Among households that have retirement accounts, the median balance is $87,000. Across all US households, including the nearly half with no retirement account, the median is about $13,000. Both numbers come from the same Federal Reserve survey. The difference is not the math; it is who gets counted, and almost no one tells you that before quoting a number.
If a headline figure ever made you feel hopelessly behind, there is a fair chance you were being compared with the wrong crowd. This study puts the two honest versions of every figure side by side: what households with retirement accounts hold, and what all households hold. Both tables come from the 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), the Federal Reserve’s triennial household survey, in 2022 dollars, and every table on this page names its lens before it shows you a dollar.
Jump to your decade: your 20s, your 30s, your 40s, your 50s, or your 60s and beyond.
Key findings
- Among households with retirement accounts, the median balance was $87,000 and the average was $333,940 in the 2022 SCF, a ratio of about 3.8 to one. The averages are lifted by a small group of very large balances: only 9.3% of account-holding households held $500,000 or more.
- The Two Medians: the median household with retirement accounts aged 55 to 64 held $185,000, while the median household aged 55 to 59 overall, counting those with nothing saved, held $24,000. Both figures are the 2022 SCF. The $161,000 difference is who gets counted.
- 54.3% of US households have money in retirement accounts (CRS analysis of the 2022 SCF). Roughly 45.7% have none, and they appear in no conditional statistic anywhere.
- Among savers, the median peaks at $200,000 for ages 65 to 74, then falls to $130,000 at 75 and older as retirees draw down. Across all households, the strict median hits $0 at 70 and older because a majority of the oldest households hold no accounts at all.
- Ownership, not balance size, drives the biggest gaps: moving from among-savers to all-households collapses the overall median from $87,000 to $13,000 while the average falls much less, from $333,940 to $129,010 (DQYDJ estimates from the SCF microdata).
- Pensions and Social Security appear in none of these numbers. 45.2% of households 65 and older expect or receive defined benefit income, which makes older households look poorer on paper than they live.
These are benchmarks, not verdicts. Where you stand against your own retirement depends on your income, spending, and timeline, and the retirement on-track calculator measures that directly.
Findings you can copy
Quote these as written, with attribution to FinExplained and a link to this page (both tables are downloadable as CSV).
Among households that have retirement accounts, the median balance for ages 55 to 64 is $185,000. Across all households aged 55 to 59, including those with nothing saved, the median is $24,000. Both numbers come from the 2022 Federal Reserve Survey of Consumer Finances, per a FinExplained analysis. The difference is who gets counted.
Only 54.3% of US households have money in retirement accounts, and among those that do, just 9.3% hold $500,000 or more (CRS analysis of the 2022 SCF, via FinExplained).
The median retirement account balance among savers peaks at $200,000 for ages 65 to 74 in the 2022 SCF, then falls to $130,000 at 75 and older. Across all households, the strict median is $0 at 70 and older, because most of the oldest households hold no retirement accounts.
Average and median retirement savings by age
Among households with retirement accounts, the 2022 SCF medians run from $18,880 under age 35 to a peak of $200,000 at 65 to 74, with the all-family median at $87,000. The averages run 2.6 to 4.3 times higher in every band. One thing before you read the table: these figures cover only the 54.3% of households that have accounts.
| Age group | Median balance | Average balance | Average minus median |
|---|---|---|---|
| Under 35 | $18,880 | $49,130 | $30,250 |
| 35 to 44 | $45,000 | $141,520 | $96,520 |
| 45 to 54 | $115,000 | $313,220 | $198,220 |
| 55 to 64 | $185,000 | $537,560 | $352,560 |
| 65 to 74 | $200,000 | $609,230 | $409,230 |
| 75 and older | $130,000 | $462,410 | $332,410 |
| All families | $87,000 | $333,940 | $246,940 |
Source: Federal Reserve, Survey of Consumer Finances 2022 interactive data tool (retirement accounts by age of reference person). Household figures, not individual targets; retirement accounts exclude defined benefit pensions and Social Security. Download both tables as CSV (CC BY 4.0 compilation with a lens column, figures attributed to the Federal Reserve and DQYDJ).
Read the median column first. The median is the midpoint among savers, so half of account-holding households in each band hold more and half hold less. The average column answers a different question, how many dollars are in the system per saving household, and a small group of very large accounts does most of the lifting there.
What this means: even inside the half of America that saves in retirement accounts, the distribution is top-heavy. The 55 to 64 average of $537,560 runs 2.9 times its $185,000 median, and the all-family gap is $246,940. If you have ever compared your balance to a published average and winced, you were measuring yourself against the largest accounts in the country, not against a typical saver. Project what your own balance could become with the retirement calculator.
