Personal Finance

How Many Americans Don't Even Have $10,000 Saved For Retirement? It May Be More Than You Think

Christy Bieber

Published: February 15, 2025 9:12 am

Saving money for retirement is critical to being financially comfortable in your later years. If you do not invest for your future, you will be forced to try to live on Social Security without any other income coming in. Since Social Security is only intended to replace about 40% of pre-retirement earnings, making due on these benefits alone would be a huge challenge. 

Unfortunately, far too many people aren’t saving for retirement. In fact, more than half of all Americans have almost nothing invested to produce an income stream when paychecks stop. Let’s take a look at just how many Americans are behind and consider some tips for making sure you aren’t one of the many who will end up struggling during your golden years.

Here’s how many Americans have less than $10K saved

According to the Employee Benefit Research Institute:

• 58.4% of Americans have between $0 and $9,999 in retirement savings. 
• 20.5% have $10,000 to $99,000
• 13.9% have $100,000 to $499,999
• 4% have $500,000 to $999,999
• 3.1% have between $1 million and $4.99 million
• 0.1% have $5 million or more invested

Obviously, this is not good news that the majority of Americans have barely gotten started on investing for retirement — if they’ve started at all. Of course, some of those people may be just starting their careers. Sadly, many more aren’t, and there are a substantial number of people who are approaching their retirement years without a nest egg. 

How to step up your savings for a secure future

It’s easy to see why so many people have little or no money saved. Most people have a lot of expenses that have to be paid now and, when you’re struggling to cover the bills today, it’s really hard to set aside money for a retirement that won’t happen for years.  Unfortunately, if you don’t start saving early, you’ll make it difficult or impossible to invest enough. That’s because you’ll lose out on years of compound growth that put your money to work helping you boost your earnings as returns are reinvested.

If you want to set yourself up for success, you don’t necessarily have to start with saving a huge percentage of your paycheck, although it can help of course. What you need to do is begin saving at as young of an age as you can, save consistently, and invest your money in the right assets. For many people, the keys to success are:

• Signing up for a workplace 401(k) or opening up an IRA at a brokerage account if you don’t have a workplace plan. 
• Setting a savings goal. You can assume you’ll need to end up with 10 times your final salary at your retirement date as a quick and simple way to set your goal, then use the calculators at Investor.gov to determine how much to invest to hit your goal
• Automating contributions to your 401(k) or IRA. Ideally, you’ll invest enough to hit your savings goal but if you can’t, invest as much as possible — and make sure it’s at least enough to earn the full employer 401(k) match so you don’t miss out on free money
• Increasing contributions over time if you don’t start out investing enough. Saving your raises is a good way to do this since you can divert the money to retirement savings right away when you get a raise so you won’t miss it.
• Investing in a safe, reliable investment you can hold for the long-term. An S&P 500 index fund is a good option for many people, and billionaire investor Warren Buffett recommends the majority of people put 90% of their money into an S&P fund

If you take these steps, you are almost guaranteed to have far more than $10K invested when it comes to retirement. It does require some sacrifice now, but it’s essential if you don’t want to be broke in your 80s.