Billionaire BlackRock CEO Larry Fink Says ‘Almost No One Is Close’ To Saving The Nearly $2.1M Americans Claim They Need For A Comfortable Retirement
You’ve heard the benchmarks. You’ve seen the surveys. Retirement experts have long floated targets like $1 million or $1.5 million. But when BlackRock asked Americans directly how much they think they’ll need, the average answer shot much higher — and CEO Larry Fink said almost no one is on track to reach it.
“In January, BlackRock surveyed Americans, asking how much money they’d need to retire comfortably,” Fink wrote in his 2025 annual chairman’s letter. “When we took the average of those responses, it was just over $2 million — $2,089,000, to be exact. That’s a lot. More than I was expecting. And almost no one is close.”
Even older workers aren’t catching up. “Even Gen-Xers, the oldest of whom will start retiring in five years, are falling short,” Fink said. “In fact, 62% have saved less than $150,000.”
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Fink said the shortfall isn’t just about how much people contribute — it’s also about what they’re investing in. Pensions, he said, often include private assets like infrastructure and real estate. Most 401(k) plans do not.
“Pension funds have invested in these assets for decades, but 401(k)s haven’t,” he wrote. That difference helps explain why “pensions typically outperform 401(k)s by about 0.5% each year.”
It adds up fast. “Over 40 years, an extra 0.5% in annual returns results in 14.5% more money in your 401(k),” Fink wrote. “It’s enough to fund nine more years of retirement.”
He continued, “Or, put another way, private assets just bought you nine extra years hanging out with your grandkids.”
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The problem, he wrote, is that private assets are still unfamiliar to many plan providers. “When you invest in private assets—like a bridge, for example—the values of those assets aren’t updated daily, and you can’t withdraw your money whenever you want. It’s a bridge, after all—not a stock.”
He added that “including assets like real estate or infrastructure in a 401(k) has become practical only within the past five to ten years.”
