Half of older Americans have nothing saved for retirement, study says

Even though the number of people with nothing saved for retirement is grim, it’s better than it was about 12 years ago.

Of those 55 and older, 48 percent have nothing put away in a 401(k)-type contribution plan or an IRA, according to the Government Accountability Office report released in March 2019.

That is better than 52 percent who had nothing saved in 2013.

Of those that have nothing saved, 29 percent had neither a pension or any other financial assets.

The GAO reported that Social Security provides most of the income for about half of households age 65 and older.

As an example: The average Social Security retirement benefit in 2017 was $1,360 per month, or about $16,000 per year. But if a person who has worked for at least 40 years in a medium paying job would probably receive just under $2,000 per month in Social Security.

That income is rarely enough to live on and Social Security was not intended to be a single source of retirement income.

The Employee Benefit Research Institute estimates that 41 percent of households headed by someone age 35 to 64 will probably run out of money in retirement. But that number is down 1.7 percentage points since 2014. So, in other words, more people are getting the message that they must save for retirement.