Retire With Confidence: What Retirement Surveys Show

Most people’s retirement plan amounts to a 401(k) they hope is enough and a general intention to get serious about it eventually. Two national surveys recently looked at what it actually takes to retire with confidence, and who has it.

Only 61% of workers feel confident they’ll have enough money to live comfortably in retirement, according to the 2026 Retirement Confidence Survey from the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) and Greenwald Research. That’s down six points from the prior year.

Fidelity’s 2026 State of Retirement Planning study surveyed 2,015 investors and found that 72% expect to retire on their own terms, up five points from 2025. Among those with a financial plan, 83% feel confident about retiring. Among those without one, only 38% do.

Source: Fidelity Investments 2026 State of Retirement Planning study, national online survey of 2,015 U.S. adults ages 18–79 who make investment decisions and hold a retirement or investment account, conducted December 2–8, 2025.

If you don’t have a retirement plan yet, or you have one you’re not quite confident in, that’s where most people are. What produces confidence, both surveys show, is a plan that pulls your numbers together and gives you a picture you can trust.

This is what the data reveals, and why clear projections matter.

Most Americans Have a Plan but Not a Number

74% of Fidelity respondents said they have a plan to reach their retirement goals. And at the same time, 31% don’t know how much they’ll have saved when they get there.

A retirement plan without a savings projection is just a starting point. Seven in 10 people know their target retirement age, so the direction is there. What’s missing for most is the math: an income projection, a withdrawal sequence, and some sense of how the pieces connect across 20 or 30 years.

Fewer have written their plan down. Only 33% of Americans have documented their financial goals in a formal plan, according to Charles Schwab’s 2025 Modern Wealth Survey. The account side shows a similar gap: about 55% of families had a retirement account in 2025, according to the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances.

If that sounds familiar, you’ve got company.

Which Retirement Planning Steps Do People Skip?

Put common retirement planning activities side by side and a pattern shows up. Most people set a goal and pick a target age. Far fewer take the tax, health and legal steps with the biggest dollar impact. Here’s how each step compares in the latest retirement planning statistics.

Source: Fidelity Investments 2026 State of Retirement Planning study (adults 18–79 who make investment decisions and hold a retirement or investment account); Federal Reserve 2025 Survey of Consumer Finances; Charles Schwab Modern Wealth Survey 2025; Trust & Will 2026 Estate Planning Report. Each survey asked a different group, so compare rows with care.

None of these steps takes long on its own. What matters is knowing which ones your plan backs with a real number and which ones it doesn’t yet. The gap check near the end of this article walks through each one.

Having a Retirement Plan More Than Doubles Your Confidence

Having a retirement plan more than doubles the likelihood that people feel confident about their future retirement, according to Fidelity’s 2026 State of Retirement Planning survey. Among retirees who had a plan, 81% say their savings will last their lifetime. For retirees without one, only 45% say the same. Among workers, the picture is starker: The EBRI/Greenwald retirement confidence survey found that only 57% believe their savings will last their lifetime.

Retirement confidence, both surveys suggest, is a planning problem at its core. The people who feel ready are the ones who can see how their savings, Social Security, and other income sources add up across decades of retirement. People who can’t see that are mostly estimating.

That’s a solvable problem, and it doesn’t require a spreadsheet full of assumptions. The Boldin Planner runs your specific numbers and shows projections across different scenarios, so you can see what your retirement looks like before you’re living it.

Do Most Retirees Get to Retire on Their Own Terms?

Six in 10 Americans told Fidelity they plan to transition into retirement rather than stop on a specific date. The alternatives they’re weighing:

• 35% are thinking about gig work or side hustles
• 29% are considering starting a small business
• 26% plan to consult or work part-time in their current field

A plan built around a hard stop date doesn’t address any of this. If you plan to work part-time for five years before stepping away, that changes when you’d claim Social Security, how you sequence withdrawals, and whether you need to bridge health insurance before Medicare kicks in at 65.

There’s also another issue to consider: a plan built entirely around a gradual transition may not survive contact with reality either.

The EBRI/Greenwald survey found that nearly half of retirees retired earlier than they planned, which was up from the prior year. Of those, 76% say the reason was something outside their control:

• A health problem or disability – 41%
• Changes at their company (e.g., workplace closure, downsizing, or company reorganization) – 35%

Nearly half of workers say they expect to transition out of work gradually, but notably, about three in four retirees reported that they stopped working all at once.

This is a helpful planning signal. A phased exit is worth modeling because it may be what you want. It’s also worth modeling because knowing what your finances look like if retirement arrives sooner than expected, and not by choice, is a different way for you to prepare.

How a Phased Retirement Plan Can Help You Prepare

Phased retirement means reducing hours or shifting to part-time and freelance income before stopping work entirely. As you manage that transition, income sequencing becomes a question. Which accounts do you draw from, and when? Tapping a 401(k) early while you’re still receiving part-time income can create a tax bill worth modeling before you commit to anything.

Social Security timing shifts too. Nearly a quarter of new retirees claim at 62, the earliest age, according to Social Security Administration data, and that choice locks in a smaller monthly check for life. Delay often still makes sense with part-time income coming in, but it depends on your projected benefit and your timeline. The only way to know is to run the numbers for your situation.

The healthcare gap is the one most people underestimate. Between leaving full-time work and Medicare at 65, coverage can cost far more than people expect. If a phased plan doesn’t address it, it has a real hole in it. If an early exit is unplanned, that hole can be expensive.

