Only 1 in 10 South Africans are on track to retire well. The other 9 made the same mistake.

Only 1 in 10 South Africans who pay into a retirement fund are on track to retire on 75% of their final salary. That is the finding of Member Insights 2026, a report released by fund administrator Alexforbes on 14 October 2026, built from 1.1 million member records across more than 310 funds and 2,300 employers.

Most people blame low pay for a shortfall like that. The bigger problem is a birthday.

The average South African who belongs to a retirement fund saves 11.2% of salary every month. Actuaries say you need to save 15% of salary, every month, for 40 years, to replace 75% of your final pay cheque. The average South African saves R75 for every R100 the maths says is needed.

That gap alone would leave most people short. It is not the whole story.

Why does quitting early cost more than saving less?

The 15%-for-40-years target assumes you work until 65. Alexforbes found the typical member actually stops working years earlier.

The report's own numbers show how much that one choice costs. Someone who retires at 60 can expect a pension worth 45% of their final salary. Wait five more years, to 65, and that climbs to 68%. No extra saving. Same salary. Just a longer career.

Those five extra years do two jobs at once. More money goes in every month, and the money already saved gets longer to grow. That combination moves the needle more than most people expect.

Photo: Kevin Schneider / Wikimedia Commons, CC0

What is a replacement ratio?

A replacement ratio is how much of your last salary your pension replaces each month once you stop working. Earn R20,000 a month before retiring, and get R9,200 a month from your pension, and your replacement ratio is 46%, which happens to be the current national average.

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Seventy-five percent is the line actuaries call comfortable. Below that, people usually cut spending, lean on family, or depend more on the state than they planned.

How much do you need to retire comfortably in South Africa?

Save 15% of your salary every month for 40 years, and the numbers land on a 75% replacement ratio by age 65. That target sits behind most retirement calculators and fund statements in the country.

Hardly anyone hits all three parts of it. The average saver manages 11.2%, not 15%. Careers also rarely run 40 clean years, because of job changes, gaps between jobs, and stretches with no fund at all.

What the shortfall actually costs you each month

Here is what that gap is worth in rand, for three common salaries.

Figures are each monthly salary multiplied by two published national averages: A 46% replacement ratio for the typical saver on 11.2% of salary, against the 75% target reached by saving 15% of salary for 40 years (Alexforbes Member Insights 2026, 14 October 2026). These are national averages for illustration, not a forecast for any one person's fund.

A person earning R40,000 a month stands to lose more than R11,000 a month in retirement income compared with someone who hits the target. The percentages are the same for every salary. The rand amount at stake just gets bigger as pay goes up.

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Stretch that R7,250 monthly gap for the R25,000 earner over a 20-year retirement, and it adds up to more than R1.7 million in lost pension income over a lifetime. That is the real size of the number sitting inside a single percentage point.

How are two-pot withdrawals shrinking pensions before retirement?

Since September 2024, South Africans have been allowed to withdraw a slice of their retirement savings once a year under the two-pot system. Alexforbes alone has paid out about R17 billion to its own members under that rule.

Every rand withdrawn now is a rand that stops compounding for the next 10, 20 or 30 years. For someone already short of the 15% savings target, an early two-pot withdrawal pulls the real retirement date further from 65, not closer to it. The rule allows one withdrawal a year, and nothing stops a member from using it every year it is open.

Photo: Artistosteles / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Money pressure is also part of why people stop working early in the first place. Rising bills, like Eskom's latest tariff increase, leave less room to save each month, and older South Africans have become a growing target for banking scams that drain savings fast.

Why is the old age grant the real floor for so many people?

For a large number of pensioners, the state grant is not a top-up. It is the whole plan. SASSA's Older Person's Grant pays R2,400 a month to people aged 60 to 74, and R2,420 a month from age 75, as of October 2026.

About 3.8 million of South Africa's 5.2 million people aged 60 and over, 73%, receive a state grant. That system runs on a shrinking group of taxpayers. A small share of South Africans already carries most of the income tax bill, and grant increases have to be balanced against everything else the budget funds.

The one number you actually control

Nobody can undo ten years of saving 11% instead of 15% overnight. The retirement date is different. It is a decision, not a debt.

The Alexforbes numbers make that plain. Stretch a career from 60 to 65, and the replacement ratio jumps from 45% to 68%, without saving a single extra rand. The 1 in 10 who are on track did not necessarily earn more than everyone else. Many of them just kept working, and saving, for five years longer than the person at the next desk.

Nobody plans their retirement date around a spreadsheet. Health, job security and family needs all get a vote. But of all the numbers in this report, the retirement date is the only one still sitting in most people's own hands.