Goldman Sachs retirement survey: 37% of respondents earning over $500,000 live paycheck to paycheck

Goldman Sachs Asset Management's retirement survey, released September 30, covered 5,106 people aged 45 to 75, split between 3,612 workers and 1,494 retirees. Within that group, 37% of respondents earning more than $500,000 a year say they live paycheck to paycheck, and in the $300,000-to-$500,000 band the share is 34%.

Those percentages sit at the top of a pattern that runs against the usual shape of the problem: the share living paycheck to paycheck is 22% between $100,000 and $200,000 and 25% between $200,000 and $300,000, then climbs to 34% and 37% in the two brackets above. The report notes that more workers overall live paycheck to paycheck at lower income levels, but on the four brackets it discloses, pressure grows with pay.

Christopher Ceder, a senior retirement strategies executive at GSAM, said at the press briefing that the strain is broad-based and that the work now is segmenting plan services, adding digital tools and advice for some populations rather than serving every participant in a 401(k) plan the same way. Wyatt Lee, who heads target date strategies in T. Rowe Price's Global Multi-Asset Division, said on the same briefing that demand for annuities has increased and that advisors are well placed to raise the subject, because many individuals are reluctant to annuitize on their own. That pitch gets easier as retirement timeframes lengthen, which the briefing attributed partly to longer lifespans and partly to some workers retiring at younger ages.

Many workers use AI for research, but a majority still prefers human guidance on major life events, emotional reassurance, tax planning, retirement income, guaranteed income and market downturns. Two of those categories, tax planning and retirement income, are where advisory fees already live, and the survey places both on the side of the ledger clients want to keep human.

Behavior is moving the same way. The share of workers increasing retirement savings fell to 39% from 55%, and the share cutting back rose to 14% from 8%, in Goldman's data, as this publication reported September 30. Strain of that kind shows up first in the contribution rate, which is why the immediate use of the survey is a conversation about fixed commitments rather than a change to the portfolio; Gen X posted the weakest on-track reading of the four generations in the same data, at 49%.