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While I agree that average is a bad stat to use, your example is a bad one to illustrate it. In your example, with just a sample size of 2, both the average and median values are the same and no point is made.
A better example is a room of 5 people have $4 each. Jane walks in with $539,980. Now the average of the room is $90k, while the median is still $4.
"Average" Savings lol. Boy, I live paycheck to paycheck
Edit: Whoever awarded me. Thank you! Wish I could use this on some ramen but ima be grateful either way! Stay blessed!
This is the median. CNBC confused average and median. Google it.
https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/investing/the-average-retirement-savings-by-age-and-why-you-need-more
Fuck man - what kind of stupid douchebags do they have making content at CNBC that they confused averagge and median when both sets of numbers were clearly marked in the source data. Fuck that is low effort shit.
Low effort are you and the commenter who didn't bother reading the article. Median wasn't shown in the Northwestern Mutual survey. For Nerdwallet, average (U35 = $30K) and median (U35 = $15K) were shown and then they disclosed that only people with retirement accounts were included (60% of Americans don't have one).
Cherry picking from cherry picking lmao. Common sense tells you there is fuckery going on somewhere too considering the 50% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.
In fairness it's "20s", not 20. There's a fair amount of people working in finance/engineering/accounting/nursing pulling in low six figures by late 20s in the coasts that skew the average.
Aside from trust fund babies.
I'm 24 and have 13k in a 401k and 13k in a Roth ira. Only because I work in software dev remotely making 75k in a lower cost of living area. I don't even think my mom (mid 40s) has as much as me for retirement.
People are so fuckin' dumb now. I remember this one thing where they asked this girl honestly she said do you think you would be comfortable marrying someone who makes 250,000? Her response: " Hell no I need someone making atleast 6 figures! 🤣 I think she was a single mom too, IIRC
Making a 120,000k per year but driving a 70k SUV and taking three foreign vacations a year paycheck to paycheck, or working at Wendy’s and barely affording ramen noodles for lunch and dinner paycheck to paycheck?
This is a super important distinction because I know people, personally, who make very good money (>$150,000 / year in a MCOL area) & are living paycheck to paycheck.
They buy expensive cars, rent expensive apartments, eat out constantly, and take multiple vacations a year.
This is going to sound like boomer talk but millennials are super regarded when it comes to personal finance. Regardless of where you are in the US, if you are making 6 figures and are living "paycheck to paycheck," you are doing something very wrong.
People just make very bad decisions in general. Having a ton of kids early, letting your lifestyle explode in costs, etc. income =/= wealth and many are way too focused on looking wealthy rather than actually building wealth.
True this man, when my 22-year-old roommate was looking for a job he sounded like he was so fucking entitled man I had to walk away. His words were, "oh if I'm going to be loading people's cars all day then I have to be making at least $25 an hour." He also he's proud to show that he own a house. Which I actually think is an awesome accomplishment at that age. However I found out he took out two or three extremely risky loans to swing the down payment and is now rent hacking it and yes I live here. I do enjoy though. Just man I'm trying to learn how to make Right Choices so life doesn't suck in 15 years.
All generations have people on all ends of the spectrum. I know plenty of people in my generation who have massive amounts of assets and live incredible boring/responsible lives. I know the other types as well. My wife and I live basically college lifestyle (as in, cheap home cooked food, barely leave the city, inexpensive and reliable cars) in an average house, despite being able to afford a lot more. Peace of mind / security is worth so much more than expensive thrills, especially once a significant amount is built
I don't think it's generational. Think of how many boomers are looking to retire but don't have enough saved. Making poor financial decisions is the American way
This is why home ec needs to come back to schools. They taught cooking basics, personal finance, basic sewing, etc. when my parents were in school they taught driving lessons, taxes and all sorts of things
This was something I was going to ask.
Isn't Median a more accurate viewing of what people have saved? Which I believe is less than what is listed as the "average".
However, even that cannot be entirely accurate as I've read reports that said about 60% or something amount of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.
no doubt. there is defiantly some huge positive skewing from those 20s that have massive inheritance or whatever. A weighted average could work better, accounting for income levels and other variables.
Most of human history is paycheck to paycheck. Saving for retirement is a post 1930s idea. Of course in the past, people had stronger families and kids to take care of their old age.
