Why 36.6% of Americans earning over $500,000 a year still live paycheck to paycheck, and what Goldman Sachs’s new survey says about lifestyle costs

Earning half a million dollars a year sounds like the end of money worries. A new survey says otherwise. Goldman Sachs Asset Management’s Retirement Survey and Insights Report 2026 found that 36.6% of households earning more than $500,000 say they mostly live paycheck to paycheck. Only one group reported a higher share. Households earning under $50,000, where 60.8% said the same.

This income is about 5.7 times the national median. The Census Bureau puts the median household income at a record $87,460 for 2025. Yet a large part of this top group says it is barely keeping up.

The survey covered 5,106 people between 45 and 75 years of age. Of these, 3,612 were still working and 1,494 were retired.


Each person picked one of three statements:- a) living paycheck to paycheck with little progress on long-term goals, b) making moderate progress, or c) making significant progress on both short-term and long-term goals.

Goldman divided the respondents into six income bands, from under $50,000 to above $500,000.

Why are some high-income families struggling?

If money problems simply shrank as income grew, the numbers would fall steadily from the lowest band to the highest. They do not. The paycheck-to-paycheck share drops from 60.8% in the lowest band to 22.2% among households earning $100,000 to $200,000. After that, it rises again, to 34.2% for the $300,000 to $500,000 band and 36.6% at the top.

The group doing best is the $200,000 to $300,000 band. In this group, 42.2% said they are making significant progress on both short-term and long-term goals.

Credit card habits follow the same pattern. About 46% of households earning above $500,000 say they usually pay only the minimum amount on their card bills, or even less. That is almost the same as the 47% among households earning under $50,000. In the $200,000 to $300,000 band, the figure is only 30%.

Top earners are also pushing their plans forward. Eighty percent of them say they have had to delay a major financial goal even though they have jobs, the highest share of any income group. Forty-five percent have delayed saving for retirement, again the highest.

Why a big salary does not always feel big

Goldman says the pressure at the top is different from the pressure at the bottom. Lower-income families are trying to pay for basic needs. Higher earners talk about more complicated financial lives, higher expectations about lifestyle, bigger fixed commitments, and a gap between the retirement they imagine and the one they have actually secured.

In real life, this can mean a larger home loan, costlier cars, private school fees and regular travel. Such spending can quietly eat up every raise. Fortune notes that this is a familiar pattern among people called HENRYs, short for “high earners, not rich yet.”

Family responsibility also matters. A Goldman Sachs spokesperson told Fortune that higher-income people may be the financial anchors for their extended families. The report adds that two households can say the same thing for very different reasons. One may be struggling to pay bills. The other may have expenses and expectations that grew faster than its income. The answers are self-reported, so they reflect how people feel about their own finances.

It is also worth noting that most top earners are not worried about their jobs. Eighty-seven percent of those earning above $500,000 say their work gives them a stable path to long-term financial security.

The report’s first major finding is that housing, health care, education, caregiving and daily expenses have grown faster than wages for decades, leaving families with less to save. Goldman says the problem is no longer whether people take part in retirement savings. It is that too many needs are competing for the same money.

Recent numbers support this. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, consumer prices have risen roughly 22% in the past five years. Gasoline was up 27.4% in August compared with a year earlier.

This is happening while the economy looks healthy. Unemployment was 4.2% in September, and the Bureau of Economic Analysis says consumer spending rose by $190.8 billion in August. Goldman’s report points out that behind this strength, financial pressure is building and threatening retirement readiness.

Retirement saving has already slowed. Among working respondents, the share who increased their retirement savings fell from 55% last year to 39% this year. That is a drop of more than 16 percentage points, and Goldman calls it the biggest one-year fall since 2020.

Fortune has also reported that many younger workers are taking on extra work to manage their expenses.