category covers "individual retirement accounts, Keogh accounts, and certain employer-sponsored accounts, such as 401(k), 403(b), and thrift savings accounts from current or past jobs." What it does not count is a traditional defined benefit pension, which has no account balance, nor Social Security, nor home equity, nor ordinary savings. So these figures understate total retirement resources for anyone with a pension, and you should read them as "money in retirement accounts," not "money for retirement."
Retirement Savings by Age
Here is the published table. Read the share column first, because it changes what the other two mean: the median and average are calculated only across families that actually hold an account.
| Age of reference person | Share with a retirement account | Median balance | Average balance |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 35 | 49.6% | $18,600 | $49,200 |
| 35–44 | 61.5% | $45,000 | $141,500 |
| 45–54 | 62.2% | $115,000 | $313,200 |
| 55–64 | 57.0% | $185,000 | $537,700 |
| 65–74 | 51.0% | $199,600 | $609,400 |
| 75 or more | 41.8% | $129,500 | $462,400 |
| All families | 54.3% | $86,900 | $334,000 |
Median vs average, families that hold a retirement account
2022 Survey of Consumer Finances, 2022 dollars. Upper bar median, lower bar average.
Source: Federal Reserve, 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances, Table 6. Bars scaled to the $609,400 maximum.
Two patterns are worth pausing on. Balances keep rising into the 65 to 74 band and then fall, which is what drawdown in retirement looks like. And the share of families holding an account peaks at 62.2% in the 45 to 54 band and declines from there, partly because older cohorts were more likely to have a traditional pension instead of an account, and partly because some retirees have spent the balance down to nothing.
The Number Almost Nobody Publishes
The table above answers "among families with a retirement account, how much is in it." It cannot answer "how much does a typical American family have," because the 45.7% of families with no account are excluded from the calculation entirely.
The Federal Reserve publishes the microdata that lets anyone work out the second number, so we did. The table below is our own calculation from the Fed's public summary-extract file for the same survey, using the Fed's own recommended method for its five imputation replicates. It covers every family in the age band, counting a family with no retirement account as $0.
| Age of reference person | Median, all families | Average, all families | Median, families with an account (for contrast) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 35 | $0 | $24,400 | $18,600 |
| 35–44 | about $9,400 | $87,100 | $45,000 |
| 45–54 | about $20,300 | $194,700 | $115,000 |
| 55–64 | about $16,600 | $306,400 | $185,000 |
| 65–74 | about $5,500 | $310,700 | $199,600 |
| 75 or more | $0 | $194,100 | $129,500 |
| All families | about $4,300 | $181,500 | $86,900 |
Why the all-family median falls after 55. This looks like an error and is not. The median of all families sits at the 50th percentile of a distribution in which a large block of families is stacked at zero. At ages 45 to 54, 37.8% of families have nothing, so the halfway family sits around the 20th percentile of the savers. At 55 to 64, 43.0% have nothing, so the halfway family sits around the 12th percentile of savers. At 65 to 74, 49.0% have nothing, so the halfway family sits barely above the bottom of the savers' distribution. Account ownership falls faster than balances rise, and the all-family median follows ownership.
That is also why these particular estimates deserve a caution the published ones do not need. Each sits in a very steep part of the distribution, where a small shift moves the answer a lot, which is why they are printed as approximations. The $0 results are firm: in every one of the five replicates, fewer than half of families in those bands hold an account, so the median is zero by definition.
A more recent read on ownership. The Fed's other household survey is fresher. Its Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2025, from nearly 13,000 adults interviewed in October 2025 and published in May 2026, found that 61% of adults had a tax-preferred retirement account such as a 401(k) or IRA, 29% had a defined benefit pension, and 67% had one or the other. By age, the share with a tax-preferred account ran 28% at 18 to 24, 63% at 25 to 54, 73% at 55 to 64 and 62% at 65 and over. That survey counts adults rather than families, so its 61% and the Survey of Consumer Finances' 54.3% are not the same statistic, but the shape of the picture is the same: roughly a third of the country is not accumulating in an account at all.