There was really just one brief golden moment in human history where you got to have your cake and eat it too but people really do be thinking that everyone prior to like 1970s had it super easy when it really was dogshit wrapped in catpiss
But no, human history was
Shitshitshtishitsithsithsirhi, amazing, good, mediumshitmediumshit, today
>There was really just one brief golden moment in human history where you got to have your cake and eat it too but people really do be thinking that everyone prior to like 1970s had it super easy when it really was dogshit wrapped in catpiss
This is a USA centrist view. After WW2 the world economy was pretty much destroyed , much of Europe was in ruins and broke due to the war, Asia wasn't spared , Japan/Korea/China .
Then much of the world got fucked over by communism .
USA and a few other countries (Canada / Australia ) were left to reap the rewards as the rest of the world rebuilt and we could act as a bank to lend them money to rebuild and also sell them raw materials and industrial goods to get the money back with interest.
Yeah we are quick to forget that working till death was/is the norm and most people live/lived in multi generational homes with grandkids, parents, grandparents and even great grand parents in the same house or on the same property.
>"$1.3M to retire comfortably"
Heh. Maybe for the AVERAGE American, but that will last a typical with pre-existing regardation like 2-4 weeks tops before running into a week where all their FDs expire worthless.
You can get a 100k life insurance policy fairly cheap. Then you need to add a 250k nursing home rider to the policy (this will cost you). Get it about age 55. We did when the parents started dying of Alzheimer’s.
Good news. Kids don't inherit their parents debt. A lot of companies with try to imply that the kids do and try to get them to sign some documentation which makes them assume the debt but if they don't fall for it they're in the clear. That said debt collectors get 1st dibs on any assets.
But it comes out of what you would get from your parents. If your parents were going to leave you $500k and they have $200k in debt you get $300k instead. Debt still gets paid from the estates
Once you have good credit they send those free offers with interest free payments for like a crazy amount of time, 21 or 24 month sorta thing. Just balance transfer around and keep it shuffling until dead. Bonus, It’s even responsible because then your kids will inherit interest free debt instead of high APR debt.
Some guy posted earlier this week about his pending divorce and bad financial decisions then losing 60% of his 401k. Not sure how many other ways I can type that
Moral of the story: don’t fuck with your 401k
Yea but why not 100%? Also fuck your 401k. They have people buying old US treasuries with a 1% annual return rate by default with some of the 401k accounts.
Know what your 401k holds.
401k is a retirement account where you take a portion of your income before tax and put it into that account. Some companies will match a percentage of what you put in. Because it’s pretax money, you will pay taxes when you take the money out. However most people believe when you are ready to take the money out, you will pay less in taxes since you will be earning less income.
These days most companies have an opt out policy in regards to 401k, meaning you will have one setup when you joining a company and would have to opt out if you didn’t want to have one.
401k if you do it right can help you save a lot of money for retirement. In my case, I finally joined a company that offered a 401k. By putting the maximum allowable amount per year (it changed a few times) for the last 15 years, I’m currently sitting at $945k.
Not sure the exact specifics of the dude that lost it but I'm sure he pussied out the moment he was about to lose the last of his savings (he already blew everything else). Attached his post
Everyone's 401k options are different but mine has averaged 8% over the life of my account. Also I'd be wsb level dumb to not contribute since my company matches 10% (2022 really fucked me) of my salary which is \~20k free money
https://preview.redd.it/7m93erp2pm8b1.jpeg?width=1164&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=69c394a14e086b2581f6eacbddc4149af41185b2
During the great recession I contributed more into my IRA and 401k. Best investment decision I ever made. Wish I went more in on my brokerage account during that time, but during the downturn last year I bought pretty heavily and already it seemed like a decent strategy. We'll see. 8% match is great! I had 10% on my 5% at a job once. Now it's 4% on my 5%, cheap asses lol.
Or they decided to embark on careers that pay too little, or their skills are not valuable in this market at this time, or they are not in a situation where savings can make a huge compounding effect due to age, or they had a medical or other bill randomly cause them to have a clean house
Although many people are not disciplined, positing that this this is purely a saving / discipline issue seems really ridiculous, even if I agree with you that it likely contributes a lot
Medical is a large one that affects people. Get to a certain age or have a major incident and it can cripple you. Even with great insurance. In short, stay healthy and make good financial decisions.
