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Recent comments by Elon Musk offering advice on people’s savings has been met with stern criticism from several financial experts.
According to Business Insider, Musk said on the “Moonshots with Peter Diamandis” podcast that people should not worry about saving for retirement because future technology will make money “irrelevant.”
Musk said that advances in AI, energy, and robotics will create an “abundance” of resources that retirement savings “won’t matter.”
Business Insider noted that household debt in the U.S. has reached $18.59 trillion in the third quarter of 2025 (up more than 50% from 2015), and at least seven finance and AI experts disagreed with Musk’s claim.
“I would pay no attention to anything Elon Musk says out of his core area of expertise,” Alicia Munnell, senior advisor and former director of Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research, told Business Insider.
“He has no idea how the American lives, how important Social Security and 401(k)s are to maintaining people’s standard of living,” Munnell added.
Musk’s public statements have drawn backlash before — for example, when his financial claims came into question while downplaying government funding support.
Financial experts Business Insider spoke to agree that people cannot rely on optimistic tech forecasting to protect their future.
According to Ekaterina Abramova from London Business School, a world where money isn’t a worry is a world where governments redistribute wealth fairly, rather than the vision Musk outlined.
Another expert, John Nosta, said Musk’s idea of the future depends on political coordination along with Big Tech.
History suggests planning still matters. University College London researcher James Ransom noted that some Cold War researchers in the 1950s stopped saving for retirement because they believed nuclear war would wipe out the future, but they regretted it later.
Ransom also warned that humans have a poor track record of redistributing wealth using technology.
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