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 two ways to classify adults as retired.
- The surveyors classify the respondent as retired
- The respondent self-classifies as retired
There isn't, of course, 100% overlap in those designations. In this post we'll look at people who have self-selected as retired.
One of the questions on the survey also asks when a respondent retired. For folks who answered, we'll use that to classify extreme early retirees (40 or younger) or early retirees (56 or younger).
Savings Accumulated by Early Retirees
We only include here people who were asked and gave an answer:
| Savings and Investments | Extreme Early Retirees | Early Retirees | All Early Retirees | All Retirees |
| Not sure | 1.0% | 4.3% | 3.8% | 2.9% |
| Under $50,000 | 56.3% | 40.5% | 43.0% | 39.8% |
| $50,000 - $99,999 | 8.8% | 12.7% | 12.1% | 11.1% |
| $100,000 - $249,999 | 13.3% | 14.1% | 13.9% | 13.8% |
| $250,000 - $499,999 | 8.9% | 8.3% | 8.4% | 12.0% |
| $500,000 - $999,999 | 2.7% | 9.0% | 8.1% | 9.1% |
| $1,000,000 or more | 9.0% | 11.0% | 10.7% | 11.2% |
... We're with you! That's not what we were expecting from the responses. In fact, it's even the opposite of what we expected to see.
The exact question text is, "What is the approximate total amount of your household's savings and investments?".
Before you ask: this wasn't a question about strict retirement assets.
It also wasn't a question about how much they had when they retired. Maybe they spent it down before this survey, they are already retired. The next section might shed some light on that possibility.
Savings of Current Self-Classified Retirees
In the last section, we used a person's reported age of retirement to look at the differences in savings among retirees.
It gave some strange results, to say the least...
In this section, let's look at the current retiree population based on their age at survey time. Again using self-classified retirees, here's what folks have saved based on their current age:
| Savings and Investments | Extreme Early Retirees (< 41) | Early Retirees (41-56) | All Early Retirees (< 56) | All Retirees |
| Not sure | 4.36% | 5.44% | 5.20% | 2.94% |
| Under $50,000 | 54.34% | 49.71% | 50.77% | 39.80% |
| $50,000 - $99,999 | 19.03% | 12.40% | 13.91% | 11.15% |
| $100,000 - $249,999 | 9.13% | 11.97% | 11.32% | 13.75% |
| $250,000 - $499,999 | 4.63% | 9.12% | 8.09% | 12.00% |
| $500,000 - $999,999 | 8.50% | 5.01% | 5.80% | 9.13% |
| $1,000,000 or more | 0.00% | 6.36% | 4.91% | 11.22% |
And once again... a head-scratcher!
The Savings of Early Retirees: Unexpected?
As you look at more expansive retirement populations and older populations, the savings amounts increase.
When sitting down to research this post, we predicted early retirees and extreme early retirees would have more resources saved than older retirees. Earlier, research showed how important Social Security is to retirement age: if people are waiting out Social Security, we thought their assets would be lighter in retirement since they could lean on a reliable stream of income.
That, obviously, does not show up in the data!
- Are the early retirees spending their resources quickly?
- Have they calculated their needed savings down to the cent?
- Are some savings an investments misclassified?
Are some early retirees - as theorized by many of you readers - mis-classified or "inappropriately" self-declaring in-retirement? Were we expecting the wrong thing going into this post?
Strange Results on Early Retiree Savings
It's tough to say what's happening here. We know wealth is out there (see our net worth by age calculator for examples).
Do you have a theory based on what this data is showing?
Along with this post we have a few more on retirement. We looked at the early retirement age (and the extreme early retirement age), as well as survey data on how common early retirement is. We also looked at how the population of American retirees pay for retirement.