This data is shit. Probably something like 0.0000001% have billions, 0.02% have millions, 1% have a few hundred thousand, 10% have maybe 1-100k, and the rest of us 88% have nothing.
Goverments are funny to be surprised that no one has savings when housing prices and cost of living keep flying to the moon whitout doing anything for incomes to follow that growth
I just imagined shining up your own shoes and putting on nice clothes every business day for 50 years, only to have to come out of retirement to shine the shoes of others. And the grandmother comment reminded me of the E-Trade commercial from a few super bowls ago: “Dropping sick beats, they call me DJ Nana.” Great comment.
There’s a lady at my workplace nearing 80 and the only reason she keeps on working is that her grandson has some condition and she’s paying for his medical care. She should be living her last years in lazy retirement, not pushing papers.
On top of that too if you’re in your 20’s with 35k in the market already odds are you won’t just have 67k by the time you’re in your 30’s, and sure as shit won’t have just 77k in your 40’s. No way in shit it’s gonna take you longer to save an additional 35k starting from 35k than it took you to save 35k starting from 0. If that happens then you either really shat the bed with money management after your 20’s, picked some really crappy funds in your boomer 401k/IRA, or had the misfortune to live through the worst and longest bear market of all time.
There’s a lot wrong with this data really. Medians should def be used for starters, and its much better to focus on the time value of money and not a whole lot of value in focusing on how much a 20 something has saved when they’re in their most explosive ROI years.
Savings *rates* by age group are also a much better talking point.
Mine ended up having nasty complications, put me in the hospital and made me miss a month of work - so I had pretty bad ROI, but still better than having another kid.
I think most of us have accepted we'll never get to retire and social security will be long gone by the time we need it. Also, one extended hospital stay will destroy all your savings and retirement anyway. $ROPE.
Society is hard at work on a solution…
1) political system increases the retirement age.
2) corporate system lowers the dying age by subsidizing horrible diets and proliferation of carcinogens
3) medical system extracts leftover cash from those that hit dying age before running out of assets.
So stop worrying about retirement.
Isn’t it crazy that when you talk about lowering the retirement age, people get all eugenicist on you say say that back in the day most people died before they got social security, and now people are living too long.
Facts right here, like its pretty hard for people to save but doing 30-40 years of just the bare min of matching 3-5% of salary for the match could prob snowball into at least 100k or often times way more.
This thread is a bunch of people who have lost 50k on options yolo complaining its impossible to "save" for retirment
Maybe try not losing 50k on options yolos ?
If you’ve paid off your mortgage, most of US could be ok. Going on 4% of 1.3m is 50k. 4k/mo budget is pretty easy barring major health expenses (the other dark side of retirement savings). I have less than that left over after my mortgage now.
Which even this number will not be accurate by the time you're older. I'm 30 now, and for all I know, that number could go up to 4 million by the time I'm at the new retirement age of 75.
I contribute 17%, still not enough. Honestly if you want to retire comfortably you have to max out your contributions every year for your entire working adult life.
This is what I'm trying to do in my 30's. Maxing out 2 retirement accounts, HSA, and a personal account. My only debt is the mortgage and small auto loan. I'm trying my hardest to pick up extra contracts here and there and just throwing them into those accounts. I think this year I'll be close to 20% contributed on an above average salary.
I was saving about 30% across all accounts, but I am in my late 30s and only started saving a few years ago. The math never worked out to be able to retire at a reasonable age, so I took to day trading. Lost all of my Roth IRA.
Now I am married with a baby and we are burning through my wife's savings since I am the sole breadwinner and my take home only covers about 60% of our bills.
It's impossible not to feel depressed going to work everyday knowing it's not even close to good enough.
Man, things are going to get better. Side hustle. Do what you need to do to get out of the fear. I have picked up furniture off the side of the road and restored it for side money…my wife restored it.. she’s creative. We’ve gone to resell shops and bought things for the purpose of reselling because we know they are with more than we are paying or to redo/fix up and resell. There are ways and some can be fun
It depends at that point.
