Which would imply that half the population has less than that saved, and half the population has more than that saved.
The oft-repeated datum is pretty darn old already. A decade! It is based on a survey of about 3,400 people taken way back in 2001 and reported on the Bureau of Labor Statistics website in an "updated" posting dating to 2005, here:
The median amount held in retirement accounts--$2,000--provides another indication of the wide variation in the amounts held by households.
More recent surveys of somewhat smaller samples of Americans paint an only slightly less apocalyptic picture of the resources Americans may or may not have tucked away:
Just over a third (34 percent) of Americans have no retirement savings, up from 30 percent in 2009, according to a new Harris Poll of 2,151 adults. ... Some 42 percent of individuals age 45 and older have less than $25,000 saved for retirement, EBRI found. Only 11 percent of all current workers say they have $250,000 or more saved for retirement.
At a 4 percent per year drawdown rate in retirement, people with $250K can draw down roughly only $10K per year for 25 years, and then it's pretty much gone.
Pretty hard to live on that without Social Security and Medicare, which themselves are going bust.
Americans are not ready for the future, but the maw of the future sure is ready for them.
