So, How Much Should a 35-Year-Old Have Saved?
You may have missed it, but there was a bit of a “twitter storm” regarding retirement last week. More specifically, a relatively innocuous post about how much a 30-year-old should have saved toward retirement got a lot of 35-year-olds stirred up. The CBSMarketwatch article quoted Fidelity as saying that you should have a year’s worth of salary saved by the time you’re 30 – but the real point of controversy appears to have been driven by the premise that by the time you’re 35, you were supposed to have twice your salary saved. 1 The point, of course, is that it’s easier if you start early. But honestly, devoting 15% of your pay to retirement savings at any age is a daunting prospect, much less at a point when college debt and the prospects of a mortgage, kids and setting aside money for the kids’ college savings loom large. If this is “easy,” imagine what hard looks like! I’ve been a consistent saver over my working career – never missed an opportunity to s...