Why the Average Is Not a Benchmark
Across all families that hold a retirement account, the average is $334,000 and the median is $86,900. The average is 3.8 times the median. In a symmetric distribution the two would be close together; here the gap exists because a small number of very large balances pull the arithmetic mean upward while leaving the midpoint alone.
You can put a number on how unrepresentative the average is. Working from the same public microdata, about 76% of families that own a retirement account have less than the average balance. At ages 55 to 64 it is about 71%. An "average" that roughly three in four savers fall short of is not a benchmark; it is a description of how concentrated the money is.
The Federal Reserve says so itself, twice. Its published mean tables carry a standing warning that the estimates "may be sensitive to outliers." And the accompanying article notes that the large difference between median and mean values "reflects the highly disproportionate share of financial assets held by some households."
The concentration shows up directly in the Fed's own analysis. Among working families aged 35 to 64 that hold an IRA or a defined contribution plan, the average combined balance was $331,400 in 2022. Split by usual income, that single average breaks into three different countries:
| Usual income group | 2016 | 2019 | 2022 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bottom half (0 to 49.9th percentile) | $66,000 | $66,600 | $54,700 |
| Upper middle (50th to 89.9th) | $193,600 | $197,800 | $226,700 |
| Top decile (90th to 100th) | $791,100 | $803,100 | $913,300 |
| All | $293,100 | $312,500 | $331,400 |
The headline average rose between 2019 and 2022 while the balance for the bottom half of earners fell by roughly $12,000 in real terms. A national average can move in the opposite direction from the experience of half the country, which is the clearest possible argument for not measuring yourself against one.
So which number should you compare yourself to? The median for your age band, among families that hold an account, if you hold one. That is the $18,600 to $199,600 column. Treat the average as a fact about the distribution rather than a target.
What Changed Since 2019
Because the survey repeats every three years with figures restated in constant dollars, it can show real change rather than inflation. Both columns below are in 2022 dollars.
| Age | Share with an account, 2019 to 2022 | Median balance, 2019 to 2022 |
|---|---|---|
| Under 35 | 45.3% to 49.6% | $15,100 to $18,600 |
| 35–44 | 55.8% to 61.5% | $69,600 to $45,000 |
| 45–54 | 57.9% to 62.2% | $115,900 to $115,000 |
| 55–64 | 54.5% to 57.0% | $154,700 to $185,000 |
| 65–74 | 48.1% to 51.0% | $190,100 to $199,600 |
| 75 or more | 37.7% to 41.8% | $96,200 to $129,500 |
Ownership rose in every single age band, by about four to six percentage points. That is the good news in this data and it is easy to miss under the balance figures.
The 35 to 44 band looks alarming, with a real median down 35%. Read it alongside the share column before drawing a conclusion. Ownership in that band rose 5.7 points, which means a large group of newly opened, small accounts joined the pool the median is measured over. The Fed applies the same reasoning to a similar decline elsewhere in its report, noting that a drop in a conditional average was driven by a group "among whom participation jumped notably." A falling conditional median is consistent with more people saving, not fewer. It is not proof that existing savers lost money, and nobody should read it that way.
A Better Benchmark Than an Average
An average tells you where other people are. It cannot tell you whether you are on track, because the amount you need depends on what you spend, not on what your neighbours saved. Two benchmarks do better.
1. A savings rate. Fidelity's published guideline is to aim to save "at least 15% of your pre-tax income each year, which includes any employer match," starting at 25 and retiring at 67. Fidelity arrives at 15% by estimating that most people need 55% to 80% of their pre-retirement income to keep their lifestyle, and that roughly 45% of retirement income has to come from savings rather than Social Security. It is a guideline from one firm, resting on those assumptions, not a rule. But it has the property an average lacks: it is something you can act on this month.
