The Fed identified threshold dollar amounts for each pre-retirement age group where they believed that their retirement savings would be on track. The responses suggest that Americans may view their retirement savings goalposts as moving too fast to keep up with. As respondents aged, the threshold for most to view their savings as on track rose more rapidly than the fraction of respondents who had reached that level of savings.
For a majority of adults ages 18 to 29, $10,000 was identified as the “on-track” threshold, but only 22 percent of the respondents in that age group had achieved that level of savings. Among adults age 30 to 44, a majority identified $100,000 or more as being the savings threshold, but, again, just 22% had saved that amount. Among respondents ages 45 to 59, $250,000 or more was identified as the savings threshold, and 27% had saved that amount.
Simultaneously, the Fed found significant differences in financial literacy between groups based on gender and level of educational achievement. For men, educational achievement predicted their confidence in their ability to allocate their retirement savings themselves. For example, 38 percent of men with a high school diploma or less, 45 percent of men with some college education or an associate degree, and 58 percent of men with at least a bachelor’s degree felt confident that they could self-direct investments within a retirement account.
Women respondents, on the other hand, did not display the same levels of confidence, and education levels were less of a predictor of investment confidence. Just 28 percent of women with a high school diploma or less, 30 percent of women with some college or an associate degree, and 32 percent of women with at least a bachelor’s degree felt confident in their ability to self-direct investments within a retirement account.
The Fed’s survey, the sixth of its kind, was fielded online by research firm Ipsos in October and November and included 11,440 participants,