Why are Gen Xers worried about retirement?

When it comes to retirement savings, members of Gen Z are doing better than their elders. In a recent survey from the investment advisory firm BlackRock, more than three quarters of them — 77% — say they’re on track to retire and maintain their current lifestyle. 

Millennials and baby boomers are close behind at 72% and 68%, respectively. But Gen Xers are in a distant last place. Only 60% of them said they have enough retirement savings.

Gen Xers are in their mid-40s to late 50s. So, it makes sense that they’re thinking — and worrying — about retirement. But that worry isn’t new, said Anne Ackerley, a senior advisor on retirement with BlackRock.

“We’ve been doing Read on Retirement for the last nine years,” Ackerley said. “Gen X is always less confident about whether they’re on track or not.”

And their confidence has gotten worse as they’ve gotten older. Gen X has a nickname: the sandwich generation. Compared to other generations, they’re caught between caring for older parents and younger children. 

“Gen X have baby boomers as parents and they’re living longer, and Gen X delayed childbearing,” Ackerley said.

Medical bills and college education, those are expensive and cut into retirement savings. And yes, prior generations had those responsibilities too, but they had more help.

“They had more siblings to share the burden with,” said Anqi Chen, senior economist at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College.

Gen X is a smaller generation caught between the two largest ever. Plus, the generation before them, baby boomers, had a supply of unpaid caregivers — women were expected to care for children and the elderly.

“Because labor participation among women has risen, it might be more become more of a strain for Gen X and younger generations,” Chen said.

Ironically, Gen Xers came of age during boom times. The late 1980s and 1990s were prosperous, with low inflation and unemployment.

“And that’s when everything was hunky dory, and it was a Goldilocks zone,” said Andrew Herzog, a certified financial planner at the Watchman Group. “So, they possibly got too accustomed to things being too good, and saying, ‘Hey, you know, if I just put a little bit of money in the stock market, I’ll get 10%, 12% no problem.’ And perhaps they were, you know, misled.” 

The BlackRock researchers said even the oldest Gen Xers have time left to save for retirement.