2. A multiple of your own income. Fidelity's companion guideline is 1x salary saved by 30, 3x by 40, 6x by 50, 8x by 60 and 10x by 67, and it says plainly that "these milestones are aspirational." The 401(k) page lays that ladder out in full. Set against it, the survey data is sobering. Using the same public microdata, the median family aged 55 to 64 that holds a retirement account has roughly 1.4 times its usual income in those accounts, against a guidepost of 8x by 60:
| Age | Median retirement accounts as a multiple of usual income (families holding an account) |
|---|---|
| Under 35 | 0.2x |
| 35–44 | 0.4x |
| 45–54 | 0.8x |
| 55–64 | 1.4x |
| 65–74 | 2.0x |
| 75 or more | 1.8x |
That gap deserves an honest reading rather than a scare. Part of it is real: the Fed's 2025 household survey found only 35% of non-retirees thought their retirement saving was on track, a share that has barely moved since 2017. Part of it is a measurement limit: the multiples above exclude pensions and Social Security, and 39% of adults aged 55 to 64 still have a defined benefit pension, which carries no account balance and therefore contributes zero to these figures.
What the numbers cannot tell you. No national figure knows your mortgage status, your spouse's accounts, whether you have a pension, what you spend, or when you intend to stop working. A balance is only meaningful next to the income it has to produce. As a hypothetical illustration only, a $185,000 balance drawn at 4% a year produces about $7,400 in the first year before tax, and a $500,000 balance produces about $20,000; those are arithmetic, not forecasts, and they assume nothing about market returns, inflation or how long the money lasts. Working the same sum with your own numbers is what the Retirement Withdrawal Calculator is for, and the 401(k) Calculator will project a balance forward from where you are now.
If the honest answer is that you have nothing yet. That is where 45.7% of families sit, so it is the normal case rather than the exceptional one. The first question is not how much to save but whether an account exists to save into: an employer plan if one is offered, capturing any match before anything else, and an IRA if not. The Fed's 2025 survey is a reminder that accumulation is fragile at the margin as well, with 14% of non-retirees having borrowed from, cashed out, or cut contributions to a retirement account in the prior twelve months.
For the wider picture, retirement accounts sit inside average net worth by age, cash outside them shows up in average savings by age, and the income most retirees actually live on is covered in the average Social Security check.
Sources & Methodology
Every figure on this page was taken from the institution that produced it, not from a secondary summary. Figures were re-pulled and re-checked on 2026-09-30.
- Federal Reserve Board, 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances: the headline balances, ownership shares and the 2019 comparison come from the historic tables (Table 6, family holdings of financial assets), estimates based on internal data and inflation-adjusted to 2022 dollars. The survey covered 4,602 families and is the only nationally representative US wealth survey of its kind.
- "Changes in U.S. Family Finances from 2019 to 2022", Federal Reserve Bulletin, October 2023: the 54.3% / $86,900 / $334,000 headline, the definition of a retirement account, and box 1 table A on IRA and defined contribution balances by income group.
- Federal Reserve SCF interactive chartbook: the Board's own browsable view of the same survey.
- Federal Reserve Board, Economic Well-Being of U.S. Households in 2025, published 13 May 2026 from a survey of nearly 13,000 adults conducted in October 2025: account and pension ownership by age, the 35% "on track" share, and the 14% who tapped or cut retirement contributions.
- Fidelity: the 15% savings-rate guideline and the assumptions behind it; the salary-multiple milestones are Fidelity's own and are labelled by Fidelity as aspirational.
- Federal Register, 89 FR 61423 (31 July 2024): the Board's approved design for the 2025 survey, with main interviewing "between April 2025 and March 2026."
How the all-family figures were calculated. The Fed publishes medians and means only for families that hold an account. To produce the figures that include families with nothing, we used the Board's Summary Extract Public Data for the 2022 survey, taking the variable RETQLIQ with the sample weight X42001, and following the method the Fed sets out in its own FAQ: compute the statistic separately for each of the five imputation replicates and average the five results. As a check, running the identical calculation restricted to families that hold an account reproduces the Fed's published table to within about 1% on ownership shares, medians and means, which is the difference the Fed itself attributes to the statistical alteration applied to public files for respondent privacy. Because the all-family medians sit close to the block of families holding $0, they are sensitive to small shifts and are reported as approximations. The multiples-of-income table uses the same file and weighting with the variable NORMINC.
