401k balance survey from polled working Americans.

I wonder about this, as they say "401k". I have $0 in 401k, it was all moved to IRA. Maybe semantics? I would be more accepting of the results if it said "in retirement accounts"....

View attachment 53289

Flieger
Yes. These studies are always flawed for that reason. I didn’t even have a 401k until 2016 when I took my final job. Only maybe 8% of our portfolio is in there.
 
Sort of sad but really not that meaningful from my POV. Example, I just rolled over a pretty large (to me anyway) chunk of money from my 401k to my tIRA. My point is, a 401k is just one leg of a multi legged stool in retirement planning. e.g. most (or many anyway) have a 401k, tIRA, equities, cash accounts, property, etc etc.
A little off topic but it took me 10 full days (start to finish) to complete my partial 401k to tIRA rollover. That's far too long (IMO) to have my money just floating in the ether.
 
Rollover time depends a lot on who holds the 401K. My wife’s 403b was held by a large insurance company, who required nearly two months to roll the money over to a brokerage.
 
1,000 is the standard “magic number” for surveys to be considered a representative sampling regardless of the topic.
...yes, as long as it's random and not a "convenience" sample that was selected because it was easy to get! ha
 
I wonder about this, as they say "401k". I have $0 in 401k, it was all moved to IRA. Maybe semantics? I would be more accepting of the results if it said "in retirement accounts"....

View attachment 53289

Flieger
401k is an easy "catch word" for "click bait" bc most people know what 401k is.

Plenty of people might not know what 403b, TSP, HSA, etc are.
 
401k is an easy "catch word" for "click bait" bc most people know what 401k is.

Plenty of people might not know what 403b, TSP, HSA, etc are.
So is it inclusive of all of these? I couldn't find anywhere where it stated. Data many times comes from 401k providers.

Flieger
 
I wonder about this, as they say "401k". I have $0 in 401k, it was all moved to IRA. Maybe semantics? I would be more accepting of the results if it said "in retirement accounts"....

View attachment 53289

Flieger

Many people have a significant amount in non-retirement accounts.

My retirement accounts represent a bit less than half of my investable assets. Yet my taxable accounts are funds that are also available to fund my retirement.

Most articles I've seen fail at even attempting to show the complete picture.
 
So is it inclusive of all of these? I couldn't find anywhere where it stated. Data many times comes from 401k providers.

Flieger
They are all similar for different types of employers, e.g. private company, public company, non-profit, Entrepreneurs (with certain ceilings on # of employees), and anything else missed.
 
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