The number nobody shows you: all households
Across all US households, including the roughly 45.7% with no retirement account, the median retirement savings is about $13,000 under DQYDJ’s strict definition, estimated from the same 2022 SCF microdata. That is the number that describes the typical American household, and it almost never makes the headline.
The table below is a different lens from the one above, and the two must never be compared row to row. Here, every household counts, and a household with nothing counts as $0.
| Age bracket | Median (strict) | Average (strict) | Median (expansive) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 18-24 | $0 | $5,861 | $710 |
| 25-29 | $4,700 | $20,361 | $8,200 |
| 30-34 | $4,700 | $35,812 | $12,680 |
| 35-39 | $8,000 | $70,362 | $21,000 |
| 40-44 | $12,000 | $102,301 | $24,000 |
| 45-49 | $19,400 | $138,665 | $33,000 |
| 50-54 | $24,000 | $242,422 | $43,000 |
| 55-59 | $24,000 | $284,016 | $59,840 |
| 60-64 | $10,400 | $326,800 | $33,000 |
| 65-69 | $8,700 | $337,197 | $50,650 |
| 70-74 | $0 | $279,162 | $105,000 |
| 75-79 | $0 | $238,017 | $36,000 |
| 80+ | $0 | $155,357 | $42,000 |
| All households | $13,000 | $129,010 | $29,000 |
Source: DQYDJ, third-party estimates from the Federal Reserve's 2022 SCF public-use microdata, on a primary economic unit (PEU) basis. The $0 strict medians at 70 and older are real: a majority of the oldest households hold no retirement accounts. Never compare a row here with a row from the among-savers table above; the denominators differ. Download both tables as CSV.
What this means: the middle of America and the middle of the savers are different households. Zeros pull a median down hard, which is why moving from among-savers to all-households collapses the overall median from $87,000 to $13,000 while the average only drops from $333,940 to $129,010. When two articles quote wildly different “typical retirement savings” figures, check the denominator before you believe either one.
Why every retirement savings article disagrees
Three lenses produce three different sets of true numbers: households that save (the Fed’s conditional tables), all households (microdata estimates with zeros included), and plan participants (provider data counted per account). Every published retirement statistic you will ever read belongs to exactly one of them.
Three lenses, three honest numbers, one survey question
- Lens 1: among savers
- $87,000 median
- Households that HAVE retirement accounts (54.3% of households)
- Read it in: The headline table above
- Lens 2: all households
- $13,000 median
- Every household, including the 45.7% with nothing in retirement accounts
- Read it in: The all-households table below
- Lens 3: plan participants
- Counted per account
- People with an account at one provider (Vanguard or Fidelity), not households
- Read it in: Our 401(k) balance by age study
Lenses 1 and 2 are the same 2022 Federal Reserve survey with different denominators. Lens 3 is provider data with a different unit entirely. Never compare figures across lenses.
The provider lens sits highest of all because it counts accounts rather than households and sees only people who already have a plan. That lens lives on our 401(k) balance by age study, which benchmarks one account type per participant from Vanguard and Fidelity data. Provider data counts accounts; the Fed counts households, and this page is the household side of that pair. For the fullest lens of all, the whole balance sheet including home equity, see our net worth by age study, built from the same 2022 SCF.
One warning from the fact-check that built this page: a circulating version of the ownership statistic is printed backwards. Some outlets state that 54% of households have no retirement savings. The survey figure is the reverse: 54.3% of households HAVE retirement accounts. If an article’s numbers seem shocking, this inversion is often why.
Retirement savings in your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s
The decade sections below quote both lenses, and the DQYDJ fine brackets let us speak to your actual decade rather than the Fed’s wider bands. Single ages map into brackets: a 32-year-old reads the 30 to 34 row, a 57-year-old the 55 to 59 row. No source publishes reliable single-year figures, so neither do we.
In your 20s
The typical household in its 20s has close to nothing in retirement accounts, and that is the honest baseline: the all-household median is $0 at 18 to 24 and $4,700 at 25 to 29 (DQYDJ strict estimates, 2022 SCF microdata). Even among under-35 households with accounts, the Fed’s median is $18,880. Low balances here are structural: student loans, entry wages, and jobs without a plan.
Your balance is close to meaningless at this age; your habit is everything. A dollar invested at 25 has roughly 40 years to compound, which is the one advantage no later decade can buy back. Capture any employer match, automate a small increase each year, and let time do the heavy lifting. See what starting early does in the compound interest calculator.
