America’s financial confidence is stuck in the doldrums.
Just one in five respondents in a recent poll of more than 1,000 American adults by the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research felt “extremely or very confident” that they will have enough savings for retirement.
While 21% of the respondents felt extremely confident, another 33% were “somewhat confident” and 44% were “not very or not confident at all” about their ability to save enough for retirement.
More than two-thirds of the respondents, 67%, say their household’s financial situation is “good,” while 32% say that it is “poor.”
Americans tend to be optimistic—while almost half of the respondents, 48%, said that their personal financial situation will remain the same over the next year, they were almost three times more likely to forecast improvement than decline (37% to 13%).
Among the respondents who felt their household finances would remain the same over the next year, 71% said their finances were good, while 29% said they were poor.
Financial optimism is somewhat linked to political affiliation, with 82% of Republicans reporting that their household financial situation is “good” versus 59% of Democrats and 57% of independent voters.
The poll also registered a slight increase in optimism among the respondents—41% in the most recent survey said that now is a good time to buy a home, up from 34% in January, the last time the survey was fielded. One-third of the respondents, 33%, said that now is a good time to invest in the stock market, up from 28% in January.
Despite economic statistics showing nearly full employment and rising wages, one in four respondents said that their income has not kept up with their expenses. While 63% of the survey respondents said that their income has kept up with expenses, only one in nine, 11%, said that their income has grown faster than their expenses.
The respondents’ ability to grow their income faster than expenses was linked with their academic achievement—17% of the respondents with a college degree said that they were growing income faster than expenses while only 5% of those who had achieved a high school diploma or less said the same.