Want to retire comfortably? You’ll need to be a millionaire, a new poll has found.
The average worker believes they need at least $1.2 million in savings on Day One of retirement - whether that’s in 2026 or five years from now, according to a survey of 615 workers contributing to retirement plans by wealth management firm Schroders.
But some 51 per cent expect to have less than $500,000 in savings on their first day of retirement. And the ability to hit that goal is becoming a struggle as people feel the squeeze of inflation and rising healthcare, housing and utility costs, the research found.
“Rising costs are forcing tough tradeoffs, and saving for retirement is often the first thing that gets deprioritized,” Deb Boyden, Schroders' head of U.S. defined contribution, said in a statement.
Some 69 percent of respondents said they believe these growing costs have made retirement impossible, and another 55 percent say they can’t save as much as they want because of competing expenses.
The Schroders survey paints a gloomy picture of retirement and echoes worries that current retirees expressed in a May poll the company conducted. Some 58 percent of retirees said they’re worried they’ll outlive their retirement savings, and another 49 percent say expenses are higher than they expected, the survey found.
The majority of respondents expressed a lack of satisfaction with their financial situation and, in some cases, the outlook was bleak. Some 5 percent of retirees said they’re “living a nightmare,” while just 4 percent said they’re “living the dream.” Another 19 percent said they were struggling, the survey noted.
Major drivers behind retirees' worries about their financial stability were inflation and healthcare costs. Inflation jumped from a modest 2.4 percent in February to a three-year high of 4.2 percent in May, largely due to skyrocketing energy prices resulting from President Donald Trump’s war with Iran.
From the start of the war on February 28 through May, rising gas prices alone cost Americans nearly $60 billion in additional spending compared to a year earlier.
Healthcare costs have offered no breaks for retirees’ wallets, either. The average total cost of healthcare in retirement reached $345,000 for couples in 2025, according to a study from financial services firm Fidelity. Ten years ago, Fidelity said that figure was $260,000.
America’s older population has responded to the growing cost of retirement by staying in the workforce longer than they have in the past.
Some 23.2 percent of the U.S. workforce is older than 55, up nearly 6 percentage points compared to figures from a decade ago, according to a study by online career platform MyPerfectResume.
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