Gen Z saves for retirement, with a sportsbook in the plan

Fifty-seven percent of Generation Z adults say retirement is achievable with a plan in place, a more optimistic answer than the 45% of Millennials who say the same. According to three surveys reported by PLANADVISER, the same generation is feeding a slice of its investment money through sports betting, cryptocurrency, options and meme stocks. The data does not describe a cohort that has given up on retirement; it describes one that is saving for it through channels the traditional plan never modeled.

The SoFi survey, an online poll of 761 U.S. adults aged 18 through 45 conducted in March, limited itself to people actively involved in retirement planning or saving, with Gen Z respondents aged 18 to 29 and Millennials aged 30 to 45. It found that 80% of Gen Z respondents were confident they could retire comfortably and maintain their desired lifestyle, and that 57% believed retirement is achievable with a plan, compared with 45% of Millennials. Forty percent named passive income as their top retirement goal, versus 35% of Millennials, and Gen Z was somewhat more likely than Millennials to call building net worth as quickly as possible a primary goal.

The tools some of them pick to reach those goals are where the story moves past conventional planning. Betterment's survey of 1,000 U.S. retail investors found that 52% of Gen Z respondents had redirected money intended for investing toward sports betting during the previous year, and 26% said they deliberately used sports betting as part of a long-term investing strategy. That sample covers retail investors, not the general Gen Z population, a caveat worth holding on to. Northwestern Mutual's 2026 Planning & Progress Study sets the behavior in a larger context: 32% of Gen Z respondents were investing in or considering sports betting or prediction markets, compared with 24% of Millennials. Gen Z also led on other speculative assets, with 32% investing in or considering cryptocurrency, 17% options and 14% meme stocks, and was more likely than older generations to consider each.

The confidence in the SoFi data coexists with real constraints. Sixty-three percent of respondents said everyday costs or housing payments were the biggest factor affecting their ability to save for the future, and inflation was the biggest retirement concern. Among those who were saving or trying to save, 64% said they had reduced their retirement savings. The financial constraints help explain why the speculative channel is tempting: a client whose budget will not stretch to fund a 401(k) at the rate she wants may decide that a smaller contribution plus a shot at a bigger payoff is the only path that reaches the same number.

Northwestern Mutual's study offers the starkest version of that logic. Among Gen Z respondents who said they feel financially behind and were investing in or considering high-risk or speculative assets, 80% believed those investments would help them reach their financial goals more effectively than traditional methods. The people most convinced that the lottery-ticket allocation will save them are the ones who can least afford a loss.

Advisors have a handle for this kind of behavior: treat the speculative money as a risk allocation that has to be named, sized and tested like any other position. When a client calls sports betting a long-term strategy, the useful response is to run the monthly stake through the same compounding projection used for every other contribution, and then to hold that up against the expected outcome of the bets. The retirement projection that includes the sportsbook rarely wins the comparison. The same arithmetic applies to options and meme-stock positions: an explicit, bounded risk allocation can have a place in a plan, but only if the client names it before the trade, not after the loss.

The advisor's edge is to take the speculation seriously without joining it. A Gen Z client who has been funding a sports betting account is likely more engaged with money, not less; those behaviors are not evidence of disengagement from planning. The 80% confidence figure in the SoFi survey suggests many of them already think of themselves as investors. The job is to move that self-concept from the sportsbook to the balance sheet.

The telling moment will come in the next client meeting, when a younger investor asks to include the crypto position or the prediction-market activity in the plan's asset allocation. That request is an opening. The advisor who can model the trade-off without judgment gets the relationship, and the retirement assets that go with it. The advisor who reaches for a lecture gets a client who stops mentioning the account, not one who closes it.