Prudential survey finds 86% of retirees hesitate to spend their savings

Prudential's 2026 Retirement Pulse survey, released Thursday afternoon, found that 86% of the more than 3,000 adults aged 50 and over it polled said they did not feel entirely free to spend the savings they had built. The reluctance survives wealth: among respondents with $500,000 or more in investible assets, 61% said they too are not convinced their money can be used any way they wish. Prudential calls that gap a missing "license to spend," the point at which a portfolio becomes income a household is actually willing to draw.

Phil Waldeck, head of U.S. Business for Prudential Financial, framed the result as a product problem in the firm's release: "It's not enough for people to save for retirement if they're afraid to spend it once they get there," he said, adding that the industry should move past an emphasis on substantial balances and toward comfortably generating income for retirees. In substance, that is the case for guaranteed income products, built on a fear those products are designed to price away.

The survey's own numbers cut in a few directions: almost 40% would rather leave money behind than face the risk of running out, a quarter take pride in balances that have not decreased, and 42% say they struggle to enjoy retirement and live in the present. These are attitudes about spending rather than records of it, and the survey never asks what any respondent actually withdrew.

Prudential's findings echo earlier research by David Blanchett and Michael Finke at the Alliance for Lifetime Income's Retirement Income Institute, which found that retirees with assets that annuitize income spend twice as much as those with non-annuitized savings—the institute reads that as an accumulation-focused retirement system leaving retirees uncertain how long they will live and constrained as a result. It is the same pattern documented in MissionSquare's research, which pointed advisers toward confidence-building rather than more information.

This publication has argued that guaranteed income is moving from conference panels to plan menus, and Prudential's data supplies the demand-side half of that case: if hesitation to spend is driven by longevity fear, a pooled-income check is the direct remedy, and the half-million-dollar cohort is the slice an insurer can plausibly serve. What the survey cannot show is take-up—saying yes to a pollster about spending more under a guarantee is not signing the contract, and whether that sentiment converts is the question the release leaves open.

Watch the 61%. Households with half a million dollars or more in investible assets are the cohort the products are built to reach, and by Prudential's own count a majority of them still feels locked out of its own money.