Guardian survey finds 13% exactly on track to save enough for retirement

Guardian Life's 2026 Mind, Body, and Wallet report, released in May, found the lowest overall well-being and financial health levels in the 15 years the insurer has tracked those measures. Three in 10 Americans rate their financial health excellent or very good, and 13% say they are exactly on track to save enough for the retirement lifestyle they want.

Nancy DeRusso, who spent more than two decades at Goldman Sachs Ayco before joining Guardian in 2026 as head of client solutions, spoke with InvestmentNews five months after the report's release, and she calls its central finding a longevity gap: the divergence between the long, healthy lives adults expect and what they are actually doing to prepare for them. Most people, she said, picture their later years as an active, engaged life stage rather than a period of withdrawal, yet only a third report getting enough exercise or taking good care of their mental health, and two-thirds say they do a poor job of living within their means.

Manufacturers hand advisors proprietary research every quarter, and the diagnosis is one most firms can reproduce from their own book. The question worth taking from this survey is the prompt it puts in the annual review: how long is this client planning for, and does the savings rate agree? Guardian's 41% who worry their savings will not last as long as they need may already be asking it.

Advisors can put the data to work where the generational split is sharpest: younger adults, Gen Z included, self-report lower financial well-being than other generations, and DeRusso treats them as the group with the most room to improve and the most time in which to do it. What she recommends they build is unglamorous: emergency reserves, consistent saving, long-term growth investing, and participation in workplace retirement plans.

The figures come from Guardian's own research, and the coverage does not describe the sample or methodology behind them. As a planning prompt, though, the survey has company; our August report on the estate-planning gap found only about a quarter of American adults have a will, another quiet risk that sits in client books until an advisor raises it.

The more useful part for an advisor may be the report's audience: the generation furthest from retirement reports the lowest financial well-being of any cohort in the survey.