Roughly 56 percent of Americans between ages 18 and 29 have absolutely nothing saved for retirement, according to estimates from the Federal Reserve’s 2023 household survey. That number sounds abstract until you’re sitting across from someone living it.
I met Terrence Holloway at a block party in the Germantown neighborhood of Louisville, Kentucky, in late February. A mutual neighbor, knowing I cover economic relief and tax policy, pulled me aside and said, “You should really talk to Terrence.” He was standing near the grill, laughing loudly at something, a red plastic cup in his hand. He looked fine. He wasn’t.
A few days later, Terrence agreed to sit down with me at a diner near his apartment. He showed up early, ordered black coffee, and folded his hands on the table like a man preparing to give a deposition. He was 25 years old, engaged to his college-student fiancée Jasmine, and earning approximately $62,000 a year as a full-time FedEx delivery driver. By most measures, he was doing okay. By his own, he was barely holding together.
The Gap Between Earning and Stability
Terrence has worked for FedEx since he was 21, first as a package handler earning $16.50 an hour, then promoted to driver two years later. His current hourly rate sits around $24, with overtime pushing his annual take-home higher than most of his friends’. But the number on his paycheck, he told me, has always felt disconnected from the security it was supposed to buy.
“People assume if you make decent money you’ve got it figured out,” Terrence told me, turning his coffee cup slowly in his hands. “But I had no one teaching me anything about money. I was just surviving, and surviving looked fine from the outside.”
In 2022, when he was 21, Terrence fell behind on a car loan after a slow stretch of hours at FedEx. The vehicle — a 2018 Nissan Altima he’d financed at a 19 percent APR — was repossessed in March of that year after he missed three consecutive payments totaling about $1,470. The repossession gutted his credit score, which had been climbing toward 680. It bottomed out at 512 and has only partially recovered since.
That single event cascaded. He was denied for a personal loan in 2023 trying to consolidate some medical debt. He got approved for a secured credit card with a $300 limit at a credit union and has been rebuilding, slowly, ever since. As of this past March, his score sits at 578 — above subprime, but not by much.
When the Insurance Changed and the Cost Didn’t Make Sense Anymore
The prescription problem started in January 2026. Terrence has managed borderline hypertension since he was 23 — young, he acknowledged, but not unheard of given family history and the physical demands of his route. For two years, his blood pressure medication cost him $15 a month under FedEx’s previous insurance plan. Then the company switched carriers at the start of this year.
The new plan changed his medication’s tier classification. His out-of-pocket cost jumped to $165 a month — an increase of $1,800 annually, overnight, for the same drug he’d been taking without issue.
He skipped the prescription for six weeks before a coworker mentioned GoodRx. Through that program, he eventually found the same medication for $38 at a local pharmacy, a significant reduction though still more than double his original cost. But the two months he went without it — while quietly pretending to Jasmine that everything was fine — are the part of the story that lingers.
“I’m 25,” he said, and laughed in a way that wasn’t quite a laugh. “I shouldn’t be rationing blood pressure medicine. That’s old-man stuff. But here I am.”
The Retirement Problem Nobody Warned Him About
FedEx offers a 401(k) plan with an employer match. Terrence has never enrolled. When I asked him why, he was quiet for a moment before answering.
“When I started, I was 21 and I needed every dollar. Then the car thing happened and I needed every dollar more. Then I just… got used to needing every dollar. You stop thinking about thirty years from now when thirty days feels hard.”
According to the IRS 401(k) contribution limits, employees under 50 can contribute up to $23,500 in 2026. Terrence has contributed zero dollars in four years of eligibility. The compounding cost of that delay is significant: financial researchers estimate that every year a person in their mid-twenties delays contributing to a retirement account can cost them tens of thousands of dollars in future value by retirement age.
During our conversation, I mentioned the Saver’s Credit. Terrence had never heard of it. He pulled out his phone and started looking it up while we talked, which felt like a small turning point — the first moment in the conversation where his body language loosened a little. He didn’t qualify at his current income level, but he spent a few minutes scrolling anyway, the way people do when a door has opened even slightly.
What Terrence Is Actually Doing Now
When I followed up with Terrence in late March 2026, about five weeks after our initial conversation, a few things had shifted — none of them dramatically, but all of them meaningfully.
None of this is a triumphant resolution. The appeal may not succeed. His credit score hasn’t moved yet. The 3 percent 401(k) contribution, while a genuine start, won’t compensate for four years of lost compounding. Terrence knows this. He said something near the end of our second conversation that stayed with me.
The Bigger Picture Behind Terrence’s Story
What Terrence is navigating isn’t unusual — it just usually stays hidden. Workers in skilled trade and logistics jobs often earn wages that disqualify them from means-tested benefits while leaving them without the financial infrastructure that higher earners take for granted: professional financial guidance, employer-subsidized healthcare with stable formularies, family wealth to absorb setbacks.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s research on financial well-being has consistently found that income level alone is a poor predictor of financial stability. Access to information, early financial education, and the absence of a single destabilizing event — a repossession, a medical bill, a surprise insurance reclassification — matter enormously.
Terrence fell into a gap that doesn’t have a clean name. He earns too much for many assistance programs and too little to absorb the compounding costs of past mistakes. His story doesn’t end in crisis or triumph. It ends, for now, in motion — which is its own kind of courage.
When I left the diner the second time, Terrence was on his phone setting up automatic contributions to his 401(k) before he talked himself out of it. He looked slightly annoyed at himself for not having done it sooner. That expression, more than anything else he said, felt true.
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