{"id":614152,"date":"2026-09-04T10:42:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-04T10:42:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/614152\/"},"modified":"2026-09-04T10:42:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-04T10:42:08","slug":"4-takeaways-on-how-gen-z-and-millennials-are-investing-for-retirement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/614152\/","title":{"rendered":"4 Takeaways on How Gen Z and Millennials Are Investing for Retirement"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s plenty of data showing younger people have a tougher time financially today<\/a> than previous generations.<\/p>\n

It’s harder to buy a home. Student loan balances<\/a> can be astronomical. Wage growth hasn’t kept up with corporate profit growth. Inflation has eaten away at spending power.<\/p>\n

But how are younger people doing with retirement savings? <\/p>\n

Fidelity recently published the second-quarter edition of its Building Financial Futures report, offering a window into the investing patterns of savings behaviors of its clients.<\/p>\n

The report is stacked with data, but we’ve pored over it and pulled out four interesting takeaways about how Generation Z and millennial savers are socking away money for their post-working years. <\/p>\n

Millennial savers are approaching an important savings milestone<\/p>\n

Millennials have an average of $94,300 in retirement accounts, according to the report, approaching a crucial retirement savings milestone: the $100,000 mark.<\/p>\n

They’re nearly done with what investing legend and Warren Buffett’s right-hard man said was the hardest part about investing. <\/p>\n

“The hard part of the process for most people is the first $100,000,” Charlie Munger said at Berkshire Hathaway’s 1999 shareholder meeting<\/a>. “If you have a standing start at zero, getting together $100,000 is a long struggle for most people.”<\/p>\n

His comment piggybacked off of the point Buffett had made moments before: building wealth successfully is helped by starting early so that compound interest can start to grow your wealth for you.<\/p>\n

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While $100,000 is an arbitrary amount, the higher your portfolio value goes, the more noticeable the impact of compounding becomes.<\/p>\n

The report found Gen Z’s average balance is $20,800.<\/p>\n

Younger people are seeing lower employer contributions<\/p>\n

Gen Z and millennials have lower employer contribution rates in their retirement accounts than older generations.<\/p>\n

Here are the numbers:<\/p>\n

Baby boomers: 5.1% employer contributionGen X: 5.1%Millennials: 4.8%Gen Z: 4.1%<\/p>\n

This indicates that Gen Z and millennials may be leaving money on the table, and not taking their full employer match by setting their savings rate to be lower per paycheck. <\/p>\n

Gen Z loves target date funds<\/p>\n

Target date funds<\/a> are most popular with younger people, with 80% of Gen Z with all of their money in a target-date fund, compared to 46% of boomers. Target date funds automatically adjust your exposure to stocks and bonds as you get closer to retirement.<\/p>\n

That’s likely due to a couple of factors. One is that target dates came to be in the 1990s, and have steadily grown in popularity since then, meaning boomers and Gen X likely weren’t as exposed to them when they started saving.<\/p>\n

Second, target date funds are now the default option for many employer-offered retirement accounts. So, if an investor doesn’t have an idea for where else to put the money and doesn’t want to actively manage their account, a target date fund can make sense.<\/p>\n

Gen Z savers are upping their savings rates most aggressively<\/p>\n

One encouraging stat from the report is that Gen Z is the generation most aggressively increasing its savings rate.<\/p>\n

This probably ties in with younger people generally having a lower savings rate to begin with, leaving more room for upside.<\/p>\n

But it could also be due to a new law change. Last year, the SECURE 2.0 Act made auto increases in retirement savings rates mandatory for many new 401(k) accounts<\/a> created after December 28, 2022. The increases continue until savings rates hit a range of 10-15%, though employers can adjust these rates at any time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There’s plenty of data showing younger people have a tougher time financially today than previous generations. It’s harder…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":614153,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[72,176,61,60,174,175],"class_list":["post-614152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-business","tag-finance","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=614152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/614152\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/614153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=614152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=614152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=614152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}