Most Seniors Wish They’d Started Saving Earlier, Survey Finds

Fifty-six percent of seniors would have started saving earlier if they had to start all over again, according to the Senior Sentiment Survey, a survey of Americans aged 62-75 commissioned by Financial Freedom, a lender of reverse mortgages. A further breakdown reveals that 60 percent would have begun saving before the age of 30.

Of those that would have started saving earlier, 65 percent have less than $50,000 in investable assets and 63 percent plan to rely on Social Security as their main source of income. Thirty-nine percent of seniors would have allocated more money toward their retirement plan, and 27 percent would have put the money they did save into safer investments. Men wished they had started saving earlier in life at a slightly higher rate than women—57 percent to 54 percent.