The Retirement Fear Index was developed by David Conti, a long-time financial writer and retirement coach. It is published monthly through his firm, RetirementMentors. The index is a monthly composite index designed to track the fears shaping the fears of retirees and pre-retirees.
Conti describes the index as, “… a composite index of the 10 fears U.S. retirees and pre-retirees carry — tracked every month, so you can see what’s rising, what’s easing and what it means for the decisions ahead.”
How the Retirement Fear Index works
The index is calculated monthly. According to Conti, “The Index synthesizes a wide range of existing academic, institutional, financial-services, public-policy, media, and market-research sources produced by professional retirement researchers, economists, policy analysts, universities, financial firms, healthcare researchers, and government agencies.”
The index consists of ten components:
Healthcare and long-term care costs
Outliving savings/longevity risk
Social Security and pension insolvency
Inflation and rising everyday costs
Cognitive decline/loss of independence
Market volatility and sequence of returns
Loss of purpose/identity crisis
Housing affordability and maintenance costs
Family caregiving burdens and isolation
Taxes and regulatory changes
The baseline for the index is December, 2025. The inaugural monthly release of the index was in June 2026 and came in at 119.7, versus a baseline of 100.
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The index came in at 120.7 for August 2026, a slight decline from the prior month. The three highest components in the latest reading were Social Security (148), healthcare and long-term care costs (131), and outliving savings (117), which are the three biggest areas of concern according to the index.
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Index helps retirees find perspective
The index is a useful tool in measuring the fears of retirees and pre-retirees. While much of the discussion we see in the media, especially from financial advisors, centers on retirement risk, retirees and those planning for retirement often make their decisions on financial and related issues based on their fears.
The index provides a look at the level of retirement fear felt by a wide range individuals in total and on a topic by topic basis. This isn’t to say that everyone in or approaching retirement has the same fears and concerns. Rather, the index provides a benchmark to review your own situation to help ensure that you are covering all of your bases as you plan your retirement finances or manage your retirement finances for those already retired.
The index can be very useful for financial advisors in structuring their conversations for clients planning for or in retirement. It can help you translate the risk vocabulary you use with clients into a more fear-based one that aligns with how your clients generally think about these retirement planning issues.
Why Social Security frightens retirees
If we look at the three highest components of the index based on the last reading, these are all key factors to consider in retirement planning.
The solvency of Social Security is a key issue. Most retirees rely on Social Security for a portion of their retirement income. A reduction in benefits or a complete loss of benefits would be devastating for many retirees.
In 2026, the average retired worker collected $2,071 per month in Social Security benefits. As of the end of 2024, about 40% of retirees count on Social Security for over 50% of their income.
While there is little or nothing individuals can do to fix Social Security, beyond voting, the realization that Social Security is a major fear should serve as an incentive to plan around this risk.
The fear associated with healthcare and long-term care costs raises an issue that retirees and pre-retirees should be addressing anyway. At the very least an indicator that individuals and financial advisors should be sure that they and their clients have a plan for this critical part of retirement financial planning.
Outliving their savings is always a key retirement income planning issue. Individuals should be looking at this in pre-retirement and ongoing once they are retired. Things change and the thought that their retirement savings are sufficient should never be taken for granted. Financial advisors should also be addressing this issue periodically for the same reasons.
The retirement fear index is a great tool for financial advisors to structure that conversation about retirement with their clients, and for individuals to ensure that “all of the boxes are checked” for their own situation.
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