In your 30s
The all-household median is $4,700 at 30 to 34 and $8,000 at 35 to 39 (DQYDJ strict estimates, 2022 SCF microdata). Among the Fed’s 35 to 44 households with accounts, the median is $45,000 and the average is $141,520, three times higher. Nearly 62% of 35 to 44 households have retirement accounts, so this is the decade when ownership itself catches up.
This is also the decade the salary-multiple goalposts start whispering that you should hold one to three times your salary. Treat them as direction, not judgment: they assume a 15% savings rate that began at 25, which is not most people’s story. The rate you set now matters more than the balance you show today. Project your own 401(k) balance with your real match and rate.
In your 40s
The all-household median is $12,000 at 40 to 44 and $19,400 at 45 to 49 (DQYDJ strict estimates, 2022 SCF microdata). Among the Fed’s 45 to 54 households with accounts, the median jumps to $115,000 against a $313,220 average. The spread between those two lenses is the ownership story in one decade: savers are pulling away from non-savers.
Your 40s are when the comparison question should turn into a planning question, because retirement is near enough to model but far enough to fix. Peak earning years are mostly ahead, and a one or two point contribution increase still has 20 years to compound. Where those dollars should live, pre-tax or Roth, is its own decision: compare in the Roth IRA calculator.
In your 50s
The all-household median is $24,000 for both the 50 to 54 and 55 to 59 brackets (DQYDJ strict estimates, 2022 SCF microdata). Among the Fed’s 55 to 64 households with accounts, the median is $185,000 and the average is $537,560. This decade holds the study’s signature pair: the $185,000 among-savers median and the $24,000 all-household median are the same survey wearing two denominators.
The 50s are also the catch-up decade in the literal, IRS sense: from age 50 the contribution limits rise, and the section on catching up below runs the engine math on what those extra dollars build by 65. If your balance is under the median, you are not an outlier; you are in the half of savers the average never describes. Check the one number that actually judges you, your own trajectory: see if you’re on track.
In your 60s and beyond
Among households with accounts, the median peaks at $200,000 for ages 65 to 74, then falls to $130,000 at 75 and older (2022 SCF). Across all households, the strict medians tell a starker story: $10,400 at 60 to 64, $8,700 at 65 to 69, and $0 from 70 on, because a majority of the oldest households hold no retirement accounts at all.
Read the declines as structure, not failure. Drawdown is the plan working: retirees spend what they saved. And the oldest cohorts built their retirements in a pension world; 45.2% of households 65 and older expect or receive defined benefit income that no account balance ever shows. For a typical household, the account is a supplement to Social Security, not a replacement for it. Estimate your Social Security before you judge any balance, including your own.
Who has retirement accounts at all?
54.3% of US households have money in retirement accounts, per the Congressional Research Service’s analysis of the 2022 SCF, which means about 45.7% have none. Ownership rises through the middle years, with nearly half of under-35 households and about six in ten households in the 35 to 44 band holding accounts, then falls again in retirement.
What this means: the ownership split, not balance size, is the single biggest reason published retirement numbers disagree. It also reframes the anxious question. “Am I behind?” assumes everyone is running the same race, but nearly half of households are not in the account race at all, many because a pension or Social Security carries their plan. The wage base that funds that system has its own moving parts, covered in our Social Security wage base explainer.
What is a good amount of retirement savings by age?
A common Fidelity guideline suggests about 1x your salary by 30, 3x by 40, 6x by 50, and 10x by 67, counting all retirement accounts. Those goalposts assume retiring at 67, saving 15% of income from age 25, replacing about 45% of income from savings, and planning to age 93. They are a model’s output, not a report on what anyone holds.
What this means: the distance between the goalpost and the observed median is real and widens with age, but a benchmark with a 15%-from-25 assumption baked in was never a pass-fail test. The medians say where the crowd is; the goalposts say where one disciplined model path leads. Neither knows your income, your pension, or your plans. A benchmark is a starting point, not a verdict: see if you’re on track replaces both with your own number.
How to catch up without panic
The catch-up path is mechanical, not moral: capture the full employer match, raise your rate, then use the age-based limits. None of it requires heroics, and the later steps are larger than most people expect because the biggest contribution room opens exactly when many households finally have the income to use it.
Start with the match, at any age. A common 50% match up to 6% of pay, skipped for 30 years by a 6% saver earning $80,000, forfeits about $278,443 by retirement in our engine’s projection. The 401(k) match calculator isolates exactly that comparison for your own formula, and our match explainer covers the vesting fine print.
Then, from 50, the limits themselves expand. In 2026 the employee deferral limit is $24,500; the catch-up adds $8,000 from age 50, and a SECURE 2.0 super catch-up lifts that to $11,250 in the years you are 60 through 63, for up to $35,750 of your own money. Here is what the final fifteen working years build at those limits, computed by our engine.
