The millennial generation is saving money—just not to leave the work force.
The majority of millennials, at 63%, are saving towards their “desired lifestyle” rather than towards retirement goals, according to the Spring 2017 Merrill Edge Report by Bank of America, released on Friday.
While an equal percentage of baby boomers and Gen Xers are saving for retirement purposes, or at least to stop working (at 55% each), millennials, are the outlier generation, with only 37% putting money towards retirement.
However, while the older generations were perceived as “very good savers” by the majority of the survey’s 1,000 respondents—54% agreed that the greatest generation were prolific savers, as opposed to 8% who rated millennials as top savers—the reality of saving is slightly different.
The “reality of average income” that seniors are saving is about 12%, while it’s nearly 20% for millennials, the report found. This gap might be expected, however, considering the majority of millennials have not yet retired.
The full study may be found here.