Sixty-seven percent of Americans now say they worry more about running out of money than dying. And confidence in retirement has fallen sharply this year, with concerns over inflation, market volatility, and potential changes to Social Security and Medicare fueling a real decline in how both workers and retirees feel about their financial futures. In Q1 2026, 70% of Americans said they were concerned about how taxes would affect their retirement income, up from 66% just one quarter earlier.
This is the backdrop your ads are running against.
Retirees in 2026 are not a passive audience waiting to be sold to. They’re watching markets swing, reading headlines about national debt topping $39 trillion, and making deliberate decisions about who they trust with their money. The brands that reach them effectively this year will be the ones that understand what’s actually driving their decisions.
Retirees Are Worried, But Most Aren’t Panicking
Twenty-eight percent of retirees say they’re concerned about a stock market crash in the next six months. That’s a meaningful level of anxiety, but the behavioral data tells a more complicated story.
Twenty-nine percent are making no changes at all to their investment or retirement plans; only 10% are delaying planned retirement, and just 9% are withdrawing from accounts. And an additional 27% aren’t sure how volatility is going to affect them.
On the surface, it might look like the 2026 Retirees aren’t really doing much of anything besides biding their time and sitting in a holding pattern. Indeed, less than a tenth are taking a big action, like withdrawing money from an account. However, Resonate’s predictive consumer intelligence shows that there are key signals happening beneath the surface. The retirees are acting. They’re just doing it in a really conservative way. For instance:
- 20% are cutting non-essential spending
- 19% are shifting to lower-risk investments
- 17% are consulting a financial advisor
This data shows that there are still lots of ways to reach this group, and that last 17% further reinforces a big opportunity for financial services providers. They still want to hear from you. The takeaway: The 2026 Retirees are accessible, in spite of what looks like inactivity. They just need specific messages.
What Do Retirees Actually Value?
The actions (or seeming inactions, in this case) of retirees reflect a distinct profile of personal values that illuminates them as individuals in ways demography can’t. This richer understanding helps to personalize messages, offerings, and services that drive a cautious retiree to act with greater confidence.
This audience values three key things that marketers can utilize to reach them: authority, duty, and dependability.
These aren’t soft brand attributes. A retiree who values duty and dependability is asking whether your company will still be there for them in five years. One who values authority wants to feel in control of their financial decisions, not talked down to.
Messaging that works for this audience is assertive, honest, and concrete. It treats the reader as someone who has been around long enough to spot the difference between substance and spin. Themes of trustworthiness, following proper processes, and keeping commitments will land with the 2026 Retirees.
What Are Retirees’ Media Consumption Habits?
It’s also useful to understand what media channels matter most for reaching this audience. Thirty-three percent of the 2026 Retirees are heavily engaged with traditional TV, significantly more than any other media type. Their top television networks include:
- Science Channel
- Hallmark Movies & Mysteries
- INSP
This is not a digital-first audience and treating them like one is a budget problem. If your media plan is weighted toward social and programmatic display without a meaningful TV component, you’re likely underpenetrating this segment.
That said, this also isn’t a reason to ignore digital entirely. It’s a reason to be intentional about channel mix and to make sure your TV creative and digital creative are saying the same thing in the same voice.
How Do Retirees Choose Financial Product Companies?
Resonate data reveals the following factors matter to the 2026 Retirees when they’re evaluating financial-product companies:
- 46% care about trustworthiness
- 35% consider the financial stability of the company important
- 32% evaluate cost-effectiveness/value
- 30% want a company known for its dependability
- 29% care about safety
- 29% prioritize the reputation of the company
Ease of use (23%), whether a company and its products are high quality (21%), and whether the company has local office access for in-person visits (17%) are also important to this audience, but they’re not at the top of the list for most of these consumers.
Trust and stability are the price of entry. If your brand hasn’t established those two things first, everything else — your pricing, your product features, your UX — is harder to land. Messaging that features customer testimonials, reflects your brand’s long-term commitment to quality and service, and touches on the experience of your staff can help to reinforce these critical values.
One more data point worth sitting with: 37% don’t care whether their bank and investment accounts are at the same company, while 32% actively prefer they be together. That’s a near-even split with a slight lean toward consolidation. For institutions that offer both banking and investment products, this is a real cross-sell opportunity — particularly with a trust-forward message that makes consolidation feel like simplification, not a sales pitch.
What Marketers Need to Know About Retirees in 2026
This audience rewards consistency and credibility over cleverness. They’re not swayed by trend-forward creative or urgency-driven calls to action. They’re evaluating whether you’re the kind of company they want a long-term relationship with.
That means your brand needs to do the trust work before it does the conversion work. Your media needs to show up where this audience actually is. And your messaging needs to reflect what they value — reliability, honesty, control — not what’s easiest to say.
The retirees who are actively consulting advisors, shifting to safer investments, and cutting discretionary spending are not checking out of financial life. They’re deliberate about who earns a seat at the table. The question is: Has your brand has done enough to be in that conversation?
You can learn more about the 2026 Retirees and other crucial consumer groups in our 2026 Resonate Predictions Report. Ready to talk about your marketing strategy and how predictive consumer intelligence will help you drive growth? Schedule a consultation with a data expert today.
