Kelly LaVigne said retirement anxiety is centered on one fear: running out of money. In April, the Allianz Center for the Future of Retirement found that 67% of Americans worry more about that than death.
The survey asked 1,000 adults ages 25 and over with household incomes of at least $50,000 or investable assets of at least $150,000 to choose between the two worries. In five recent annual surveys, running out of money has won every time.
Kelly LaVigne and the cost gap
LaVigne, vice president of consumer insights at Allianz, said, "It's running out of money," and added, "It's not being able to afford healthcare. It's not being able to afford long-term care." Those costs sit at the center of the anxiety the survey measured, along with rising inflation and longer life expectancy.
One practical reason the fear persists is the size of the numbers people are hearing. David John, senior strategic policy adviser at the AARP Public Policy Institute, said in April, "You start to see these stories: In order to have a comfortable retirement, you have to have $1.4 million," and, "People see big numbers. And what big numbers may or may not do is actually apply to them. But what it does is scare people."
Social Security and age 70
LaVigne also said, "The closer you can get to age 70 before you claim, the higher your lifetime benefit will be," and, "The more of your essential expenses you can cover with Social Security, the better off you are." That advice runs into a harder reality for many households: if Congress does nothing, Social Security faces a shortfall as soon as 2032, and retirees would see a 28% cut in monthly benefits.
Longer lives make that gap harder to ignore. The Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker said life expectancy at birth reached 79 years in 2024, while CareScout said the average assisted living facility now charges $6,200 a month. Those numbers help explain why people who have saved, invested, or built higher incomes still worry about whether retirement will last longer than their money.
Catherine Collinson and the strain
Catherine Collinson, CEO of the Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies, said in April, "We can't overestimate the financial strains that Americans are facing," which lines up with the survey's result across five years. Americans are being told to save more, claim later, and plan for more expensive care at the same time.
For readers trying to judge their own position, the basic arithmetic is the point: a comfortable retirement requires enough liquid income, enough health coverage, and enough time for savings to stretch past age 70. The survey does not answer how many Americans can reach the $1.4 million mark, but it shows that fear of falling short already dominates the conversation around retirement.
