5 Big Mistakes People in Their 50s Make While Saving for Retirement

Be careful — these pitfalls could derail your well-laid plans

Jaclyn Greenberg,

AARP

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Published May 22, 2026

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Jon Krause

Key takeaways

Prioritizing short-term expenses can disrupt your retirement saving.
Knee-jerk reactions to the stock market’s ups and downs can have long-term negative consequences.
Discussing finances with aging parents can be difficult and feel uncomfortable, but avoiding the topic isn’t the answer.

Reaching your 50s can feel like a financial turning point. Your career might be at its peak, but retirement is starting to come into focus. At the same time, new demands, such as financially supporting adult children or caregiving for aging parents, may command your financial attention and eat into your ability to meet savings goals.

“There’s a well-known retirement red zone five years before and five years after retirement, where bad decisions can lead to long-term losses for a retiree,” says Steve Parrish, an attorney and professor at the American College of Financial Services in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. “While there’s a lot going on during this period, prioritizing retirement planning is central to retirement success.”

Avoiding the following blunders can help keep your well-laid plans on track.

Prioritizing short-term expenses over growing your nest egg

It’s easy to let more immediate financial goals crowd out saving for retirement, especially when they involve helping loved ones, but that can have long‑term consequences. For example, diverting money you might sock away for retirement into a 529 plan for your child’s education could set you back significantly.

“You can borrow for an education, but you can’t borrow for retirement,” says Parrish. “People don’t always realize that.”

The fix: The solution is actually pretty simple: Create a budget, with saving for retirement as one of the essential line items, and don’t deviate.

Assuming your income will increase until you retire

Your position may feel secure, especially if you’ve been employed for a long time, but artificial intelligence is disrupting the labor market and putting many people’s jobs in jeopardy. In March, AI was the leading reason for job cuts by U.S.-based employers, according to a report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a global outplacement and executive coaching company.

“I’ve seen a lot of our clients in the 40-to-55 age range get laid off over the past two years,” says Emily Green, head of wealth management at Ellevest in New York City. Many older workers weren’t prepared, she says, with some people simply assuming “they were going to make ‘X plus inflation’ until they retire.”

The fix: Prepare for the worst by building up a solid emergency fund. Many financial planners recommend that working adults save enough to cover at least three to six months of essential living expenses.

Gambling with your retirement savings

Fiftysomethings who’ve fallen behind on their retirement saving sometimes take risks to try to catch up, says Tyler End, a certified financial planner and CEO of Retirable in New York City. He warns against reallocating steady long-term investments in hopes of a big score.

“Now’s the time to really get serious about a disciplined strategy with your investments, because you don’t have as much time before you actually leave the workforce,” he says.

The fix: Focus on time-tested strategies to build your nest egg, like making catch-up contributions to your retirement accounts. In 2026, most workers can contribute up to $24,500 to a workplace retirement plan such as a 401(k), but the max for those in their 50s is $32,500.

Reacting emotionally to the market’s ups and downs

Short-term swings can lead to knee-jerk reactions, such as selling stocks when the market suddenly drops or raiding retirement accounts out of fear during times of economic uncertainty. Such moves might feel like financial self-defense, but they can hurt you in the long term.

“Either the market’s hitting new highs, so people get euphoric and put all their money in one stock, thinking it’s going to keep going up, or the opposite happens [where] the market has a bad year, they freak out, sell everything and break all momentum because of emotion,” says David Adams, a financial planner and founder of Adams Wealth Partners in Nashville, Tennessee

The fix: Don’t get spooked during turbulent times. Stay calm, avoid making emotional decisions with your investments and keep up with your retirement plan contributions.

Not talking to your parents about their finances

Discussing money with aging parents can be difficult and uncomfortable, especially when you bring end-of-life planning into the conversation. But avoiding the topic isn’t the answer.

The fix: Sit down with your parents and have an open conversation about their finances. How much money do they have saved for long-term care? Have they created an estate plan? Don’t pass judgment. Framing the conversation as “wanting to make things easier, rather than taking control, helps people open up and can prevent a lot of confusion later on,” says End.

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Jaclyn Greenberg lives on the East Coast and enjoys traveling with her family of five. She has written for The New York Times, CNN, Wired, Fodor’s and Parents.