Your Gen X and Gen Y workers may finally be saving some of their hard-earned cash, but it's not going into their 401(k)s.
New research from LIMRA suggests that the more than 116 Gen X and Gen Y consumers in the U.S. understand that they really do need to make contributions to be able to retire – ever – but their priorities are elsewhere.
Among Gen X consumers polled by the organization in "Sowing the Seeds for Retirement," fewer than half (46 percent) picked retirement as their top reason to save, though they do at least rank retirement planning higher than savings costs including vacations (38 percent), home improvements (29 percent) or education costs (26 percent).
Recommended For You
Unfortunately, for Gen Y consumers – those born between 1982 and 2003 – retirement is only a second-ranked priority, and just barely more important than home improvements, in their eyes.
According to LIMRA's study, 41 percent of Gen Y respondents listed vacations and travel as their top saving priorities, followed by retirement (31 percent), saving money to start a family and/or buying a home (25 percent), or buying a car or making other large household purchases (24 percent).
LIMRA says a more troubling statistic from the study is the fact that only 43 percent of Gen X women and 27 percent of Gen Y women listed retirement savings as one of their top three financial priorities.
© 2025 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
