Retirement Planning’s Missing Middle
After years of doing everything “right,” Sara finds herself in retirement’s missing middle: prepared, responsible, and still unsure what comes next.
Arriving without a map
Sara has reached a place she spent most of her adult life working toward, and now that she’s here, she’s not entirely sure what comes next.
For years, her approach to retirement was straightforward: contribute consistently, keep saving, and trust that time would do the rest. “When I was younger, retirement was just this mythical thing,” she said. “As long as I just shoveled a whole bunch of money away, everything was gonna take care of itself.”
In her 40s, that idea doesn’t quite hold.
Sara doesn’t feel afraid about the future. She’s not lying awake worried about whether she’ll be able to pay her bills, but she also doesn’t feel settled. “I feel like I have too many unknowns,” she explained. “It feels like there are too many unknowns for me to be like, ‘Yep, I got a plan. I’m all set.’”
That uncertainty feels surprising, not because Sara hasn’t been disciplined, but because she has.
On the conveyor belt of life
She’s spent her career doing work that rewards precision and follow-through. In manufacturing, her role centers on getting complex projects all the way through the system—costing them, planning them, anticipating constraints, and making sure nothing falls apart before the finish line. “It’s about getting the order through the factory,” she said. Every step matters. Every assumption gets tested.
That same logic shapes how she thinks about retirement. “It’s like putting all of the pieces together,” Sara said. “You can’t just say, ‘Well, I have a 401K, I contribute to it—boom, done.’” She thinks in layers and contingencies. If one option doesn’t work, another needs to be there. “If I can’t use this,” she said, “then I have this.”
What makes Sara’s situation so interesting is that she’s no longer in the phase of just starting out, and she’s not anywhere near the kind of wealth that comes with built-in guidance like a personal financial planner. She’s reached the point where she can do all the “right” things. And that’s exactly where the questions start.
“For the first time in my life, I’m like, I can max things out. So I do,” she said. “And then it’s kind of like… well then, so now what?” The challenge isn’t effort or discipline. It’s direction.
Sara describes herself as being “in the middle,” and it’s a place she doesn’t see reflected very often. “You either find advice for people who are digging themselves out of student loan or credit card debt,” she said, “or people who have millions and need to set up trusts. I’m neither of those.” She says she doesn’t need help learning how to save, but she does want help understanding how all the pieces are supposed to fit together now that she’s here.
That question matters more because her future isn’t a solo equation.
Sara is raising two children, both on the autism spectrum, and caregiving is part of every long-term calculation she makes. “Maybe you go to college, maybe you don’t,” she said. “Maybe you move out, maybe you don’t.” Retirement, for her, isn’t about drawing a clean line between work and rest; it’s about flexibility, having options, and being able to respond to whatever the next chapter requires. While Sara is confident in how she’s thinking about retirement and providing for herself and her children, many SaverLife members are not. In fact, 82% of members with children under the age of 18 say they wish they were doing more to prepare for retirement.*
A plan without a plan
Even without a clear master plan, Sara keeps herself grounded by paying attention. Once a month, she sits down and checks in on everything—not out of anxiety, but orientation. “I know where everything is,” she said. “I just don’t know how that’s all gonna fit into my larger picture.”
Life still interrupts, of course. Big, unavoidable expenses that come with being a homeowner show up. When they do, Sara handles what she can through short-term adjustments and uses the buffers she built for what can’t be postponed. Sara is not alone. We know that 82% of SaverLife members have experienced an expense shock.* But Sara doesn’t see those moments as failure. She sees them as proof that her system is doing its job.
When Sara imagines retirement, the vision is simple and telling. “Not having a set schedule,” she said. “And definitely not having to get up in the morning.” She’s not chasing extravagance. She’s working toward breathing room—time that isn’t packed edge to edge, days that don’t feel like puzzles she has to solve before she’s even had coffee.
Sara’s story isn’t about financial struggle, and it isn’t about financial freedom. It’s about what happens when you do what you’re supposed to do, arrive where you planned to arrive, and realize the next step isn’t obvious. She keeps moving forward the same way she always has: carefully, thoughtfully, and with the quiet confidence of someone who knows she’ll figure it out—because she always has.
*(Survey data were collected online by SaverLife from over 1,400 of its member panelists in June 2025. Member panelists are SaverLife members who have agreed to participate in SaverLife research and were provided a financial incentive to participate in our research and storytelling efforts.)