Amerikalılar Diğer Emekli Geliri Kaynaklarına Göre 401(k )'lara Ne Kadar Güveniyor?

How Much Do Americans Rely on 401(k)s Compared to Other Sources of Retirement Income?

Peter Gratton

Sat, September 19, 2026 at 9:15 AM GMT+3 4 min read

401(k)s may loom large for workers, but retirees' income often comes from a wider mix of sources.
Credit: MoMo Productions / Getty Images

Key Takeaways

Only 45% of retirees say a workplace retirement plan is an income source, compared with 83% of workers who expect one to be.
The median Vanguard 401(k)-style balance for Americans 65 and older is about $95,000, or roughly $3,800 a year using the 4% rule.
Many 401(k)s get rolled into IRAs by retirement, so retirees may still be using old workplace savings but under a different label.

Workers building 401(k) balances often assume the account will be their main source of retirement income. But for most current retirees, it isn't.

Among Vanguard participants 65 and older with an active 401(k)-style account, the median balance is $95,425, according to its 2025 report. Using the common 4% withdrawal rule, that would produce about $3,800 a year—enough to matter, but not enough to live on. That gap isn't necessarily a reason for concern, but it does point to an important wrinkle: By their late 60s, many retirees have moved old 401(k) money into an IRA.

Pensions, 401(k) withdrawals, and IRA distributions are a meaningful part of retirement income, but they are not the whole picture. A Congressional Research Service analysis of surveys linked to Social Security records found that older Americans also rely heavily on Social Security and earnings, with the mix changing substantially by age.

Why This Matters To You

The gap between what workers expect from 401(k)s and how retirees actually fund retirement can help you plan a more realistic mix of income streams.

The 401(k) Expectation Gap

Many workers think 401(k)s will eventually do most of the income work in retirement, but retirees say something different. The Employee Benefit Research Institute 2026 Retirement Confidence Survey found that 83% of workers expect a workplace retirement savings plan to be a source of income in retirement. But just 45% of retirees say theirs is, down from 54% the prior year.

The share of retirees citing a traditional IRA as an income source fell to 54% from 59%, and the share citing a defined benefit pension dropped to 56% from 64%.

Survey self-reports can be imperfect, of course. Retirees tend to overstate their reliance on Social Security and underreport withdrawals from 401(k)s and IRAs, sometimes by wide margins.

Where Retirement Income Comes From

A 2025 Congressional Research Service analysis of 2019 income records—the most recent data linking surveys to tax and benefit information—gives a clearer picture of how Americans 65 and older fund retirement. Social Security accounts for about 30% of total income. Then earnings from wages, salaries, and self-employment make up 27%. Pensions and retirement savings, which include defined benefit checks, 401(k) withdrawals, and IRA distributions, account for 24%.

The mix changes with age. For Americans 65 to 69, earnings dominate at 49%, while Social Security accounts for 19%. By age 80 and older, earnings fall to 5%, while Social Security rises to 40% and pensions and retirement savings reach 29%. Even when retirement-account income carries more weight, it still does not overtake Social Security.

Why 401(k) Balances Don't Tell the Whole Story

While Vanguard's median account balance for 401(k)s was just over $95,000, the average was $299,442. At more than three times the median, the average is being pulled up by a relatively small number of larger accounts.

Most retirees no longer have active workplace retirement plans by their late 60s, according to the Federal Reserve's 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances. When workers leave a job—whether they retire, switch employers, or are laid off—they often roll their 401(k) savings into an IRA. Nearly 60% of traditional IRA-owning households held rollover assets as of mid-2024, according to the Investment Company Institute.

Those flows have made IRAs the largest single pool of U.S. retirement money. At year-end 2025, IRAs held $19.2 trillion, while 401(k) plans held $10.1 trillion.

CRS found that about 29% of Americans 65 and older drew household income from IRA withdrawals, but much of that money may have started life in a 401(k). The account label doesn't always tell you where the savings originated, which means 401(k) figures alone can undersell how much workplace savings eventually help fund retirement.

Read the original article on Investopedia