How much super is enough? What the latest balance data actually tells you
Published by Compass FP — 28 August 2026
Every year the numbers come out, and every year the same thing happens. Someone reads that the average superannuation balance for a 60-year-old is a bit over $400,000, looks at their own statement, and quietly concludes they have made a mess of it.
Usually they haven't. They have just been handed the wrong number to measure themselves against.
The average and the median are two very different things
The Association of Superannuation Funds of Australia (ASFA) released its latest update on account balances in August 2026, drawing on Australian Taxation Office data as at 30 June 2024. For Australians aged 60 to 64 — the band in which most people retire — it reports:
- Men: average balance $413,700, median balance $236,126
- Women: average balance $327,440, median balance $174,655
- All persons: average $371,379, median $203,326
The average is pulled upwards by a relatively small number of very large balances. The median is simply the middle person — half of that age group have more, half have less. The two differ by roughly $168,000, and it is the median that describes the typical Australian approaching retirement.
Almost every headline you read quotes the average. Almost every reader compares themselves to it.
The spread is wider than either number suggests
ASFA also publishes percentile figures drawn from the ATO's two per cent sample of tax returns. For the same 60 to 64 age group, they show how enormous the range is:
- A quarter of men have less than $109,810 in super. A quarter of women have less than $81,302.
- At the other end, ten per cent of men have more than $1,058,983, and ten per cent of women more than $827,775.
There is no such thing as a normal balance at 60. There is only your balance, your spending, and the gap between them.
The trajectory is genuinely improving
It would be a mistake to read the numbers as bad news. Balances for both men and women are at record levels, lifted by the Superannuation Guarantee reaching 12 per cent from 1 July 2025 and by a strong run of investment returns. ASFA's estimate is that over four in ten Australians aged 60 to 64 now retire with enough savings — counting money held outside super — to fund its Comfortable Retirement Standard, and that the proportion will keep climbing as the system matures.
The system is still young. Someone retiring today has only had compulsory super for part of their working life, and much of it at rates well below 12 per cent. That, not personal failure, explains most modest balances at retirement.
What happens after 70 is the part people miss
Roughly 1.32 million Australians aged 60 to 64 hold a super account. By ages 70 to 74 that falls to around 687,000, and only about 35 per cent of people aged 75 and over still have super at all. ASFA is clear that the fall is driven by accounts being closed as benefits are taken, not by deaths.
That is superannuation working as designed. It was built to be drawn down and spent, not preserved intact for an estate. But how you draw it down carries consequences that a balance figure will never show you.
Money held inside a retirement income stream generally has its investment earnings taxed at nil, up to the transfer balance cap. The same money sitting in a bank account or a share portfolio in your own name is taxed at your marginal rate. Both are counted under the Age Pension assets test. Which means the decision to take a lump sum — to clear the mortgage, replace the car, help an adult child — is rarely about whether you can afford it. It is about which account it comes from, in which financial year, and what it does to your pension entitlement afterwards.
A better set of questions than "am I average?"
If you are within a decade of retiring, these are more useful than any benchmark:
- What do you actually spend? Not what you think you spend. Twelve months of real numbers beats any national standard.
- Will you own your home outright? Housing status changes the required balance more than almost any other single factor, and it changes your Age Pension assets test limits too.
- What sits outside super? Balances alone ignore savings, shares, investment property and an inheritance that may already be in view.
- Where will the Age Pension fit? For most Australians it is not an either/or. A part pension alongside a super income stream is the normal outcome, not the fallback.
- What is the sequence? The order in which you stop working, start an income stream, take any lump sum and claim the pension can be worth more than another year of contributions.
The honest summary
The published balance data is a useful picture of the country. It is a poor measure of you. Two people with an identical $250,000 in super — one renting in Melbourne, one mortgage-free with a working partner — are in completely different positions, and no table can tell them apart.
If you would like to know what your own number needs to be, rather than how it compares to a national average, that is exactly the conversation we have with people every week. The first one is always free.
Superannuation balance data in this article is sourced from ASFA, An update on Superannuation Account Balances: 2026 Edition (August 2026), based on Australian Taxation Office data as at 30 June 2024. Figures were current at the date of publication and change over time.
This article contains general information only. It does not take into account your objectives, financial situation or needs. You should consider whether the information is appropriate for you and seek personal financial advice before acting on it. Compass Retirement and Aged Care Advisers Pty Ltd ATF Compass Retirement Family Trust, trading as Compass FP, Corporate Authorised Representative No. 1322023 of Millennium3 Financial Services Pty Ltd, AFSL 244252. Jason Bell, Authorised Representative No. 1008463.
