August 2025
18Aug

How Many Americans Have Retirement Savings? The Answer May Surprise You.

Given the choice, most Americans would probably rather spend their extra money on entertainment, vacations, or home improvements than contribute to an IRA or 401(k). But without retirement savings, you risk struggling financially once your career comes to an end and you stop collecting a steady paycheck. If you're an average earner, you can expect your Social Security benefits to replace about 40% of your wages, assuming the program doesn't have to move forward with cuts. But it's typical for retirees to...

August 18, 2025
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15Aug

Social Security isn’t the broken piece of America’s retirement crisis. Here’s what really needs to be fixed.

In the beginning, the aims of Social Security were both noble and modest. “We have tried to frame a law,” said President Franklin D. Roosevelt at the signing of the Social Security Act, “which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age.” It was Aug. 14, 1935. The key phrase was “some measure of protection.” Social Security was never meant to be the principal...

August 15, 2025
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13Aug

Analysis: The US$400 trillion global retirement gap

By Paul Mackintosh   In a recent discussion with the World Economic Forum (WEF), Yie-Hsin Hung, chief executive officer of State Street Investment Management, addressed the global retirement savings gap, estimated to have hit some US$50 trillion ten years ago and forecast to reach around $400 trillion by 2050. The US is expected to account for 33% of the $400 trillion, China, 30%, and India, 20%. In the US, those who are 45- 60 years old or Generation X save on average around...

August 13, 2025
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13Aug

US. The Silver Tsunami: Navigating Retirement Risk in a Declining Financial Literacy Landscape

As the global population ages, a quiet crisis is unfolding: financial literacy rates among older adults have plummeted to below 60%, a stark drop from 69.5% in 2020. This decline, driven by cognitive aging, digital disengagement, and inadequate educational resources, is creating a perfect storm for retirement planning. With 78% of retirees underestimating their life expectancy and $28 billion in U.S. scam losses reported in 2023 alone, the stakes for long-term financial resilience have never been higher. The erosion of...

August 13, 2025
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12Aug

One in Three Older Households Is Cost Burdened

The recently released State of the Nation’s Housing 2025 report highlights worrying trends in housing affordability for older households (those led by someone age 65 or over). In 2023, over a third (34 percent) of older households were cost burdened, paying more than 30 percent of their income for housing. This represents a new high of over 12.4 million households and an increase of nearly 2.3 million households just since 2019. More than half of these households, 6.7 million, pay over...

August 12, 2025
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11Aug

Vanguard: Emergency Savings Mean Retirement Savings

Employer-sponsored 401(k) plans help millions of Americans save for retirement, but not all those savings make it to retirement age, according to new research from Vanguard. According to the firm’s June research note, “Emergency Savings Protect Retirement Savings,” one-third of Vanguard plan participants who left their jobs in 2023 withdrew their 401(k) balance as a cash lump sum—often incurring withdrawal penalties and jeopardizing their retirement readiness. For more stories like this, sign up for the PLANSPONSOR NEWSDash daily newsletter.  “It’s really about...

August 11, 2025
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07Aug

US. What’s Driving Early Retirement Plan Withdrawals?

Hourly workers tend to cash out their retirement plan savings more frequently than salaried workers when they leave their job, according to a report from Vanguard. Early cash outs from defined contribution plans normally come with a 10% tax penalty, and far more often than not, represent a sub-optimal savings strategy. About 33% of participants in Vanguard-administered plans took a cash-out when they left their jobs in 2023. This is consistent with data from the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI),...

August 7, 2025
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06Aug

US. Increasing Social Security’s Retirement Age…

By Andrew G. Biggs Without forgetting that some people aren’t living longer. I have a new policy brief co-authored with John Shoven of Stanford looking at how we might address part of Social Security’s funding gap by raising the retirement age, but doing it in a way that account for differential mortality by income — the fact that rich people tend to live longer than the poor, which means that rich people are contributing more to Social Security’s insolvency than are the poor. The trick...

August 6, 2025
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06Aug

70% of Americans Don’t Think They’ll Reach $1 Million for Retirement: 8 Things They Can Do Now

Hitting $1 million for retirement might feel out of reach, and most Americans agree. In fact, 70% say they don’t think they’ll ever get there. How People Feel About Saving for Retirement According to CNBC, a survey that was conducted by Schroders, an investment management company, shows that Americans who have an employer-sponsored retirement plan feel that they will need to have at least $1.28 million put aside for retirement. Only 30% of workers with a retirement plan will expect to have $1 million saved, 48%...

August 6, 2025
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05Aug

US. Republicans want to give Uber workers benefits. There’s a catch.

Should independent contractors get employment benefits? The question has fueled decades of legal and political battles — and it might finally be coming to an end for the roughly 58 million people who currently work as freelancers, contractors and gig workers across America. Three Republican senators — led by Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who chairs the chamber’s Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee — have introduced bills to expand benefits like health insurance and retirement savings for contractors. The legislation...

August 5, 2025
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