Goldman survey finds fewer Americans increasing retirement savings as Gen X lags

Goldman Sachs' retirement survey gives this year's annual review a sharper first question: is the client still adding to the account? Among Americans, the share increasing retirement savings fell to 39% from 55%, while the share reducing savings rose to 14% from 8%, a two-way move that makes the contribution screen the place to start. A portfolio can perform exactly as designed while the client falls behind because the contribution side stopped moving.

That 16-point drop is large enough to alter the review's starting point. The survey covers retirement planning and defined contribution, so the deterioration is appearing in the very accounts where automatic deferrals should be doing the heavy lifting, and the six-point rise in the reducing-savings share adds confirmatory pressure. When both numbers move in the wrong direction, an annual review that opens with asset allocation and closes with a withdrawal projection is looking at the wrong screen.

Gen X sharpens the instruction. The cohort posted the lowest on-track reading of the four generations at 49%, below the halfway mark and below every other cohort the survey measures, which should reorder the review queue. For a Gen X client, the retirement-income conversation becomes premature if the current contribution rate will not build the asset base the income plan assumes; the more urgent work is savings-rate triage—which accounts still receive money, which contributions have lapsed, and what can be automated before year-end.

The annual-review move is straightforward: ask for the most recent pay stub or plan statement, confirm the deferral rate, check the employer match, and compare that number with last year. If the rate has not moved in three years, model a one-point increase; if it moved down, find out what absorbed the difference. This requires no new market forecast, fund change, or revised capital market assumption—just asking a question the industry under-asks: is the savings rate still true?

The 14% reducing-savings figure deserves its own line on the agenda, even though the survey does not say why clients are cutting back. That missing reason is the opening: a client who reports a lower contribution rate has given the advisor a concrete clue that something in the household budget changed. The planning work is to identify that change and sequence the recovery, rather than paper over it with a better asset allocation.

Defined contribution plans run on defaults: an employee defers a percentage, the employer matches part of it, and the balance compounds. The Goldman survey's 39% increasing-savings share suggests the default slips once budgets are squeezed. Advisors cannot reset employer match formulas, but they can make sure clients are not leaving money on the table; a single question—are you deferring enough to capture the full match?—can be worth more than a portfolio rebalance. The same review should check automatic escalation where the plan offers it, because a client who opted out during a tight year often never opts back in; that single setting change, made in an annual review, can raise the savings rate over several years without requiring another decision from the client.

Gen X's 49% on-track reading points toward a higher and steadier contribution rate ahead of any more aggressive equity allocation. The planner can show this in the software: a portfolio compounding at a given return with a flat deferral falls short of the target, while the same portfolio with a deferral raised by a percentage point or two may close part of the gap. The client controls the amount of income that goes into the account every pay period; the market does not answer to the client.

That reframing also changes the meeting, shifting the early agenda from the withdrawal rate safe at 65 to the savings rate that must be reached by December. For a Gen X client who is behind, the near-term control variable is the deferral election, the catch-up contribution, and the decision about whether a bonus goes into the plan or into spending. The Goldman data suggests these are the levers that determine whether the client reaches the point where withdrawal planning matters.

The advisory default has been shaped by asset distribution: the largest accounts belong to older clients, so meetings tilt toward required minimum distributions, Roth conversions, and estate transfers. The Goldman survey is a reminder that the accumulation engine is under stress earlier in the life cycle. A 16-point drop in the share increasing savings is the kind of deterioration that shows up in retirement readiness a decade later, long after the current quarter's performance report.

Decumulation planning remains necessary for clients already in or near retirement, where withdrawal planning is the right frame. For everyone still working, the first question of the annual review should be the contribution rate, because a client cannot draw from assets that were never accumulated. The Goldman survey hands advisors the evidence to make that sequence explicit.

The survey does not say whether the drop is concentrated among lower-income savers or higher earners, among young workers or older ones; for the advisor, the response is the same. A client who has reduced contributions is a client whose financial plan needs a new input, because the old plan built on the old contribution rate is now a baseline error. The advisor who updates the plan before the next statement arrives will find the gap while there is still time to fix it.

The survey's two-way move and Gen X's on-track reading are a simple table to bring to a client meeting. The advisor who starts there will spend the meeting on the variable the client can actually control, and that is a better use of the hour than another conversation about what the market might do.