The average 60-year-old American has $537,560 saved for retirement. The median for that same age group, 55 to 64, is $185,000.
That gap is not a typo. A small slice of households with seven figures in retirement accounts pulls the average up far past what most people actually have. The median, the number sitting right in the middle of everyone in that age range, is the one that tells you what’s typical.
The government’s wealth survey groups people 55 through 64 together rather than isolating age 60 specifically, so this is the closest official benchmark there is. Either way, if your own balance falls well under $185,000, you are not some outlier. Roughly half the households in this bracket are below that line, by definition.
What actually separates the people sitting above that median from the people sitting well below it has less to do with luck and more to do with a handful of specific decisions made over thirty plus years.
What separates the people ahead from the people behind
Time in the market does more of the work than people expect. Someone who contributed steadily from their late 20s through their 50s, even at a modest 6% to 8% of salary, ends up with a meaningfully bigger balance than someone who started at 40 and stopped and started every time money got tight. Compounding rewards consistency far more than it rewards a few aggressive years late in the game.
Employer matching is the other big lever, and it has gotten more generous over time. The average 401(k) match climbed to a record 4.7% of pay in 2025, and the average combined savings rate, what workers put in plus what employers add, hit an all time high right alongside it. People who captured the full match every single year are sitting on a noticeably bigger balance than people who contributed just enough to get by, or who skipped years entirely when budgets got tight.
Investment allocation matters too, though less dramatically than people assume. Workers who stayed invested through market drops, rather than pulling everything to cash during the rough years, generally came out ahead. People in target date funds, which automatically shift the mix of stocks and bonds as you age, trade far less often than people managing their own portfolios, and that hands off consistency tends to help more than it hurts over a career that long.
The single biggest leak in the system is cashing out. Roughly a third of 401(k) participants cash out their entire balance when they leave a job, rather than rolling it into an IRA or a new employer’s plan. Withdrawing before age 59 and a half also typically triggers a 10% penalty stacked on top of regular income tax. Workers who rolled their accounts over instead of cashing out, even through several job changes, kept the compounding clock running the whole time.
How to check where you actually stand
You do not need to guess. Pull up the most recent statement for every 401(k), 403(b), and IRA you have, including accounts sitting at old employers you have not thought about in years, and add the balances together. Plenty of people are surprised by how much they have scattered across two or three accounts they forgot to consolidate.
From there, a free retirement projection calculator, the kind most 401(k) providers offer right inside the account dashboard, can model what your current balance and contribution rate will turn into by the time you actually stop working. Plug in your real numbers instead of a rough guess, since the output is only as useful as what you put into it.
If you want a simple benchmark to measure against, one widely used guideline suggests aiming for roughly eight times your annual salary saved by age 60, building toward ten times by 67. It is a rough rule of thumb, not a verdict, and it assumes you plan to retire around 67. Still, it gives you a second reference point beyond the national averages.
Worth doing at the same time: set up a my Social Security account and pull your actual benefit estimate, rather than relying on a number you half remember from a mailed statement years ago. Knowing your real projected Social Security benefit on top of your actual savings balance gives you the full picture instead of half of it.
Real ways to catch up if you’re behind
The tax code gives people your age more room than younger workers get. In 2026, you can put $24,500 into a 401(k) through regular payroll deferrals. Workers 50 and up can add another $8,000 on top of that, and if you are between 60 and 63, the catch-up jumps to $11,250 instead, for a possible total of $35,750 in a single year. Traditional and Roth IRAs allow $7,500, plus an extra $1,100 if you are 50 or older.
One wrinkle worth knowing if you are a higher earner: starting in 2026, anyone who earned more than $150,000 in wages the prior year has to make those catch-up contributions through a Roth option instead of pretax dollars, if their plan offers one. It does not shrink how much you can save, but it does change the tax treatment, so it is worth a quick call to your plan administrator before you assume the old pretax rules still apply.
Working a few extra years does double duty. It gives your existing balance more time to grow, and it can meaningfully raise your Social Security check. Waiting past full retirement age adds about 8% to your benefit for every year you delay, up until age 70. For anyone born in 1960 or later, full retirement age is 67, so someone who waits until 70 ends up with a benefit roughly 24% higher than if they had claimed right at 67, and someone who claims at 62 instead locks in a benefit that is permanently about 30% smaller.
It also helps to rethink how much you plan to pull from savings each year once you actually retire. The old rule of thumb was a flat 4%. Current research puts a more realistic starting withdrawal rate closer to 3.9%, assuming a portfolio with somewhere between 30% and 50% in stocks. Planning around that slightly more conservative number, rather than the old 4% shorthand, builds in a cushion if the math on your own savings turns out tighter than you hoped.