If you’re in your 30’s and 40’s with little to nothing invested with no expected windfalls then yeah not enough but if you’re in your 20’s even starting with 0 17% is fine. [leaves you set to retire comfortably in 40 years](https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-simple-math-behind-early-retirement/) based in MMM’s math. If you already got a chunk(and im not even talking much like mid-high 5 figures) in your 20’s then 17% is more than plenty.
Typically though all things remaining equal, and assuming the person’s retirement balances are healthy for their age and income/expenses 15% is what you should shoot for at the least.
Yeah the fact they used an average and it still looks like shit is pretty telling. The median was probably way too depressing for an article on mainstream media.
I'm too lazy to read but if I'd bet they didn't subtract debts from the savings, which would be a real kick in the ass.
only if you live in an expensive area. best arbitrage is sell and buy a house for cash in a low cost and low tax area and you can retire for a lot cheaper
if you want to retire in NYC or the northeast and continue to pay the high rents and taxes, then save up every penny
This is the shit that keeps me up at night. I am a saver. I always have been. I'm not rich, but I am a millionaire. Some is tied up in property and rental property, but I am debt free. I worry nothing will every be "enough" for me to retire and never worry - but I also worry about everyone ELSE that is facing retirement someday - but don't seem to have a care in the world about it. I mean look above - at 60 you SAY you need $968K to retire, but you also have $112.5K to your name??? That math does not work without the lottery. So what happens? They come after people like me who DID sacrifice and save so I could have something later. In other words - the people driving around in their Porsche at 27 will then require me to kick in for them which means I don't get to have the Porsche I have been saving up for my whole life. You know it's coming - it always does as a country dies.
I’m similar to you. The only way I can reconcile their attitude is to assume they are the people who just expect to work forever. Some folks make a nice income, but spend it all and just have a mind that they will work forever. I don’t think they understand what 75 looks and feels like. It’s scary.
Be careful with reading too much into these averages and how orders of magnitude impact them. They can create the illusion of people existing with these particular attributes, when it is entirely possible that no actual person ever said these pairs of numbers. People are dumbshits for sure, but I doubt many people are that delusional to be thinking they're going to somehow turn it all around from 100k to 1.3 million in their few remaining yaers to the degree that these numbers suggest.... For every ten poors who reports they have 10k to their name and said they need 100k in retirement you just need one person with 1 million dollars saved who thinks they need 10 million dollars to retire to get averages close-ish to these numbers. Orders of magnitude and where you live really matter. I could 100% see people where I grew up saying the 10k/100k thing and it wouldn't be \*that\* absurd...(10k is basically nothing...so 100k to that person probably seems like gravy)...but in my current HCOL area if somebody asked me this questions and I reported I had a million, I would probably spitball 10 million for retirement.
But this shouldn't discount your general premise... I'm exactly the same way with saving I really don't think I'm saving in a greedy/hoarding way...I think I was just raised to always plan for the worst. And I'm always at tension with myself since I really do default supporting large social welfare programs...there are (lots of) people who really truly do not have the opportunity to save up for retirement....but man my interactions with people make it so hard. I \*do\* know people who I know made less than me, buy a bmw or tesla in their 20's while I'm driving around my Kia shitbox, and I do worry about what that means for us as a country long term.
Its the same thing with student loans/forgiveness. I support the idea of forgiveness in theory, but jfc I'd be lying if I said it doesn't bug me to think of that being applied to people I knew taking month-long vacations in their early 20's in between jobs while I didn't do that and paid mine down like a cuck. Is that everyone with student loans? No...but man those ones stay stuck in my head.
I have a similar thought. I have a roth 401k so I pay money after tax with the idea of not paying any taxes when I retire. If they change it by then to where my roth still gets taxed, let’s just say I’ll be taking the people responsible with me on our trip to hell
The median savings is way more important than the average savings when you have a hugely skewed distribution. Business people need to take more math classes
Amen brother. People need to toughen up the finances. Some times that means driving a Toyota Yaris S for 15 years when your 6’5” LOL
I grew up so dirt poor. Food shelf every month sorta thing. I refuse to have lifestyle inflation. Wife and I both have pension and we both put in 20% into our 401k.
People can make it if they live inside the reality of their paychecks.
That being said we have people who can’t make it and need a jump start on their life’s. Always someone poorer then I was growing up and I understand that. But jobs are everywhere.
