Average Savings by Age (2026)

Americans have far less set aside than headlines about average savings suggest. The typical (median) US household held just $8,200 in liquid savings (checking, savings, and money-market accounts) in 2025, up from $8,000 in 2022, while the average was $62,800 (Fed SCF 2025).

That nearly 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. In the 2025 survey the median climbs from $5,000 for households under 35 to $10,000 at ages 55-74 and a high of $14,000 for those 75 and older (see the chart and table below). In 2022 the peak had been at 65-74 ($13,400).

Notably, working-age households, even in their peak-earning 45-54 years, hold a median of only about $9,400 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 nine times the median. For the 55-64 group, the median is $10,000 but the mean is $90,660 (2025).

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 2025 median grows from $21,000 under 35 to $257,000 at ages 65-74, and holds at $257,000 for the 75+ group (see the chart and table below). In 2022 the 75+ median had been far lower, at $131,000.

The overall median for account-holders is $106,000 (up from $87,000 in 2022) and the mean $451,120, 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 54.9% of households held any retirement account in 2025 (54.3% in 2022), meaning about 45% had none (see the chart and table below).

Ownership peaks at about 63% for the 45-64 groups and is lowest for the youngest (48.8%) and, surprisingly, those 75 and older (44.6%), 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. In the 2022 survey (the latest CRS breakdown), nearly 46% had nothing, about 30% had between $0 and $100,000, and just 4.6% had 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 2025, 12% 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) (Fed SHED 2025).

Only 55% had a three-month emergency fund, unchanged from 2024 but down from 59% in 2021. And 18% said the largest emergency expense they could handle right now using only savings was under $100. 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. In 2025 the top 10% of earners held a median liquid balance of $105,000, roughly 130 times the $800 held by the bottom 20% (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 12% 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 was 4.1% in August 2026 (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.