Most Americans Are Blind To How Much Their Retirement Actually Costs, New Study Finds
The majority of Americans have significant blind-spots when it comes to financial planning for their sunset years and communicating their retirement arrangements to their family members, newly released research shows.
Libby Bandelin·Nov 10, 2026·3 min read
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The majority of Americans have significant blind-spots when it comes to financial planning for their sunset years and communicating their retirement arrangements to their family members, newly released research shows.
Eighty percent of families have not had in-depth discussions about age-related and long-term healthcare costs, pointing to a significant preparedness gap for American adults’ retirement and financial considerations, data from Lincoln Financial’s Consumer Sentiment Tracker published Monday shows.
“Many families recognize that aging can bring new healthcare and caregiving needs, but those conversations often don’t happen until they’re forced by a health event or family crisis,” Jared Nepa, senior vice president and head of Insurance Solutions Distribution at Lincoln Financial said in the retirement plan company’s Monday press release.
“The challenge is that important decisions about care preferences, caregiving responsibilities and potential costs become much harder when they’re made under pressure,” Nepa added. “Having these conversations early can help families feel more informed and prepared.”
also suggests that many families have few discussions around retirement income, life insurance and the state of their inheritance.
Nearly all older parents and many adult children feel responsible for starting discussions but do not because they want to avoid making their children worry or report complex family dynamics, the study found.
However, Gen X parents who have not talked about these scenarios with their children are more likely to feel stressed, worried, and unprepared compared to Baby Boomer parents, according to the study. Despite not having conversations about the state of their loved one’s estate, more respondents expect that their parents have financial plans in place than is actually the case.
For example, 55 percent of adult children believe their parents had financial plans in place for long-term healthcare affordability costs, but only 38 percent of older parents actually had such plans in place, the study found. Sixty percent of adult children also believe their parents have a life insurance plan, but 44 percent of older parent respondents reported they had such a policy.
This study comes at a time when the cost of long-term retirement care has greatly outpaced Americans’ incomes in recent years, according to AARP.
In the U.S., national monthly average costs are $7,440 for home care, $5,463 for a one-bedroom assisted living facility and $9,480 for a private room in a skilled nursing home, Lincoln Financial reported.
Despite the high costs for care and expectancy for plans in place, the majority of adult children are basing their retirement plans solely on a family inheritance that may or may not materialize, another recent study from annuity and life insurance provider Ethosfound.
Fifty-eight percent of adult children build their long-term financial plans around money that they’ve never confirmed will appear, the September Ethos study found. Meanwhile, 84 percent of parents surveyed said they’d spend those savings on themselves before leaving an inheritance.
The research from Lincoln Financial released Monday was conducted in April as part of the Lincoln Financial Consumer Sentiment Tracker. Data was collected from 1026 US adults using the Qualtrics survey platform and the sample includes quotas to be representative of the total U.S. adult population, the study said.
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