Why Retirement Planning Is So Hard for Nurses and How to Fix It

Written by: Nichole Coyle, CFP® CSLP®

If you’re a nurse who has been meaning to “get serious” about retirement for years but never quite gets there, you are far from alone. Nursing is one of the most demanding professions in the country, and that demand doesn’t stop when you clock out, it follows you home, into your inbox, and into the small pockets of free time you’d otherwise use to sit down and plan your financial future.

Recent survey data puts numbers behind what many nurses already feel (Center for American Nurses and WISER):

• 61% of nurses say they simply don’t have time to focus on securing their own retirement because of other, more pressing priorities.
• 59% of nurses say they don’t know where to begin.
• Just 6% of nurses say they feel knowledgeable about investing.

These aren’t small gaps. They point to a systemic problem in how the nursing profession, and the financial services industry, supports one of the hardest-working groups of professionals in the country. Let’s break down why this happens, and more importantly, what nurses can actually do about it.

Why Nurses Struggle to Plan for Retirement

1. Time is the scarcest resource in nursing

Twelve-hour shifts, rotating schedules, mandatory overtime, charting after hours, and the emotional toll of patient care leave little room for anything else, let alone comparing target-date funds or reading a 403(b) summary plan description. A joint survey by the American Nurses Association and the Women’s Institute for a Secure Retirement found that a majority of nurses cite exactly this: too many competing priorities and not enough hours in the day (American Nurse Journal). Retirement planning gets pushed to “someday,” and someday has a way of becoming “too late to fully catch up.”

2. Nursing education doesn’t include personal finance

Nursing school prepares clinicians to save lives, not to evaluate an expense ratio, understand a pension multiplier, or decide between a Roth and a traditional 403(b). Financial literacy simply isn’t part of the curriculum, which helps explain why so few nurses report feeling confident as investors. It’s not a knowledge problem unique to nurses; it’s a gap in how most Americans are educated about money. But for a workforce this large and this essential, the cost of that gap adds up fast.

3. Retirement benefits are more complicated than they look

Many nurses have access to a 403(b), a 401(k), a 457(b), a public pension, or depending on their employer, some combination of these. Layer in questions about vesting schedules, employer match formulas, and whether to supplement with an IRA, and it’s easy to see why 59% of nurses say they don’t know where to start. According to recent Fidelity research, most nurses do participate in workplace retirement plans, but the median account balance still lags well behind what’s needed for a secure retirement. This is even among nurses who are actively contributing to their workplace plans (401(k) Specialist). Participation isn’t the same as preparedness.

4. Caregiving doesn’t stop at work

Nurses are disproportionately likely to be the ones managing care for aging parents, raising children, or supporting a spouse on top of a physically and emotionally demanding job. That caregiving instinct, which makes nurses exceptional at their profession, often means their own financial well-being quietly moves to the bottom of the list.

How to Fix It: A Practical Path Forward for Nurses

The good news is that none of these barriers are permanent, and none of them require nurses to become financial experts overnight. Here’s where to start:

1. Get a clear picture of what you actually have. Before you can build a plan, you need to know what you’re working with: your 403(b) or 401(k) balance, any pension eligibility, Social Security estimates, and any outside savings. This alone resolves a huge part of the “I don’t know where to begin” problem.

2. Really understand your employer’s retirement plan. Many hospital systems and healthcare employers offer a match, and leaving that match unclaimed is one of the most common and avoidable retirement planning mistakes. Take 30 minutes to read your plan’s summary, or better yet, have a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional walk you through it.

3. Automate what you can. Given how little uninterrupted time nurses have, automation is one of the most powerful tools available. Automatic contributions, automatic annual increases, and automatic rebalancing all remove the need to find “free time” you don’t have.

4. Work with someone who understands the nursing schedule and the nursing benefits landscape. This is where a financial planner who specializes in working with medical professionals can make a real difference. Nurse-specific retirement questions such as: pension buyback decisions, 403(b) vs. 457(b) sequencing, shift-differential income planning, or coordinating benefits across multiple healthcare employers can benefit from guidance that already understands the terrain, rather than a generic, one-size-fits-all approach.

5. Start before you feel “ready.” Confidence tends to follow action, not the other way around. You don’t need to feel like an investing expert to take the first step, you need a plan that fits your schedule and your goals, built with someone who can translate the jargon into plain English.

The Bottom Line

Nurses give an extraordinary amount to their patients, their families, and their communities. The same intentionality that shows up in patient care deserves to show up in your own financial future. However, given the realities of the job, most nurses need a partner to make that happen, not just a stack of brochures from HR.

If you’re a nurse who has been putting off retirement planning because you don’t have the time or don’t know where to start, that’s exactly the gap this practice aims to close. Reach out to schedule a conversation designed specifically around the realities of a nursing career.

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Sources: Center for American Nurses and WISER; American Nurse Journal / ANA-WISER survey; 401(k) Specialist Magazine, citing Fidelity’s 2025 Nurses Financial Wellness and Retirement Readiness Study; Nurse.org, Retirement Planning for Nurses