The average 40 year old has $63,000 in savings

i am shocked it's that much. most people seem to spend more money than they have. McMansions, 70k tahoes, etc.

Seems everybody these days who makes even 50-60k has a 60-70k pickup or SUV

63,000 os pretty good for 40 years old.

That would be surprising except since its the average, that number is pretty inflated by wealthy and very wealthy people.

Most 40 year olds do not have 63,000 in savings…. no way!

Again, I think its inflated

I don't believe it. I have a net worth of over $1M and I know nobody who is not in the same arena. I earn $120k per year.

Sounds like it includes retirement savings. I first thought they were talking cash only. If it were cash, I would think this was way, way too high.

But if including retirement, I would believe it. Most jobs have retirement accounts you have to at least pay a little bit into, so I could see a lot of 40 year olds who don't push retirement having that much or a little less. I'm just over 40 and do focus on retirement and my wife and I have about 7 times that much saved up. Together we make about 100k a year.

remember only 40% of the US population has a college degree. If you don't have a college degree, you probably have next to zero in retirement savings at age 40. But if you do have a college degree you probably have a quarter million dollars at that age. Guessing.

as with all stats about the US, to get a good picture of where you fit in. you need to divvy up the population. Compare yourself to the group you want to be in. I suspect if you are a distance runner posting on LRC you have a college degree and work at a decent job. So your peer group has saved a ton more than $63,000. Most likely.

Like another poster said, averages are easily skewed by outliers. The median would be a more relevant and useful metric.

i believe it is based on the median.

Net Worth by Age Calculator for the United States

Fun to play with numbers here

I can't believe that it's that high of a number. Maybe all the trust fund kids are driving up these numbers? That would be my theory.

If 60% have $250k on average, even if the other 40% have nearly nothing, that puts the average at about $150k. The numbers don't make sense because many 40 year olds have a net worth of several million $. Just shocking a bunch into a 401k for the past 18 years woukd give you $1M.

I'm ac

I'm actually surprised it's that high. They always release numbers on how a big percentage of the population doesn't have $1000 or $2000 for an emergency. I'm thinking the top 10 percent of savers have a LOT saved and that's bringing the average up.

another point is that these numbers are often wrong in fundamental ways....if someone has two IRAs and a two 401ks they might count them all separately instead of adding them all up and counting them toward one person. It's tricky stuff so don't take it too seriously.

Plus, of course, the value of our Social Security 'annuity' is enormous and never included in these stats.

That seems low. Between our contributions, employer match and profit sharing we are at $75K a year in our retirement contributions each year. I would describe us as middle class and average at best.

I am used to seeing what I consider to be low levels of savings for people. As others have mentioned, this number is skewed HIGHER than probably what it really is just based on what some wealthy people have accumulated.

To give some hope to some of you who don't have much savings though...

A friend of mine and her husband recently retired at age 62.5 years old (they are within days old of each other). They started taking Social Security at age 63 (so just lived on saved cash for 6 months) to the tune of about $50,000 annually. They own their home outright and have no debt. She said they have health insurance from Obamacare that costs them about $350 a month for both of them. They DO have retirement accounts, but they have not dipped into them yet and have no plans to until the stock market heads north again. Obviously, had they waited to take SS a little longer, their payout would have been more. Anyway, they are easily making it based only on that SS money, but again, they own their house outright and have ZERO debt.

Social security shouldn't be counted, as it's going to have a 20 percent auto cut in 2036 if Congress does nothing about the funding shortfall -- which I fully expect to happen. People should not be relying on SS at all when considering retirement.

Also, I've been working since 16 but it's not a lot if you haven't been continuously working in adult life. This is especially true for women who have taken time out from the workforce to raise kids. Of course, they might get a spousal benefit.

Either way, SS is a lot and if you're 40s or younger, def do not count on it.

I have been hearing about how Social Security is not going to be funded for 50 years. You know why it will be funded... voters. There are no politicians that would eliminate SS. The Wall Streeters want the money to go to them and maybe one day that will happen only if people forget that investments go down like this year. But they will keep at it because it is literally trillions of dollars that they aren't making fees from. So don't worry about Social Security... something will be there.

It says "retirement savings."

That's quite different than "savings."

With retirement funds, mutual funds, etc., that sounds right.

If we were talking about actual savings sitting in a bank account, that'd be shockingly high.