Retirement savings habits of women vs. men: Vanguard study

Women tend to save more of their paycheck for retirement than men, but still trail them in 401(k) account values, new research shows.

The average 401(k) balance among men in 2025 was $194,597, compared with $146,476 for women, according to Vanguard’s new 2026 How America Saves report, which looks at data from nearly 5 million retirement savers across more than 1,300 workplace plans. 

Yet women display better savings habits overall, the report shows.

“At comparable income levels, women are more likely to participate in plans and often save at slightly higher rates,” said Jeff Clark, head of defined contribution research for Vanguard and author of the report, in an email.

“They also tend to invest more consistently, using professionally managed options and trading less frequently — behaviors linked to stronger long-term outcomes,” Clark said. 

Separate research has shown that women’s investment portfolios tend to outperform those of men. For example, on average, their investments beat men’s by 40 basis points, or 0.4%, according to Fidelity Investments’ analysis of annual performance across 5.2 million accounts from January 2011 to December 2020 — and the trend continues.

More recently, 2025 Wells Fargo research shows women achieve similar or better returns while taking less risk with their investments, compared with men. 

Yet other factors are at play that can lead to lower balances, experts say. For starters, full-time working women earn about 81% of what their male counterparts do, according to the Labor Department. 

Other contributing issues can be “working part-time or stopping work entirely for a time to be a caregiver, for children, aging parents, or a sick spouse,” said certified financial planner Patti Black, a financial advisor at Savant Wealth Management in Birmingham, Alabama.

Most caregivers are women, according to a 2025 joint report by AARP and the National Alliance for Caregiving, a nonprofit advocacy and research group.

Stepping away from work to care for others can mean missing out on putting money into a retirement account and getting matching contributions from an employer. There may also be a “motherhood penalty” — research has found that women’s earnings can suffer after becoming a mother.

However, while “women have lower balances on average due to income differences, that gap narrows significantly when comparing participants at similar income levels,” Clark said.

For example, among retirement savers who earn between $30,000 and $149,999, women had average account balances that were within 10% of men’s, according to the Vanguard report. For those in the $30,000 to $49,999 range, women’s average balance, $31,806, was higher than men’s $31,288.

Meanwhile, both men and women have similar asset allocations in the Vanguard study. For instance, both have an average of 6% of their assets in bonds and 3% in cash. Additionally, 50% of women’s assets are in target-date funds, on average, compared with 42% of men’s holdings. On the other hand, men have more in diversified equity funds at 42%, compared with 37% among women. 

Outside of retirement accounts, however, some women keep too much cash in a regular bank account, Black said. In other words, some of that cash could conceivably go toward their retirement savings, she said.

“They have a rainy day fund that’s a ‘Noah’s Ark flood’ kind of emergency fund,” Black said. “We don’t need quite that much in an emergency fund.”

She said that a year’s worth of expenses is okay to have in cash, but “at least keep it where you’re getting some interest.”