Vintage and the next update. The 2022 wave, published in October 2023, is the most recent one the Federal Reserve has released. The survey is normally triennial; the 2025 wave was in the field from April 2025 to March 2026 under the design approved in the Federal Register notice above, and the Board has not announced a publication date for its results. This page will be rebuilt on the 2025 figures when they appear.
Limitations, stated plainly. These are 2022 dollars and 2022 balances, so a portfolio that has simply tracked the market has moved since. The category excludes defined benefit pensions, Social Security and home equity. Survey wealth data relies on what families report. And every figure here is a distribution statistic, not a personal benchmark.
This article is for general information and is not financial, investment or tax advice. Figures are from the Federal Reserve Board's 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances, its Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking, and Fidelity's published savings guidelines, all checked on 2026-09-30. The withdrawal figures are hypothetical arithmetic used to illustrate scale, not projections, and assume no market return, inflation or tax. Your own situation will differ from any national average; consider speaking to a qualified professional before acting on retirement decisions.
FAQ
What is the average retirement savings in the US?
$334,000 among families that hold a retirement account, with a median of $86,900, per the Federal Reserve's 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances. Counting all families, including the 45.7% with no account, the average is about $181,500 and the median about $4,300.
How much does the average 60 year old have saved for retirement?
The survey reports in bands rather than single ages. For families aged 55 to 64 that hold a retirement account, the median is $185,000 and the average $537,700. Counting every family in that band, including those with nothing, the median is closer to $16,600.
Should I compare myself to the average or the median?
The median. About 76% of families with a retirement account hold less than the average, because a small number of very large balances pull the average up. The Federal Reserve itself warns that its mean figures "may be sensitive to outliers."
What percentage of Americans have no retirement savings?
45.7% of US families held no retirement account of any kind in 2022. The Fed's more recent 2025 household survey found 61% of adults had a tax-preferred retirement account and 67% had either that or a defined benefit pension, so roughly a third of adults had neither.
Why is this different from the average 401(k) balance?
Different source, different unit. The average 401(k) balance by age comes from Vanguard's recordkeeping data and counts one account belonging to someone already enrolled in a Vanguard plan. This page counts all retirement accounts a family holds, across a nationally representative sample of US families including those with no account at all.
Is 2022 data still relevant in 2026?
It is the most recent published wave, and the Survey of Consumer Finances is the only nationally representative measure of US family wealth. The 2025 survey was in the field from April 2025 to March 2026 and has not been released. Treat the balances as a picture of the distribution rather than of today's market values.
Do these numbers include pensions and Social Security?
No. The category covers account balances only: IRAs, Keoghs, 401(k)s, 403(b)s and thrift savings plans. A traditional defined benefit pension has no account balance and contributes nothing to these figures, yet 39% of adults aged 55 to 64 still have one. Social Security and home equity are excluded too.
How much should I have saved by my age?
There is no statutory answer. Fidelity's published guideline is to save at least 15% of pre-tax income a year including any employer match, with milestones of 1x salary by 30, 3x by 40, 6x by 50, 8x by 60 and 10x by 67, which Fidelity itself calls aspirational and which assume you start at 25 and retire at 67. Those are one firm's guidelines rather than rules, and they are a more useful yardstick than any national average.
Why do the all-family medians fall after age 55?
Because account ownership falls faster than balances rise. Only 51% of families aged 65 to 74 hold a retirement account, so the halfway family in that band sits near the bottom of the savers' distribution. It reflects who owns an account, not what savers have accumulated.
Cite This Page
Journalists, educators and researchers are welcome to cite these figures. Please link back so readers can reach the underlying Federal Reserve data and the methodology note above, particularly for the all-family estimates, which are our own calculation from the Fed's public microdata rather than a published Federal Reserve statistic.
"Average Retirement Savings by Age: The Honest Numbers." Wealthy Pot, 2026. https://wealthypot.com/average-retirement-savings-by-age/
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