You can model phased retirement scenarios with the Boldin Planner, including part-time income, different Social Security claiming ages, and bridging healthcare costs. You can also model what happens if full retirement comes earlier than you planned.

What Retirement Costs Do Most Plans Leave Out?

The healthcare number deserves more attention than it gets. Fidelity now estimates retirement healthcare costs at $185,500 for a single 65-year-old, up 7.5% in a year. And 8 in 10 respondents in the Fidelity study expect those costs to be high.

Only 25% of respondents are funding a Health Savings Account. Meanwhile, the EBRI/Greenwald survey found that 41% of retirees say their overall costs in retirement ran higher than they expected when they first retired.

An HSA delivers a triple tax advantage: contributions are deductible, growth is tax-free, and withdrawals for qualified medical expenses are tax-free as well. For anyone still in a high-deductible health plan, it’s one of the most powerful tools for covering future healthcare costs. Three-quarters of people in the study aren’t using it.

The Roth gap is similar. Only 15% of respondents have completed a Roth conversion. For people in a lower tax bracket now than they expect to be in later retirement years, or anyone trying to reduce future Required Minimum Distributions, a Roth strategy can shift the long-term tax picture by a lot. Most people haven’t started.

Two quick questions worth a look: Are you in a high-deductible health plan this year? Is your current tax bracket lower than the one you expect in your mid-70s when RMDs kick in? If either answer is yes, there’s an opportunity for you to explore.

Long-term care is another cost many plans leave out. About 70% of people turning 65 will need some form of long-term care, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and Medicare doesn’t cover most ongoing care. Here’s how to plan for long-term care costs.

These aren’t edge cases. They’re planning decisions with significant dollar consequences that most retirement plans skip entirely.

Which Generation Is Least Confident About Retirement?

Of all generations, Gen X members are the least confident about retirement. Nearly two in five aren’t confident they’ll retire when and how they want.

Source: Fidelity Investments 2026 State of Retirement Planning study.

In the Fidelity study, roughly two-thirds of Gen Xers also don’t expect their savings to cover them for life. Close to half anticipate scaling back their spending at some point during retirement.

That’s not surprising. Gen X is in the window where retirement has moved from abstract to near-term, and where the next five to ten years will define what the following 30 look like. The cost of waiting is highest here.

The EBRI/Greenwald survey adds two additional data points that are relevant. Worker confidence in Social Security providing future benefits of similar value sits at 50%. Separately, 78% of workers rank potential government changes to the retirement system as their top concern, above recession, rising housing costs, and health events. For someone 10 years away from retirement, those uncertainties are live variables.

The encouraging piece in the Fidelity data: among retirees who had a plan, 81% say their savings will last. That outcome is achievable. Getting there runs through specifics. What will your monthly income look like? Which accounts do you draw from, and in what order? What does your Social Security timing decision cost you at different claiming ages?

Why Are Women Less Confident About Retirement Than Men?

81% of men in the study expect to retire on their own terms. Among women, that number is 63%.

That 18-point spread almost certainly reflects real differences in financial circumstances. Women are more likely to have had career interruptions, more likely to have worked part-time at some point, and on average live longer in retirement. Each factor compounds.

A generic plan doesn’t account for any of that. For women, planning on your own terms means running scenarios that include career gaps, a longer time horizon, and survivor benefit decisions if you’re part of a couple. The plan has to fit the real situation, not an average.

What Income Sources Do Retirees Draw From?

Understanding the income side of retirement is just as important as the savings side. The EBRI/Greenwald survey asked both workers and retirees about their income sources: what workers expect to draw from, and what retirees actually do. The divergences are noteworthy.

Source: 2026 EBRI/Greenwald Retirement Confidence Survey, conducted online January 2–28, 2026; general population sample of 2,052 Americans ages 25 or older, including 1,007 workers and 1,045 retirees.

Social Security is the one source where expectation and reality align. Nearly everything else shows workers expecting to count on income streams that retirees end up drawing from less, sometimes substantially less. Only 45% of retirees actually use a workplace retirement plan as an income source, compared to 83% who expected to. Workers are also counting on earned income in retirement that most of them will likely not earn. Only 27% of retirees actually use work for pay as an income source.

Social Security is fixed and inflation-adjusted. A 401(k) demands decisions about when to start withdrawing, in what order, and with what tax approach. The income mix you’re counting on shapes every planning decision downstream.

Knowing which buckets you’ll draw from, and in what sequence, is what a retirement income plan answers. Getting that picture in front of you, even roughly, can positively change how you feel about the rest of the planning.

What Confident Retirees Do Differently

The Fidelity study is clear on what produces the ability to retire with confidence: a plan that works through income sources, tax exposure, healthcare costs, and how withdrawals sequence across retirement. People with that kind of plan are more than twice as likely to feel good about where they’re headed.

Confidence isn’t certainty. Retirement has too many variables for that. But a plan built around your actual numbers and timeline gives you something to work from and adjust as things change. That’s a different position altogether from hoping it works out.

How to Check Your Retirement Plan for Gaps

A gap check takes less time than it sounds. Go through each step below and note whether your plan has a specific number behind it or only a general idea. Start with whichever step is closest to you in time.

For more depth on each step, see these guides to Social Security strategies, retirement withdrawals, health insurance before Medicare and long-term care.

The Boldin Planner is built to get you there. It models your full retirement picture, surfaces the decisions with the highest impact on your outcome, and lets you test scenarios before you’re living them.

If you’ve been putting off getting specific, this is a good time to start.

Frequently Asked Questions