Australians’ long-term financial optimism fading: Fidelity

Yasmine Raso

Senior Journalist, Financial Newswire

23 January 2026

Australian workers have singled out retirement planning and other long-term financial prospects as the primary sources of their pessimism reported in Fidelity International’s latest Global Sentiment Survey.

And while they were feeling much more optimistic about their work, health and personal lives, Australia could not match or outpace that of its global counterparts.

This year’s edition of the annual survey, comprising 38,000 respondents across 35 markets including the US, Japan, India, China, Brazil, the UK, Saudi Arabia and Australia. It found 65 per cent of Australian workers are mostly optimistic about the next six months, compared to an average of 69 per cent globally, 86 per cent in India and 85 per cent in China.’

Australian workers reported that their top concern causing stress was the impacts of cost of living and inflationary pressures (72 per cent compared to an average of 64 per cent for the Asia Pacific region), followed by the state of the economy (60 per cent), geopolitical events (55 per cent), meeting long-term financial goals (53 per cent) and saving enough for retirement (51 per cent).

“Most people, including in Australia, feel their work, personal lives and health are in good shape but are less confident about their overall finances, and less confident still about their retirement planning,” Simon Glazier, Managing Director of Fidelity International, said.

“The research highlights that financial confidence is higher in the short-term, such as managing immediate personal finances and debt, than it is for longer term, including planning for the future and retirement planning.

“In particular, Australian workers are more likely to say they feel stressed by cost-of-living issues, and more likely to have reduced their savings levels over the past year, than the global average.

“This could be driven by factors such as fears about housing affordability, or broader concerns about the concentration of the stock market and a potential AI bubble which would affect retirement savings in superannuation.”

Retirement planning also presented as another significant concern for Australian workers when it came to labelling it as ‘very or quite good’ (43 per cent), compared to work/life balance (66 per cent), work (65 per cent), physical health (62 per cent), mental or emotional health (60 per cent), and personal and social life (60 per cent).

The research also confirmed 27 per cent of respondents expect to retire later than planned due to events in the last six months, with 41 per cent of these concerned that their retirement savings are not as much as expected. Only 30 per cent are retiring earlier because they have enough savings and can afford to.

“When it comes to retirement there is almost an equal number of Australians who feel ‘confident’ and ‘not confident’ about being financially comfortable in retirement (36 per cent vs 32 per cent),” Glazier said.

“This is despite Australia having a well-established superannuation regime that is looked up to by many other countries.

“It is clear that market volatility and uncertainty is playing a role in this. Many Australians say they haven’t changed their approach to saving/investing for retirement over the past six months (43 per cent).

“However, of those who have changed their approach, the reasons given are revealing – 18 per cent say they have put more money towards investments because they believe the stock market will do well, while 10 per cent have put more into cash because they are worried about volatility. This shows there are very mixed views about the outlook for markets.”

Australian workers were also more likely to have saved less in the past six months (28 per cent) than have saved more (23 per cent), which was mainly attributed to spending more on household expenses.

“This is by far the biggest response – the next highest is 21 per cent who are spending more on ‘extras’ such as discretionary or luxury spend,” Glazier said.

“Globally, the only other country that is spending more on household expenses, and therefore saving less, is Japan (63 per cent). Furthermore, those Australians who have saved more over the past six months say that the main reason is that they are spending less on extras (49 per cent).

“The message is that Australians are spending more on essentials, and less on luxuries, compared to their global counterparts.”