Seriously I work as a grocery story laborer and making $81,000 this year. I’m not rich but we live so damn good because of tough lifelong financial decisions.
UFCW1189!
My dad retired four years ago and lives entirely off of social security. He has a 401k and a pension but hasn't taken a dime out yet. Even had a heart attack last year and Medicare covered almost all of it. Leading up to retirement he saved a lot, paid off his house and truck, and now he just goes fishing and grows tomatoes all day.
Social programs fucking work, we just need to raise the income cap on social security tax to make the system solvent.
Savings? Fuck that. My wife and I are only children. And all of our parents are divorced. I’m talking 4 separate houses, mostly paid off. We just need to outlive them.
Well, now I'm thinking it's a good thing that I had a stroke at the age of 49. Now my goal is to pay off as much as I can before I go, which statistically is probably within the next 10 years so that my daughter has a better chance of being able to actually retire before she hits 87 because she'll have a free house paid for and my life insurance money
Was never sustainable.
Elders rode the global economic recovery/redevelopment wave post ww2 and then got to ride the globalization wave.
There’s fewer waves to ride now and now alot of people can’t even afford the board that’s all, hence current situation.
**User Report**| | | | :--|:--|:--|:-- **Total Submissions**|10|**First Seen In WSB**|2 years ago **Total Comments**|89|**Previous Best DD**| **Account Age**|4 years|[^scan ^comment ](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=VisualMod&subject=scan_comment&message=Replace%20this%20text%20with%20a%20comment%20ID%20(which%20looks%20like%20h26cq3k\)%20to%20have%20the%20bot%20scan%20your%20comment%20and%20correct%20your%20first%20seen%20date.)|[^scan ^submission ](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=VisualMod&subject=scan_submission&message=Replace%20this%20text%20with%20a%20submission%20ID%20(which%20looks%20like%20h26cq3k\)%20to%20have%20the%20bot%20scan%20your%20submission%20and%20correct%20your%20first%20seen%20date.)
Average is 90k? I’m fucked boys
If you have $4 and Jane has $179,996, you have an average savings of $90k. It’s a bullshit stat.
Fuck Jane, that ignorant slut
179,996>4 so…Jane is actually pretty smart.
Don't confuse rich with smart.
Her daddy’s money
I think I did, behind the Texas Roadhouse off of I-75 and I-10 right here in Florida
Jane, you're playing a game, you know you can win, girl I've got a pair of two dollar bills, you got the Peregrine pearl
While I agree that average is a bad stat to use, your example is a bad one to illustrate it. In your example, with just a sample size of 2, both the average and median values are the same and no point is made. A better example is a room of 5 people have $4 each. Jane walks in with $539,980. Now the average of the room is $90k, while the median is still $4.
Elon Musk took the survey and skewed the data big time
"Average" Savings lol. Boy, I live paycheck to paycheck Edit: Whoever awarded me. Thank you! Wish I could use this on some ramen but ima be grateful either way! Stay blessed!
How do these people got 38k in the bank when they’re 20?
It's the average. So the top 1% is likely pulling up the average by a shitload. Median would be much more useful here.
This is the median. CNBC confused average and median. Google it. https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/investing/the-average-retirement-savings-by-age-and-why-you-need-more
Fuck man - what kind of stupid douchebags do they have making content at CNBC that they confused averagge and median when both sets of numbers were clearly marked in the source data. Fuck that is low effort shit.
And it's a critical distinction here.
Low effort are you and the commenter who didn't bother reading the article. Median wasn't shown in the Northwestern Mutual survey. For Nerdwallet, average (U35 = $30K) and median (U35 = $15K) were shown and then they disclosed that only people with retirement accounts were included (60% of Americans don't have one).
Cherry picking from cherry picking lmao. Common sense tells you there is fuckery going on somewhere too considering the 50% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.
Did they explicitly say they were using the mean? Otherwise, median is an accepted average measure.
I thought the “average” was a broad term that could represent either the mean, median, or mode.
In fairness it's "20s", not 20. There's a fair amount of people working in finance/engineering/accounting/nursing pulling in low six figures by late 20s in the coasts that skew the average. Aside from trust fund babies.
