Gen Xers Plan to Rely on Social Security — but Worry They Won’t Get the Chance

“So really, Social Security is kind of the base,” he says. But he’s worried about potential cuts to the program and threats to change or privatize it.

According to the Transamerica Center poll, nearly 40 percent of Gen Xers expect to retire at age 70-plus or not at all. They are more likely than other age groups to cite financial concerns, including not having enough retirement savings and fears that Social Security payments will be less than expected.

Will Congress act in time for Gen X?

The decline of pensions and the rise of “defined contribution” workplace plans such as 401(k)s that make most Americans responsible for funding their own retirement has “heightened the role of Social Security” for Gen X, says Joel Eskovitz, senior director of Social Security and savings at the AARP Public Policy Institute.

In the June AARP poll, only 17 percent of Gen X respondents said they planned to rely most on a company-paid pension in retirement, while 41 percent said they would rely on Social Security payments.

Eskovitz says that reality has collided with low confidence in the program, fueled in part by uncertainty and misapprehension about Social Security’s financial health. The AARP poll showed that many Gen Xers do not trust the government to keep its promises and believe Social Security’s funds are “running out.”

According to the 2025 annual report from Social Security’s Board of Trustees, the program’s trust funds are projected to run short of money in 2034, only two years after the first wave of Gen Xers reach their full retirement age of 67. Benefits would not end if that happens, but they would be reduced by an estimated 19 percent.

To avert a shortfall, Congress must increase the revenue that funds Social Security, reduce overall spending on benefits or adopt a plan that combines both approaches. AARP has long pressed lawmakers to protect and strengthen Social Security by acting sooner rather than later. 

Eskovitz is confident lawmakers will stabilize the program before Gen X is affected. “They want to give people plenty of time” to adjust their retirement plans, he says. “It would be a challenge for Congress to tell people who are right on the cusp of retirement, ‘What you were expecting is not going to be there.’ ”

The AARP survey found widespread confusion among Gen Xers about the implications of a trust fund shortfall. More than 40 percent of respondents in that age group said Social Security would not be able to pay any benefits if the trust funds ran dry, and another 17 percent said they were not sure what would happen. Only 31 percent correctly answered that benefits would continue but be reduced.

The just-in-case camp

Nick Socha, a financial adviser with Northwestern Mutual, says he’s not surprised there’s confusion about Social Security’s solvency or even more basic elements of the program. “Most people haven’t done a deep dive into Social Security or really read through their Social Security statements,” he says.

Like Eskovitz, Socha does not believe Congress will risk the political blowback that would come with drastically curtailing Social Security benefits and says he shares that view with worried clients.

“It only takes a relatively small tweak in those numbers to now make Social Security more sustainable than it is today,” he says. “The big question mark is just the politics and the timing.”

Still, when building financial plans for retirement, some Gen X clients ask him to include a “haircut” in their estimated Social Security payments or leave them out entirely, because they’re too nervous about the program’s future.

Jennifer Reaves is in that camp. She is skeptical that political leaders in Washington will address Social Security’s funding shortfall.

“I just don’t think that there’s anybody in leadership who’s working to try to make the promise” of Social Security a reality for Gen X and future generations, she says. “And that’s disappointing to me, because those of us who have been working for decades … we’ve been paying into the system.”

Reaves has worked for more than 30 years as an urgent care nurse, including going wherever she was needed during the pandemic. Her husband works in the financial sector, and they have two adult children.

Nearing the crossroads of retirement, Jennifer Reaves, 56, is building a plan that doesn’t factor in Social Security because she believes “it may or may not be there.”

William Crooks

Like many Gen Xers, they took on debt to help put one of their kids through college, and now they are helping care for Reaves’ parents. According to a 2025 financial wellness report from the technology firm Payroll Integrations, 17 percent of Gen X workers reported having withdrawn money from a 401(k) or other retirement fund to pay off debt.

“After raising children and working full-time … you’re just tired,” Reaves says. She plans to retire at 62 and will apply for Social Security right away, even though she would get a much bigger monthly payment if she waited until her full retirement age of 67. Nearly 3 in 10 Gen Xers surveyed by Northwestern Mutual for its 2025 Planning & Progress Study feel the same.

Reaves isn’t counting on Social Security to be a reliable source of income in the long term anyway. “My husband and I have tried to work and save and try to prepare” for a retirement without it, she says.

‘I’m prepared to adjust my lifestyle downward’

By the time he was 40, John Quinn thought he was financially set. As a financial and management consultant, he’d amassed enough savings to put his three kids through college and fund a “country club” retirement for himself and his wife.

He quit his consulting firm, moved his family from Chicago to North Carolina and started a real estate investment fund that didn’t involve as much travel. “I left consulting so I could be a better dad,” he says.

Then the 2008 financial meltdown hit, and he watched his real estate firm’s value “fly off the cliff.” He had to drain all his retirement accounts and start over. He now runs a company that helps corporations manage their health care costs.

“I am hoping that we will liquidate our company and convert that into enough wealth that will take us through retirement,” Quinn says. “I’m prepared to adjust my lifestyle downward if I have to.”

As for Social Security, Quinn says he concluded early in his career that he could not count on the program in retirement. He says that was “very, very common wisdom back in that period” among people he saw as well-educated.

“The general message was, you better save and or invest appropriately, because 50-50 odds, it’s not going to be there,” he adds. When he’d see the FICA number on his paycheck — the amount withheld to fund Social Security — “I used to laugh and say, ‘I’m never going to see any of that money.’ ”

Quinn says he’ll still apply for his benefits when he retires, but it’s not on his retirement ledger. “I’ve never in my life thought about what my Social Security check’s going to be.”