Finance news is for rich people and this article proves it, talking like it's a choice whether you retire with $1 million or not. If you're thinking you're not rich but still interested in finance, then you're probably rich! ;)

The article breezes past that the median retirement saving is actually $164,000, which makes sense as the median salary is ~$60,000.

I have always heard you should have 10x your salary (starting salary or ending salary, I am not sure).

This makes the average retirement "426,000 for those aged 65 to 74" seem less bleak, but the median(164,000) makes it sound pretty bad.

There is so much conflicting advice on this topic. It makes it difficult to plan. Are we getting Social Security? Will it be reduced? Is the safe withdraw rate of 4% a safe assumption? The article uses 7% for rate of return, is this inflation adjusted? Do These calculators make assumptions, like your house will be paid off, or you have reduction in spending from kids moving out?

I am assuming if you pay SS tax and put 15% of you income into the S&P for 30 years, you should be able to retire at 65. Hopefully it works out!

The title is misleading, they are referring to "Retirement Savings" just counting 401k and IRA dollars only. Personally my "retirement savings" are over 60% in non-IRA or 401k dollars, and I'm retired.

Later in the article they begin to talk about overall net worth including regular savings and investments and the numbers are better but could still be problematic:

>> In terms of the average retiree’s net worth, the Federal Reserve data puts it at approximately $1.2 million for those aged 65 to 74. The average net worth drops to $958,000 for those aged 75 and older.

For those in the US trying to do retirement planning I highly recommend trying: https://projectionlab.com/

I first saw it shared on HN and I've been a happy customer for the past year and the ability to compare the impact of different scenarios has helped me make a few big financial decisions. Good community around it for asking questions too.

One, in the article many more retirees have net worth > $1 million. Not sure which is the more relevant number.

Two, this likely means most people will rely on Social Security to fund their retirement.

For 95% of people that is an incredible amount of money

Question must be - how does one retire on $1M? What kind of passive income one could hope for reliably considering one doesn't have a right for mistake when they are 65+ because there's no way to start over, so "rent some servers with Solana stake" is not a viable strategy.

Useless statistic - people unable to retire are not part of the survey.

A more valuable stat would be % of people over 65 with $1M+ in savings.

$1M in investments, drawing down at a moderate rate of 4% per year, gives you $40k/year income. Not poverty level in the USA (unless you’re in a high COL city), but not fabulously comfortable either. And only 10% of retirees have even that? Ouch.

Back in the ‘80s, “retiring a millionaire” was awesome: you won. Not so much, today. People are living longer now, too. $1M is not going to stretch as far as many would believe. I’m planning to significantly dial down my lifestyle when I retire—most of us will have to.

With todays prices it won't last long.