More than half of Americans worry they will withdraw too much from their retirement savings and run out of money before they die and new research suggests that fear is grounded in a systematic miscalculation of how long retirement actually lasts.
The 2026 TIAA Retirement in the Age of AI and GLP-1s Survey, conducted by KRC Research among 1,000 U.S. adults aged 18 to 65 between July 27 and July 31, 2026, finds that 53% of respondents are most concerned about outliving their savings, compared to just 21% who worry about underspending.
Eight in 10 Americans report financial fears about living longer, compounded by artificial intelligence (AI) and GLP-1 medications, a class of drugs originally developed to treat diabetes and obesity that have shown significant effects on longevity.
The findings sharpen a conversation around the gap between how long clients think they will live in retirement and how long they are statistically likely to live, which is wider than most appreciate, while the tools available to close it are underused.
Tim Pitney, Managing Director and Head of Lifetime Income Distribution at TIAA in Cambridge, Massachusetts, has spent years documenting the longevity miscalculation that runs through American retirement planning. The problem, he says, starts with a number that clients know but misapply.
"You get to 65, you survived any other major healthcare issues or disasters, and now your longevity is not 78, it's more akin to like 87 or 88," Pitney told InvestmentNews. "And then for a couple, for one to survive, it's into the 90s, 94, 95 or so."
Workers tend to anchor their retirement planning on average life expectancy at birth - roughly 78 averaged across males and females - without accounting for what reaching retirement age actually does to those odds. A client who has made it to 65 is no longer facing average mortality risk; they have already survived the events that drive down population averages. Their relevant planning horizon is a decade longer than their intuition tells them.
For advisors, that recalibration has direct consequences for drawdown strategy, asset allocation, and the conversation around guaranteed income. A retirement income plan built for a 78-year-old horizon is structurally different from one built to sustain a couple's joint life expectancy into the mid-90s, and the difference matters most in the decisions made at or near the point of retirement.
Forty-three percent of survey respondents are not confident that traditional retirement planning methods can keep pace with longer lifespans. That figure rises to 49% among women and 47% among Gen Z workers - two client segments whose planning horizons advisors may be systematically underestimating.
The survey introduces two forces that are actively disrupting clients' sense of what their retirement will cost and advisors' ability to model it with confidence.
On the healthcare cost side, American workers are nearly evenly split on what AI will do to retirement expenses: 27% believe AI will increase costs by generating expensive new breakthrough treatments; 22% believe it will lower costs through greater efficiency and accessibility; 20% expect no significant financial impact; and 32% simply do not know.
Seventy-seven percent already identify rising healthcare costs as a direct threat to their retirement plans; a concern that sits alongside the rising cost of living and inflation, cited by 80% of respondents.
GLP-1 medications add a second dimension of uncertainty. If drugs originally developed for metabolic conditions prove to extend healthy lifespans meaningfully, the longevity assumptions embedded in clients' retirement models (and in the actuarial tables that underpin annuity pricing) may need revisiting.
The top financial fears associated with a longer life are familiar to any advisor who has had a late-career retirement income conversation: 46% of survey respondents fear running out of money to cover basic day-to-day expenses; 42% worry about insufficient disposable income to enjoy the extra years; 41% fear the high cost of long-term medical, memory, or nursing care; and 30% worry about becoming a financial burden on their children or family members.
"An annuity doesn't care what AI does," Pitney said. "Regardless of what happens - whether medical advances extend longevity or don't move the needle, whether interest rates rise or fall - that guaranteed income payment will continue to arrive."
The TIAA survey data arrives alongside a market dynamic that has direct relevance for advisors advising clients on retirement income transitions. According to LIMRA, total US retail annuity sales reached a record $464.1 billion in 2025 - a 7% increase year over year and the fourth consecutive annual record.
"Think about people who have an entire retirement package with their workplace, maybe paying all-in costs of 10 to 20 basis points," Pitney said. "They're taking their money out and immediately going out and buying an annuity. But if you don't have the kind of income services within those plans, that's what's going to happen."
That basis point differential is a conversation advisors should be initiating proactively with clients who are approaching retirement with significant balances inside employer-sponsored plans. The question of whether to roll over, stay in the plan, or access income solutions inside the plan carries meaningful cost implications and the answer is rarely obvious without guidance.
TIAA is scaling its institutional lifetime income solutions into the broader 401(k) market in response to this dynamic. By the end of 2026, the firm expects to serve 1,000 unique institutions using customized solutions with embedded lifetime income in default investment options, reaching approximately $100 billion in assets and around one million participants by next year. As more workplace plans build credible income tiers, the rollover conversation will become more nuanced - and the advisor's role in navigating it more consequential.
The survey's broader message for advisors is consistent with what the data has been pointing toward for years: clients need guaranteed income strategies, they underestimate how long those strategies need to last, and they are increasingly anxious about forces - AI, rising healthcare costs, GLP-1-driven longevity extension - that no accumulation strategy alone can fully address.
Forty-three percent of survey respondents are not confident that traditional retirement planning methods adequately account for how long retirement now lasts. That is not a crisis of confidence advisors can talk clients out of. It is an opening for the income planning conversation that the numbers have long demanded..
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