Average Savings by Age (2026)

Americans have far less set aside than headlines about average savings suggest. The typical (median) US household held just $8,000 in liquid savings, checking, savings, and money-market accounts, in 2022, while the average was $62,410 (Fed SCF).

That eightfold gap between median and mean is the whole story: a small number of very wealthy households pull the average way up, so the median is the honest measure of what a typical family has.

Liquid savings rise slowly with age and peak later than you'd think. The median climbs from $5,400 for households under 35 to a high of $13,400 at ages 65-74, before dipping to $10,000 for those 75 and older as retirees spend down (see the chart and table below).

Notably, working-age households, even in their peak-earning 45-54 years, hold a median of only about $8,700 in liquid savings. Most wealth is tied up in homes and retirement accounts, not cash.

At every age, the mean liquid balance runs four to eight times the median. For the 65-74 group, the median is $13,400 but the mean is $100,250.

This is why "average savings" figures can be misleading: they describe a distribution dominated by a wealthy few, not the experience of a typical household. Whenever you see an average savings number, look for the median beside it.

Retirement balances tell a more encouraging story, at least for those who have accounts. Among households with a retirement account, the median grows from $18,880 under 35 to $200,000 at ages 65-74, then falls to $130,000 for the 75+ group as they draw down (see the chart and table below).

The overall median for account-holders is $87,000 and the mean $334,097, again a wide gap reflecting concentration at the top. For a fuller net-worth picture, see our net worth by age page.

The biggest retirement problem isn't small balances, it's no balance at all. Only 54.3% of households held any retirement account in 2022, meaning about 46% had none (see the chart and table below).

Ownership peaks at 62% for the 45-54 group and is lowest for the youngest (49.6%) and, surprisingly, the 65+ group (47%), partly because older cohorts more often relied on traditional pensions instead of 401(k)s.

Zooming out to all households, retirement wealth is starkly unequal. Nearly 46% have nothing, about 30% have between $0 and $100,000, and just 4.6% have more than $1 million (see the table below).

Even in the best-prepared age group (55-64), fewer than 10% have crossed the $1 million mark. The comfortable-retirement image of a seven-figure nest egg describes a small minority.

For many households, the issue is not retirement decades away but a shock next month. In 2024, 13% of adults could not cover a $400 emergency expense by any means, and 30% could not cover three months of expenses (see the table below).

Only 55% had a three-month emergency fund, down from 59% in 2021. This fragility is the flip side of the low liquid-savings medians above: a large share of households have almost no cushion.

The single biggest driver of savings isn't age, it's income. The top income group's median liquid balance was about $111,600, roughly 120 times the ~$900 held by the bottom income group (see the table below).

That gap dwarfs any difference across age groups. Getting older helps you save, but earning more helps far more, which is why the savings gap tracks the income and wealth gaps so closely.

You've probably seen the claim that "most Americans have less than $1,000 saved." There is no authoritative government figure that says this, and fact-checkers rate the "majority" version as overstated.

The closest official measure is the Fed's finding that 13% of adults can't cover a $400 expense by any means. The scarier survey numbers (from Bankrate and others) use stricter thresholds and self-reported sentiment, useful as directional signals, but not the hard balances they're often presented as.

The savings shortfall has a macro backdrop: Americans save a shrinking share of income. The personal saving rate averaged about 11.7% in the 1960s and 70s but sits around 3% today (BEA).

Structurally lower saving, driven by rising costs, the wealth effect from home and stock gains, and a spending-heavy economy, is part of why liquid-savings medians are so thin. See our personal savings rate page for the full trend.

Common guidelines give rough targets: an emergency fund of three to six months of expenses, and retirement savings scaling with age, often cited as roughly 1x your salary by 30, 3x by 40, and 6x by 50.

These are useful north stars, not laws, since the right number depends on your costs, income, and goals. The data above shows most households are behind these benchmarks, so treat them as a direction to move toward, not a verdict.

The practical order of operations is clear from the data. First, build a starter emergency fund, since so many households can't absorb a $400 shock, even $1,000 in cash puts you ahead of a large share of Americans.

Then automate retirement contributions, because the biggest driver of the retirement gap is simply having an account and funding it consistently. The households pulling ahead aren't timing markets, they're saving steadily and letting compounding work, ideally in low-cost index funds inside tax-advantaged accounts.