Americans think they need $1.46 million on average to retire comfortably, recent research from Northwestern Mutual found.

Likewise, one-third of workers who calculated how much money they will need in retirement estimated $1.5 million or more, the Employee Benefit Research Institute recently found. Yet a third of workers have less than $50,000 in savings and investments, and 14% of workers have less than $1,000, EBRI found.

In the Fed’s survey, of seniors with $50,000 to $99,999 in savings, 86% said they were either living comfortably or doing okay. Of seniors with more than $10,000 in retirement savings, 93% said they were doing okay or living comfortably.

“If we’re going to have a retirement crisis, why don’t we have one already?” Biggs said in an interview.

Li, Wang and Pei have been sharing their research at conferences and it’s been positively received — many are impressed by their work although it confirms suspicions many harbor. One reaction in particular stands out to Li, no doubt an information-age wrinkle on “the dog ate my homework” excuse.

“A college student emailed us afterward asking us to share the paper with him,” she said. “He mentioned that his last name started with W. He’s going to tell his parents it’s not because of him — it’s because of his last name.”

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