Plenty of Americans have a retirement plan. The catch is that someone else wrote it, the federal government mails it once a month, and the average check comes to about $2,089.
Personal finance radio host Dave Ramsey has spent years warning that Social Security can’t carry a retirement on its own. Research from his company, Ramsey Solutions, suggests millions of households are betting on it anyway.
Nearly half (42%) of Americans aren’t saving for retirement at all, according to the company’s Today’s Retirement Crisis research.
The nationally representative survey found that among the 58% who were, only one in 10 set aside 15% or more of their income, the rate Ramsey recommends, and seven in 10 said they wished they were saving more.
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Washington’s own numbers tell the same story
The Federal Reserve’s latest Survey of Consumer Finances, released in October and covering 2022 to 2025, found that 54.9% of families held a retirement account in 2025.
That was up just 0.6 percentage point from 2022, which still leaves roughly 45% of families with no 401(k), individual retirement account, or similar account.
Retirees are already leaning hard on the government check. In Gallup’s April survey, 62% of retirees said Social Security is a major source of their income, tying last year’s record high. Work pensions came in at 37%, and 401(k)s and IRAs at just 27%.
Workers are expecting a different menu. Only 36% of nonretirees expect Social Security to be a major source of retirement income, while 48% expect to lean on a 401(k), IRA, or similar account. That’s a lot of faith in accounts that nearly half of families don’t have.
The nerves are showing, too. Gallup found 69% of non-retirees are very or moderately worried about not having enough money in retirement, tying the 2022 high.
Social Security was built as the side dish
The average retired worker collected $2,088.79 a month in September, according to the Social Security Administration, or roughly $25,000 a year. Benefits get a 3.6% cost-of-living adjustment in January, which works out to about $75 more a month for the average retiree.
And the program’s biggest checks are out of reach for most workers.
Ramsey’s company has a menu analogy for all of this.
“It was always meant to supplement your retirement income — like how a side of french fries is meant to ‘supplement’ your cheeseburger,” Ramsey Solutions wrote on its website in 2024. “Like the old saying goes, ‘Man cannot live on french fries alone’… or something like that.”
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The company served up a dessert version of this advice on another page.
“If you end up getting retirement benefits when you decide to retire, that’s great,” Ramsey Solutions wrote. “Any money you get from Social Security should be considered icing on the cake. But making Social Security the main ingredient of your retirement plan? That’s a recipe for disaster.”
Ramsey has said the same thing in his own words.
“I’ve never counted on Social Security and I’ve never taught people to count on Social Security to retire because it’s not enough, for one thing,” Ramsey told TheStreet in an exclusive interview. “And it was never meant to be the retirement plan.”
Retirement money hiding in plain sight
Ramsey’s baseline is investing 15% of household income for retirement. With the savings target Americans say they need hitting another record high, a few lesser-known moves can stretch that effort further.
Let Uncle Sam chip in. Starting with contributions made in 2027, the federal Saver’s Match will add 50% of up to $2,000 a person saves in a workplace plan or individual retirement account, for a maximum of $1,000 a year. It’s aimed at low- and moderate-income savers, married couples filing jointly can each qualify, and the money goes straight into the retirement account. Savers claim it on the 2027 tax return they file in 2028. There’s some irony in the government helping people need the government less.
Go looking for a lost 401(k). Workers who change jobs can leave money behind. The Labor Department’s Retirement Savings Lost and Found database, created under the SECURE 2.0 Act, lets people search for old employer plans that may still owe them benefits. Users need an identity-verified Login.gov account, and some records come from older filings that may be out of date.
Fund an IRA for the spouse at home. If Bezos turns out to be right about one-paycheck households, this one gets more valuable. A spouse with no paycheck can still contribute to an individual retirement account when the couple files a joint return and the other spouse has taxable compensation, according to the Internal Revenue Service. With the 2026 limit at $7,500 per person, a couple can put away up to $15,000, as long as the total doesn’t top their joint taxable pay.
Use the 60-to-63 window. Workers who turn 60, 61, 62, or 63 this year can make a higher catch-up contribution of $11,250 to most 401(k)s, instead of the standard $8,000 for savers 50 and older. That lifts their total 2026 limit to $35,750, and with only a few paychecks left in the year, the window for 2026 is closing fast.
Nobody orders a side of fries and calls it dinner. Social Security will keep showing up, raise and all, but nearly half of households are still planning the whole meal around the side dish.
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