Neither gender did terribly well on their own. The real breakthrough for retirement saving came with married workers, 81 percent of whom said they had saved for retirement. Sixty-nine percent reported having a DC plan and 56 percent said they had an IRA, both on a household level.

Sadly, unmarried women (44 percent) are also more likely than unmarried men (32 percent), and more than twice as likely as married workers (18 percent), to have less than $1,000 in total household savings and investments.

But apparently the teamwork of marriage helps savers in the amount they save, as well as getting them to save in the first place. Married workers, according to the survey, were far more likely (22 percent) to have managed to accumulate more than $250,000 in retirement assets than either unmarried men (5 percent) or unmarried women (4 percent).

Unmarried men (43 percent) are more likely than unmarried women (28 percent) to have attempted to figure out how much they might need in retirement. That might account for the fact that, although they have longer life expectancies and thus should expect higher expenses in retirement, 38 percent of unmarried women thought that less than $250,000 in retirement savings would adequately see them through retirement. Only 27 percent of unmarried men thought that.

Married workers apparently know better. Only 19 percent thought that would be enough to live on.