Integrated Financial Planning, Inc.

06/03/2026

"At 3.60%, the savings rate in Dec 2025 is below the 10-year average of 7.01% by 3.41pp. The trend is downward, with decreases in 5 of the last 6 months.

What This Metric Measures
This page tracks personal saving as a percentage of disposable personal income. How much of their after-tax income Americans are saving rather than spending.. The data comes from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis FRED database, series PSAVERT, updated monthly.

Historical Context
The all-time peak was 31.80% in Apr 2020 — roughly 8.8x the current level. The all-time trough was 1.40% in Jul 2005. During COVID-19 in 2020, the reading hit 31.80% (Apr 2020). Year-over-year, the metric has moved -16.3%."

The U.S. personal savings rate is 3.60% as of Dec 2025. How much are Americans saving? Historical chart and what low savings means for consumer debt and the economy.

06/01/2026

Monday Motivation!

05/29/2026

Timing, not returns.

"Morningstar’s 2026 research and Schwab’s modeling point to the same mechanics — specific, counterintuitive, and largely absent from standard retirement planning tools. Here is what the data actually shows:

Why Early Losses Hit Harder Than Late Ones

During the accumulation phase, a market decline is an opportunity, and as prices drop, you keep contributing, and you buy more shares at lower prices. The math works in your favor, but the moment you start withdrawing, the dynamic reverses completely. When you sell into a declining market, you lock in losses and reduce the number of shares available to participate in any recovery. A 20% decline in year one of retirement, combined with a $50,000 withdrawal, doesn’t just cost you the decline itself. This decline can also cost you every dollar those sold shares would have compounded over the next 20 to 25 years. This is why a 10% drop at age 30 and a 10% drop at age 63 are not even remotely close to the same event."

Two retirees, $1 million each, same withdrawal schedule, same average return over thirty years. Schwab’s Center for Financial Research ran this exact scenario. One portfolio lasted three decades; the other was gone by year eighteen. The only variable separating those two outcomes was the timing of...

05/27/2026

"For many people, heading back to work at this point is no longer an option (or at least, not an appealing one). Instead, the most powerful move you may be able to make is to reduce expenses. If your planning reveals that your portfolio can't sustain your current level of spending, then consider whether moving to a lower-cost area (potentially combined with downsizing) could bring your plans back into balance. If you're a homeowner, this could also let you unlock some of the appreciation that home prices in many areas have enjoyed over the long term.

As for your portfolio, once you're in retirement it may be even more important to try to avoid selling stocks during a pullback. If you're in the early years of retirement, you may be vulnerable to so-called ""sequence of returns risk."" This is the risk that the market hits a downturn in your initial years of retirement.

As the chart below shows, hitting a downturn in your first retirement years—and selling stocks into the downturn—can cause a permanent erosion of your wealth that your portfolio may never fully recover from. By contrast, bear markets that fall later in retirement, after a series of positive returns, generally don't have such a severe effect on hypothetical or modeled planning outcomes."

https://www.fidelity.com/learning-center/personal-finance/retirement/inflation-and-volatility

05/22/2026

"Regardless of where you are in your career, life stage or financial plans, comparing your retirement savings with national benchmarks can help you gauge whether you are on track to meet your goals. That context is especially valuable in 2026 as inflation, interest rates and market uncertainty continue to affect how Americans save, invest and plan for retirement.

The average retirement savings balance is calculated by adding all balances together and dividing by the number of households. As such, high-balance households can skew that number upward, often making the average larger than what typical households have actually saved. This is where the median rate comes in handy, since it shows the midpoint where half of households have more and half have less."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/investor-hub/article/average-retirement-savings-age-how-to-catch-up/

05/20/2026

"To understand if you're saving enough, Fidelity has some suggestions.

- Save at least 15% of your pre-tax income every year. This includes the money you put in your 401(k), IRA, and any other accounts meant for retirement. It also includes money you receive from your employer, like through a 401(k) match.
- Invest for growth potential. Helping your money grow with investments that provide a rate of return above the rate of inflation can help ensure you can maintain your lifestyle in retirement. A diversified, age-appropriate mix of investments could help you reach your goals more quickly and easily than investing in cash or very safe investments.
- Aim to save 10 times your income by age 67. If you plan to retire earlier, you may need to save a higher multiple of income (for instance, 12 times your income)."

https://www.fidelity.com/learning-center/personal-finance/average-retirement-savings

05/15/2026

Want to try your hand at fixing Social Security? "The Reformer" allows users to build
their own plan to restore solvency. See how your choices stack up!

https://www.crfb.org/socialsecurityreformer/

05/13/2026

Under current law, Social Security cannot pay benefits it does not have the revenue to
support. Once the Old Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund reserves are exhausted
in 2033, benefits will automatically be limited to incoming revenue, resulting in a roughly
23 percent benefit cut for all retirement and survivor benefits.

As such, refusal to work towards Social Security reform is effectively endorsing across
the-board benefit cuts. Policymakers who want to avoid that outcome should focus
reforms on protecting lower-income retirees, reducing Social Security’s long-term tax
burden on all Americans, and introducing personal ownership options that strengthen
retirement security without expanding government dependency.

https://epicforamerica.org/education-workforce-retirement/epic-explainer-what-will-happen-when-social-securitys-trust-fund-runs-dry/?utm_source=chatgpt.com