What this means: at a 7% return, maxing the base limit from 50 builds about $615,661 by 65, and adding the catch-ups lifts it to about $832,133. The catch-up dollars alone are worth about $216,472, and even the standard $8,000 catch-up with no super years builds about $201,032, the same figure our 2026 contribution limits playbook publishes for that scenario. Few households can max these limits, and the chart is not a demand that you do. It is evidence that the runway after 50 is long enough to matter, at whatever contribution you can sustain.
Where do you stand?
Two tables on one page can locate you in two different crowds, and neither can tell you whether your retirement is funded. That takes your numbers: income, spending, current balance, and the age you want to stop. The retirement on-track calculator compares your trajectory with your target and reports the gap in dollars per month, which is the only version of “behind” you can actually act on. If early retirement is the question, the FIRE calculator works the spending-based math instead.
Methodology
Headline table (Lens 1). Federal Reserve, Survey of Consumer Finances, 2022 wave (published October 2023), from the Fed’s interactive data tool: retirement account balances by age of reference person, conditional on holding any retirement account, in 2022 dollars. We verified every cell against the Fed’s published dataset at build time. Retirement accounts cover IRAs, Keoghs, and employer-sponsored defined contribution plans. The gap column (average minus median) is derived by FinExplained with decimal-precise math.
All-households table (Lens 2). DQYDJ’s estimates from the 2022 SCF public-use microdata, on a primary economic unit basis, in 13 fine age brackets. DQYDJ labels the vintage 2023 because about a quarter of the wave’s interviews ran into 2023; it is the same 2022 survey. Strict definition: retirement accounts plus defined benefit plans with cash value. Expansive: additional savings categories per DQYDJ’s methodology. These are third-party estimates and we label them as such everywhere.
Ownership figures. The Congressional Research Service’s analysis of the 2022 SCF (IF12928 and R48143): 54.3% of households hold retirement accounts, 9.3% of holders have $500,000 or more, and the defined-benefit expectation ladder by age.
Lens discipline. One source per table, one lens per table, never mixed, never averaged across lenses. The two lenses disagree because they count different households, and explaining that disagreement is this page’s job, not a discrepancy to smooth over.
Projections. The catch-up runway chart is computed by the same tested, decimal-precise engine behind the site’s calculators, under stated assumptions: 15 end-of-year contributions from age 50 through 64 valued at 65, a constant 7% annual return, and 2026 IRS limits held flat (real limits index with inflation). The match example comes from the 401(k) match calculator’s published scenario. These are illustrations of mechanics, not predictions.
Household basis. All SCF figures are household (PEU) figures filed under the reference person’s age. Couples pool multiple accounts into one row, so household medians are not per-person targets. Provider statistics count the opposite way, per account, which is one plain reason the lenses disagree.
Limitations. The SCF is triennial, so these figures age between waves; the 2025 wave is expected in late 2026, a projection rather than an official Fed date, and this page refreshes when it publishes. Conditional statistics exclude nearly half of households; all-household medians include zeros; neither is wrong alone and neither is complete alone. Retirement accounts exclude DB pension value and Social Security entirely, which understates older households’ retirement resources. Fine-bracket microdata estimates rest on smaller samples at the extremes, so treat top percentiles as approximate. This page is educational, not financial advice.
Refresh cadence. The SCF publishes every three years; this page refreshes on that cycle, with changes recorded in the site changelog. Both tables are downloadable as CSV with a lens column on every row.
Data sources
- Federal Reserve, Survey of Consumer Finances interactive data tool, 2022 wave, retirement accounts by age class, conditional medians and means.
- Congressional Research Service, IF12928, Distribution of Retirement Account Balances, analysis of the 2022 SCF.
- DQYDJ, Retirement Savings by Age, estimates from the 2022 SCF public-use microdata (third-party estimates, PEU basis).
- Fidelity, How much do I need to retire?, the salary-multiple guideline and its assumptions.
- IRS Notice 2025-67, 2026 contribution and catch-up limits.
- Both tables are downloadable as CSV under CC BY 4.0 with attribution to FinExplained; the underlying figures belong to the Federal Reserve’s published survey and DQYDJ’s published estimates.
The denominator is the story
Before you accept any retirement savings statistic, including ours, ask one question: who was counted? Among savers, the typical household near retirement holds $185,000. Among everyone, $24,000. Both are true, neither is your answer, and the only number that judges you is the one you compute from your own income, spending, and timeline. Pick the lever you can move this month, the match, the rate, or a catch-up, and then see if you’re on track.