Category: Retirement

How Much Do Early Retirees – Or Extremely Early Retirees – Have Saved?

In this post, we'll look at early retirees - and some of their extreme early retiree counterparts. How much do they have saved for retirement? How do they differ from the general population? Let's find out using the 2017 Federal Reserve Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking. Savings of American Early Retirees The SHED has […]

Early Retirement: How Common – Or Rare – Is It?

In a recent post, we argued that 55 years old as the early retirement age cutoff in America. In this post, we'll look at how rare early retirement is in the US. As a preview, 24.29% of current living retirees report retiring before age 56. Number Retiring by Age of Living American Retirees in 2017 […]

What is the Early Retirement Age? Examining Government and Popular Opinion

The early retirement age, so to speak, is in dispute – specifically, someone needs to answer: what is early retirement? Is it 62? 50? There actually isn't a stock answer (as you probably expected). However, we consider 55 as the cutoff age for early retirement. Here's why. What is the Early Retirement Age? There are […]

Retirement Planning: How Do Americans Pay For Retirement?

In this post we use 2017 Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking microdata to see how do Americans pay for retirement, and also look at what is retirement. Hopefully this data is useful for your own retirement planning! How Do Americans Pay For Retirement? A SHED series of questions enumerated retirement funding sources and asked […]

Why Do Americans Retire?

In our average retirement age in the United States piece we briefly discussed retiring for health reasons... then didn't dive deeper. Through the lens of 2017 Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking responses, today we'll evaluate retirement reasons for the living retiree population. We'll touch both why do Americans retire as well as craft a […]

Average Retirement Age in the United States

The average retirement age in the United States among currently living retirees was 59.88 years old. The median living retiree left work at 62 years old, and the most common age to retire was 62 years old. 18.7% of retirees retired at age 62, and a whopping 63.1% retired between the ages of 57 and […]

Age and Retirement Savings to Income Multiple: What Should You Have Saved?

One way to evaluate retirement savings is to look at a retirement savings to income multiple. In this post we'll look at a good multiple to target and how Americans are doing. How do you compute a retirement savings to income multiple? Take a household's total retirement savings and divide by typical household income to […]

American Retirement Savings by Age: Averages, Medians and Percentiles

Unfortunately, most people aren't on track to save a significant amount of money for retirement. Depending on how you do the math, 32-61 year old households averaged around $120,809.40 in retirement savings. Age, of course, matters. Using a very strict definition, households headed by 30-34 year olds averaged$24,254.48 in retirement savings with a median of […]

In 2016, American households headed by someone aged 32-61 averaged $120,809.40 in retirement savings, or$264,453.30 using an expansive calculation. Using the same calculations and definitions, American households have a median of $7,800 and$17,000 saved, respectively. American Retirement Savings in 2016 In 2016, the Economic Policy Institute released a study with an interesting dive […]