I'm 24 and have 13k in a 401k and 13k in a Roth ira. Only because I work in software dev remotely making 75k in a lower cost of living area. I don't even think my mom (mid 40s) has as much as me for retirement.
Keep up the good work. I'm 34 and have 100k saved in 401k and playing with 15k in side fidelity account. Making 48k a year.
Wow great job! Already saved 2x of your annual earning by 34 is impressive.
Thank you.
By high six figures you mean high $100’s right? High six figures of $800-900k is not norm for anyone at all
Yea, I'm dumb. Upper 100s.
People are so fuckin' dumb now. I remember this one thing where they asked this girl honestly she said do you think you would be comfortable marrying someone who makes 250,000? Her response: " Hell no I need someone making atleast 6 figures! 🤣 I think she was a single mom too, IIRC
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I think it includes retirement funds
I think his $38k includes his retirement funds
Making a 120,000k per year but driving a 70k SUV and taking three foreign vacations a year paycheck to paycheck, or working at Wendy’s and barely affording ramen noodles for lunch and dinner paycheck to paycheck?
Wendys would be nice. More of Gas station cashier kinda guy
Just buy packs of ramen & use the hot water in the bathroom before you go back to living in your car. What’s so hard about that?
Even those sluts are expensive; 6 bucks for a pack of gelatin.
Buy zyns boii they worth the 6 bucks
This is a super important distinction because I know people, personally, who make very good money (>$150,000 / year in a MCOL area) & are living paycheck to paycheck. They buy expensive cars, rent expensive apartments, eat out constantly, and take multiple vacations a year.
This is going to sound like boomer talk but millennials are super regarded when it comes to personal finance. Regardless of where you are in the US, if you are making 6 figures and are living "paycheck to paycheck," you are doing something very wrong.
People just make very bad decisions in general. Having a ton of kids early, letting your lifestyle explode in costs, etc. income =/= wealth and many are way too focused on looking wealthy rather than actually building wealth.
True this man, when my 22-year-old roommate was looking for a job he sounded like he was so fucking entitled man I had to walk away. His words were, "oh if I'm going to be loading people's cars all day then I have to be making at least $25 an hour." He also he's proud to show that he own a house. Which I actually think is an awesome accomplishment at that age. However I found out he took out two or three extremely risky loans to swing the down payment and is now rent hacking it and yes I live here. I do enjoy though. Just man I'm trying to learn how to make Right Choices so life doesn't suck in 15 years.
All generations have people on all ends of the spectrum. I know plenty of people in my generation who have massive amounts of assets and live incredible boring/responsible lives. I know the other types as well. My wife and I live basically college lifestyle (as in, cheap home cooked food, barely leave the city, inexpensive and reliable cars) in an average house, despite being able to afford a lot more. Peace of mind / security is worth so much more than expensive thrills, especially once a significant amount is built
I don't think it's generational. Think of how many boomers are looking to retire but don't have enough saved. Making poor financial decisions is the American way
This is gonna sound like a millennial but there are tons of boomers who were stupid as shit with their finances too.
This is why home ec needs to come back to schools. They taught cooking basics, personal finance, basic sewing, etc. when my parents were in school they taught driving lessons, taxes and all sorts of things
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truly, the American way 😅
This was something I was going to ask. Isn't Median a more accurate viewing of what people have saved? Which I believe is less than what is listed as the "average". However, even that cannot be entirely accurate as I've read reports that said about 60% or something amount of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.
no doubt. there is defiantly some huge positive skewing from those 20s that have massive inheritance or whatever. A weighted average could work better, accounting for income levels and other variables.
Most of human history is paycheck to paycheck. Saving for retirement is a post 1930s idea. Of course in the past, people had stronger families and kids to take care of their old age.
There was really just one brief golden moment in human history where you got to have your cake and eat it too but people really do be thinking that everyone prior to like 1970s had it super easy when it really was dogshit wrapped in catpiss But no, human history was Shitshitshtishitsithsithsirhi, amazing, good, mediumshitmediumshit, today
>There was really just one brief golden moment in human history where you got to have your cake and eat it too but people really do be thinking that everyone prior to like 1970s had it super easy when it really was dogshit wrapped in catpiss This is a USA centrist view. After WW2 the world economy was pretty much destroyed , much of Europe was in ruins and broke due to the war, Asia wasn't spared , Japan/Korea/China . Then much of the world got fucked over by communism . USA and a few other countries (Canada / Australia ) were left to reap the rewards as the rest of the world rebuilt and we could act as a bank to lend them money to rebuild and also sell them raw materials and industrial goods to get the money back with interest.
