Where do your retirement savings rank? Here are 5 wealth levels in America — from $0 to $2M-plus

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There's no single number that defines whether you're financially prepared for retirement. Americans reach their later years with vastly different amounts saved, from nothing at all to portfolios worth millions.

Where you fall on that spectrum can provide some useful context for your own retirement planning. Someone with $50,000 saved faces very different decisions from someone approaching $500,000 or $1 million — and reaching each new level can change what you need to prioritize next.

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So what do those levels actually look like? And if you've managed to build a $2 million nest egg, just how unusual is that compared with other American households?

Here are five retirement wealth levels in America, what the numbers tell us about each group and some moves to consider depending on where you are today.

This is a surprisingly large cohort. Nearly 46% of U.S. households didn't have a retirement savings account, according to a Congressional Research Service analysis (2) of the Federal Reserve's 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances.

To be fair, some of these households may have other ways to fund their retirement, including home equity, Social Security or corporate pensions. But for others, having nothing in a 401(k), IRA or other retirement account may simply mean they haven't found room in their budget to start saving yet.

If you're starting from $0, however, you don't necessarily need to find hundreds of extra dollars every month to begin investing. One way to get started is to build investing into the purchases you're already making.

With Acorns , you can automatically invest spare change from your everyday purchases into a diversified portfolio of ETFs managed by experts at leading investment firms like Vanguard and BlackRock.

For instance, if you buy a donut for $3.25, Acorns will round up the purchase to $4 and invest the change in a smart investment portfolio. So a $3.25 purchase automatically becomes a 75-cent investment in your future.

Over time, those small investments can add up and help you build the habit of regularly putting money toward your future. As an example, even investing just $20 a week can meaningfully grow over 15 years to a $15,600 investment. But when you assume a 10% annual return, your money could grow to more than $34,638. Invest that for 30 years, and it could grow to nearly $180,000 (3).