The paltry level of retirement savings may also help explain rising poverty among older Americans. The share of seniors living in poverty climbed to 15% in 2024, up from 14% a year earlier and the highest rate among all age groups, Census data shows.
I hadn't heard of this NIRS think tank but their vision on their About Us page is may be revealing:
Our vision is one of a retirement system that simultaneously meets the needs of employers, employees, and the public interest.
Employers listed first.
Honest question, how does someone end up in the situation where they have no prospects of retirement and also not end up hyper-radicalized? The fact that I'm going to have to work into my sixties if everything goes right is basically what turned me into a Stalinist so I really don't understand how people in worse situations just pretend this isn't a problem.
They propagandized the masses to believe that it's an individual personal failure to not save for retirement, rather than a choice the powerful made for everyone and have refused to allow the creation of a system that would benefit all of us rather than just the self appointed god kings with all the money.
They just kept telling everyone that when you fail it's because you fucked up. It isn't that the system isn't designed to assist the vast majority of people, but rather that 70% of the population is just failures, now watch reality tv shows that let you feel better than other failures.
As a manual laborer in the socialist paradise of Denmark, I likely have to work until I'm 73 before I can retire. (And my monthly retirement payments will be basically nothing unless I save up like 30% of my paycheck for the next 40 years)
Climate collapse will happen before I'm retirement age anyway
If you don't have $2M saved for retirement you may as well kiss your ass goodbye!
Even if a samurai's head were to be suddenly cut off, he should still be able to perform one more action with certainty. If one becomes like a revengeful ghost and shows great determination, though his head is cut off, he should not die. 
If you don't have $2M saved for retirement you may as well kiss your ass goodbye!
I got $4 on a gift card
Damn they gave you a gift card? How much schnitzel do I gotta turbo-vacuum for that?
it's not for retirement, it's for if my car gets impounded for expired tags I can get a beater
oh but my landlord decided I have to move so it's probably for that now
Apparently that "typical worker" is 57% of the population, cuz the other 43% doesn't even have that saved up https://www.usnews.com/banking/articles/2026-financial-wellness-survey
What’s missing, probably intentionally, is this statistic.
Another commenter noted that the median retirement plan savings is $955 if all workers are included is inconsistent with the common statistic that half of Americans don’t have $500 for an emergency.
My retirement plan is that the government will need to continue a massively inflationary policy to handle the debt load while the stock market flatlines due to climate change and deindustrialization, thereby justifying my choice to live a hedonic lifestyle.
56 million workers that don't have a 401k or anything similar, and maybe 100 million who do but have a median of $40k saved up... this math sounds off.
It doesn't sound consistent with the statistic that about half of Americans can't afford a sudden $500 expense.
Maybe it has to do with savings/checking accounts vs retirement accounts? The latter aren’t as liquid as the former. The study has this table that only refers to DC plans.
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I think it’s also relevant that the financial data is from December 2022 when worker leverage had only just shifted back to employers, student loan repayments had not been restarted and there may still have been eviction moratoria in place. All this is to say that reality might be bleaker than the study’s conclusion.
What would make it work out is if people had negative savings (debt) that was factored into it.
At any rate I've seen a lot of fellow workers with the sentiment of "I'll be working until I keel over dead".
