How much do you feel comfortable having in your 401k prior to retiring? My father recently retired at 50 years old (after working at IBM for his whole life) and I believe has close to 2MM in retirement. Is that the norm? That seems kind of impossible, especially at such a young age.

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Anyone in this industry today will be very lucky to accumulate $2M in retirement funds.

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Yup. He was a software engineer at IBM. Made excellent money

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Get your house paid off, save a bit, and you don’t really need that much more. As much as you like to think so, you won’t be as materialistic when you’re 60 as you are now. And you won’t be doing surfing trips to Bali in your 70s, or ayahuasca retreats in the rainforest. Or be buying a new phone every year. Lower your overhead and you automatically need way less to live off.

My exes parents had $300k and a paid off house and they’re totally fine, great even.

These insane wealth expectations are sickening, and I feel bad for anyone going through the only life they got trying to amass so much wealth that they forget to enjoy the time they have here on earth.

likesmart

Exactly! Saving for the sake of saving means missing out on a lot. My husband and I have always traveled; we have seen too many older folks who waited too long- hobbling up or down stairs or trying to visit ancient sites that don’t have options like elevators!

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Hopefully I’ll get to stop ripping mine to shreds to cover bills and debt. Right now the plan is to die at my desk

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It sounds like your uncle might’ve had a pension, not a 401k. But yeah, amass as much as humanly possible, as early as possible so the compound interest can work its magic.

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I didn’t know fishbowl had so many 1%-ers

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I’m 30 with only 23k stacked up right now. I just changed my contribution to 2% to traditional and 4% to Roth

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I’m 33 with 3k. Hopefully I can get back to work and work on that number.

Keep working and let it ride.

2 million feels like small potatoes for the rest of your life, but maybe he has other money elsewhere

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Best line I ever heard while debating over buying something at a street fair in Sydney, “they’re not makin’ pockets in coffins ya know!”

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Depends, my uncle worked until 70 with 5.3MM and he’s only retired for two months before he took another job. Some people just wanna be very comfortable.

And on the other hand, my dad worked until 61 and retired with nothing but. $2k/ mo pension and $1.5k/mo social security.

When I retired, I want at least 2 MM

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Your investment account balances need to fund your lifestyle in retirement. The finance nerd famous "Trinity study" done in the 90s showed an index 60/40 stock/bond portfolio could sustain 4% withdrawals per year and never run out of money. So at 2mm, if your father in law invested this way, could withdraw 80k per year and have almost no chance of the money running out until he dies. Inverse of this is multiply your yearly expenses by 25 to get to your total number of invested assets.

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The objective of retiring at 50 years old is unrealistic for most people. Somewhere between 65 and 70 would be more realistic, at which age £2m should buy you a comfortable but not very luxurious retirement. In the UK the average life expectancy of an IBM retiree is currently 89 years, and this will trend upwards in the coming decades.

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$2m to last you from 50 to death is not enough. Retiring at 50 is very young. He must have more money elsewhere - if not you should speak to him

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Father in law**

20MM

😳😳

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Realizing I’ll never retire

Sadly feel the same🥲

I’m a baby millennial who has been maxing out my 401k since starting in tech a couple years ago. On one hand I’m scared because I won’t have social security but on the other hand a target date of 2060 sounds fake. There’s just no way the American economy as we know it will still exist.

The recommendation is to have 1x gross salary in retirement savings at 35, 3.5-5.5x gross salary in retirement savings at 50 and 7-5-13.5x at 65. If your father in law was well paid, and he put regular $$$ into his retirement account for 25+ years, then $2m at 50 is very possible.

The magic here is capital growth. Even if he was saving $100/mo as a junior, that amount has been growing at 7% a year compounded and tax free for 25 years. The goal might feel impossible now, but time does the work for you.

Yeah, IBM was a different animal. My friends’ parents all retired early or took amazing packages. Oh, and “Cadillac“ health insurance. We in the ad game? Forget it. Half a mil and you’re lucky.

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