"Am I saving enough?" is the question that keeps diligent savers up at night. Benchmarks cannot tell you your exact number, but they are useful guardrails: if you are wildly behind the typical targets, you know to act now while time is still on your side.
The widely used benchmarks
Fidelity's well-known guideline suggests aiming to have saved:
- By 30: 1x your annual salary
- By 40: 3x your annual salary
- By 50: 6x your annual salary
- By 60: 8x your annual salary
- By 67: 10x your annual salary
So if you earn $80,000, the targets would be roughly $80,000 saved by 30, $240,000 by 40, $480,000 by 50, and $640,000 by 60. These assume you start saving at 25, save about 15% of income (including any employer match), and retire at 67.
Other frameworks exist, T. Rowe Price and J.P. Morgan publish their own versions, and the numbers differ modestly. Do not treat any single table as gospel; treat them as a sanity check.
Why "multiple of salary" works
Basing the target on your own income, rather than a fixed dollar amount, automatically adjusts for your lifestyle. Someone earning $200,000 needs far more saved than someone earning $50,000, because retirement spending tends to track pre-retirement income. The common planning assumption is that you will need roughly 70–80% of your pre-retirement income each year in retirement, with Social Security covering part of it.
What if you are behind?
First, do not panic, and definitely do not chase risky investments to "catch up." The math of catching up is boring but effective:
- Increase your savings rate first. Going from 10% to 15% matters more than finding a fund that returns an extra 1%.
- Capture the full employer match. It is an instant 50–100% return on those dollars. Leaving match money on the table is the most expensive mistake in retirement saving.
- Use catch-up contributions. Once you hit 50, the IRS lets you contribute extra to 401(k)s and IRAs each year.
- Delay Social Security if you can. Each year you wait past full retirement age (up to 70) increases your monthly benefit meaningfully.
Someone who starts at 35 instead of 25 needs to save roughly twice the percentage of income to reach the same endpoint, which is painful but entirely doable. Starting at 45 requires closer to triple. The lesson is always the same: the best time to start was years ago, the second-best time is today.
The two numbers that matter most
Forget complex models. Two inputs drive almost everything:
- Your savings rate (what percentage of income you invest). This is the variable you control completely.
- Your start date (how many years of compounding you get). Every year of delay costs more than the last.
A 25-year-old saving 15% will almost always beat a 35-year-old saving 20%, even though the second person saves a higher share. Time in the market does the heavy lifting.
The bottom line
Check where you stand against the age benchmarks, then focus on the one lever that matters: your savings rate. Automate it, increase it 1% a year, and let compounding work. Use our retirement savings calculator to project your own trajectory, and our compound interest calculator to see what an extra few years of saving is worth.
Estimates for planning only, not financial advice.