The Nest Egg Retirement Sentiment Survey found that retired Australians who are confident in their wealth were more likely to have invested some money outside of their superannuation, rather than simply saving.

Of the respondents who said they’d accumulated enough wealth for a comfortable lifestyle in retirement, 38.24 per cent had invested their extra money, compared with just 8.82 per cent of respondents who exclusively saved, with the remaining 52.94 per cent relying on a combination of savings and additional investment.

These figures were notably different for those retirees who did not believe they’d accumulated enough wealth for a comfortable lifestyle, of whom only 16.67 per cent invested their extra capital, with 33.33 per cent instead saving their money, and 50 per cent splitting their extra money between investments and savings.

Retirees who made frequent additional contributions were also more likely to have enough wealth for a comfortable lifestyle, the survey found, with 71.43 per cent of confident retirees having made regular additional contributions.

Half of those retirees who were not confident in their wealth were more likely to have made only occasional additional contributions, with only 41.67 per cent having made regular ones.

In both groups, less than 15 per cent of respondents made no additional contributions at all.