Guest Contributor: Christopher Ceder, Senior Retirement Strategist, Goldman Sachs Asset Management

Background:

A core challenge for plan sponsors and advisors isn't just helping employees save — it's engaging the savers who are hard to reach. A small group is highly proactive; but most struggle to stay engaged, use available tools, or build momentum. The standard response has been more education and financial literacy. We argue that’s incomplete: outcomes are also shaped by the behavioral capacity to persist, learn, and adapt.

Findings:

Building on Retirement Mindset Matters and academic research on grit, the firm partnered with behavioral research firm Escalent to develop the concept of  Financial Grit: the willingness to maintain a growth mindset and persevere toward long-term goals despite pressures or setbacks. Four dimensions underpin it — financial optimism and resilience, financial perseverance, focus on long-term saving, and a growth mindset toward planning. Respondents self-assessed how they behaved during a recent financial hardship; factor and cluster analysis produced three segments.

Utilizing data from our annual survey of over 5,000 working and retired individuals, and controlling for age and income, segmentation revealed a strong relationship between Financial Grit and retirement success— extending beyond literacy and savings behavior into confidence, optimism, and self-efficacy. High Grit savers hold 74% more retirement savings relative to income than Low Grit savers — and the least-supported group is the one going it alone most often.

Bottom Line:

Retirement success tracks behavior at least as much as income or literacy — and Financial Grit is learnable, strengthened through education, reflection, reinforcement, and adjustment.

Implications — one size does not fit all:

• Low Grit — Simplified guidance, "set it and forget it" automation, motivational cues, and active encouragement toward external support.
• Mid-Level — Open to advice but settles for "good enough." Build confidence and educate on accepting manageable risk.
• High Grit — The readiness benchmark. Reinforce existing habits and future orientation.

Reframing retirement as a dynamic journey — persist, learn, adapt, repeat — gives sponsors a human-centered lever beyond markets and contribution rates. Read the full report here.

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Insights shared by guest contributors are their own and do not represent the views of DCIIA or the RRC. The opinions voiced in this material are for general information only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual.

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General Disclosures  
THESE MATERIALS ARE PROVIDED SOLELY ON THE BASIS THAT THEY WILL NOT CONSTITUTE INVESTMENT ADVICE AND WILL NOT FORM A PRIMARY BASIS FOR ANY PERSON'S OR PLAN'S INVESTMENT DECISIONS, AND GOLDMAN SACHS IS NOT A FIDUCIARY WITH RESPECT TO ANY PERSON OR PLAN BY REASON OF PROVIDING THE MATERIAL OR CONTENT HEREIN. PLAN FIDUCIARIES SHOULD CONSIDER THEIR OWN CIRCUMSTANCES IN ASSESSING ANY POTENTIAL INVESTMENT COURSE OF ACTION.

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Sources:
1 Retirement Mindset Matters, Goldman Sachs Asset Management, 2023
2 Duckworth, A. L., Peterson, C., Matthews, M. D., & Kelly, D. R. (2007). Grit: Perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(6), 1087–1101. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.92.6.1087