Offer your thoughts or opinion on the input financial query or topic using your financial background.

What is the median retirement savings in the United States today?
Statistics are often tough to grasp. Specifically, we need to understand the exact context and implication of the data and how it's presented. An example - I look at real estate sales data for a given town, and find that for   the last 10 years, the average sale price has dropped, 3%/yr, every   year for these 10. What can I conclude?  Now, to your data. You don't mention age.  When we look at this chart, combined with the next -  The picture, while still bleak, is at least more clear. Nearly half of pre-retirees have no "retirement" savings. If that lower half is running close to zero, the average for the upper half is nearly twice the reported $164K.  Even now, there are important bits going unaddressed. People who have had no access to retirement accounts, either through lack of company availability, or self-employeds who just ignored them, may very well have saved outside of retirement-labled accounts. You can see these graphs are tracking only 401(k), IRA, and Keogh accounts.  Last, social security for the $30K earner will replace nearly half their working income at retirement, almost 65% if they work till 70. I don't advocate counting on SS for the entirety of one's retirement income, but the way SS benefits are structured, replacement benefits are far higher (as a percent) for lower wage workers, as the system intended.  To conclude, median alone is too small a data point to be useful, in my opinion. This kind of information presented in these charts is far more preferable to get a fuller picture.