More than 60% of people over 50 are worried they won’t have enough money to live on in retirement according to the most recent Financial Security Trends Survey from AARP. 

And about a third of people who are still working have saved less than $10,000 toward retirement.

The closer people get to retirement, the realer it tends to become, and the more they tend to start worrying about it, according to David John at AARP. “People really aren’t sure how much they’re going to need, or how to deal with that,” he said.

Recent inflation has also heightened a lot of people’s concerns about retirement, John said. “They’re especially worried about health care, unexpected expenses, and a key one is prices rising faster than their income.”

Less than half of people have saved enough to maintain their standard of living in retirement, according to Alicia Munnell at the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. 

That’s one reason so many people are concerned, and another? “It’s in the public domain that Social Security is not going to be able to pay full benefits beginning in 2034,” Munnell said. “And that has to be alarming to people.”

About 40% of people get half or more of their retirement income from Social Security.