Guardian survey finds 13% on track to save for the retirement they want

Guardian Life's 2026 Mind, Body, and Wallet report, released in May, recorded the lowest overall well-being and financial health readings in the 15 years the insurer has tracked those metrics. Financial wellness is the weakest pillar of the set: three in 10 respondents rate their financial health excellent or very good, and only 13% say they feel exactly on track to save enough for the retirement lifestyle they want.

Nancy DeRusso, who joined Guardian this year as head of client solutions after more than two decades at Goldman Sachs Ayco, put a name to the distance between those numbers in an interview with InvestmentNews published October 1: the longevity gap, as she calls it, the divergence between people's expectation that they will live long, healthy lives and what they are actually doing to prepare for that length. Most adults, the report finds, picture their older years as an active, engaged life stage rather than a period of withdrawal, and the behavior answers do not corroborate the picture.

One-third of respondents say they get enough exercise or do a good job of taking care of their mental health; two-thirds say they do a poor job of living within their means, the survey's version of household cash flow overtaking retirement saving as the competing priority. Auto-enrollment closes the enrollment gap and leaves the cash-flow gap untouched — a sponsor can default a worker into the plan, but it cannot underwrite the car payment that competes with the deferral.

Further down the report sits the number that matters most for the lifetime-income business: 41% of respondents worry their retirement savings will not last as long as they need. That is the demand case, forming in a market already leaning that way: annuity sales hit a record $123.9 billion, an 11th consecutive quarter above $100 billion, while AEI-ACLI modeling published in August found a one-time 50% annuity purchase ahead of both the 4% rule and full annuitization in a four-strategy comparison.

Where the money sits blunts the easy version of that pitch: Retirement assets reached a record $51.2 trillion, but the fastest-growing slice is IRAs, the pool where product distribution is hardest. DeRusso's own prescription for younger adults, who report lower financial well-being than any other generation, stays in accumulation: emergency reserves, consistent saving, long-term growth, participation in a workplace plan. The gap between that advice and the 41% who doubt their savings will last is where the design question sits — whether guaranteed income becomes a plan default, or stays something a worried household buys alone, late.