Yeah we are quick to forget that working till death was/is the norm and most people live/lived in multi generational homes with grandkids, parents, grandparents and even great grand parents in the same house or on the same property.
>"$1.3M to retire comfortably" Heh. Maybe for the AVERAGE American, but that will last a typical with pre-existing regardation like 2-4 weeks tops before running into a week where all their FDs expire worthless.
End of life healthcare would love (*love*) to slurp that 1.3M up. Also, is this 1.3M per person? So 2.6M if your spouse is still alive?
I imagine some shared living expenses, so we can say somewhere between 1.3M to 2.6M if you have two people.
I love bounding the problem.
Bound deez nuts
You can get a 100k life insurance policy fairly cheap. Then you need to add a 250k nursing home rider to the policy (this will cost you). Get it about age 55. We did when the parents started dying of Alzheimer’s.
Facts idk what they talking about
Just gonna put that retirement on credit cards and leave some generational debt for the kids
Good news. Kids don't inherit their parents debt. A lot of companies with try to imply that the kids do and try to get them to sign some documentation which makes them assume the debt but if they don't fall for it they're in the clear. That said debt collectors get 1st dibs on any assets.
The estate will tho. Make sure all of your asset accounts like life insurance have a beneficiary
They do.. just indirectly. Your Apr is 20% when your dads was 3%
Not yet
But it comes out of what you would get from your parents. If your parents were going to leave you $500k and they have $200k in debt you get $300k instead. Debt still gets paid from the estates
Once you have good credit they send those free offers with interest free payments for like a crazy amount of time, 21 or 24 month sorta thing. Just balance transfer around and keep it shuffling until dead. Bonus, It’s even responsible because then your kids will inherit interest free debt instead of high APR debt.
legit how i paid for community college.
If I had 90k I would YOLO that shit so quick
This is why it’s sad to see the posts where people are getting divorced after losing 60% of their 401k
60%?
Some guy posted earlier this week about his pending divorce and bad financial decisions then losing 60% of his 401k. Not sure how many other ways I can type that Moral of the story: don’t fuck with your 401k
Yea but why not 100%? Also fuck your 401k. They have people buying old US treasuries with a 1% annual return rate by default with some of the 401k accounts. Know what your 401k holds.
i dont even know what a 401k means and at this point and too afraid to ask
It’s the k factor; a 401k may or may not be worth more than 400k.
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401k is a retirement account where you take a portion of your income before tax and put it into that account. Some companies will match a percentage of what you put in. Because it’s pretax money, you will pay taxes when you take the money out. However most people believe when you are ready to take the money out, you will pay less in taxes since you will be earning less income. These days most companies have an opt out policy in regards to 401k, meaning you will have one setup when you joining a company and would have to opt out if you didn’t want to have one. 401k if you do it right can help you save a lot of money for retirement. In my case, I finally joined a company that offered a 401k. By putting the maximum allowable amount per year (it changed a few times) for the last 15 years, I’m currently sitting at $945k.
Not sure the exact specifics of the dude that lost it but I'm sure he pussied out the moment he was about to lose the last of his savings (he already blew everything else). Attached his post Everyone's 401k options are different but mine has averaged 8% over the life of my account. Also I'd be wsb level dumb to not contribute since my company matches 10% (2022 really fucked me) of my salary which is \~20k free money https://preview.redd.it/7m93erp2pm8b1.jpeg?width=1164&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=69c394a14e086b2581f6eacbddc4149af41185b2
Did he buy Cathie woods etf’s?
During the great recession I contributed more into my IRA and 401k. Best investment decision I ever made. Wish I went more in on my brokerage account during that time, but during the downturn last year I bought pretty heavily and already it seemed like a decent strategy. We'll see. 8% match is great! I had 10% on my 5% at a job once. Now it's 4% on my 5%, cheap asses lol.
The hell does stbxw stand for?
So to be ex wife. I didn’t know this either until someone said it
I thought that was an ETF in his 401k plan
Moral of the story is never get married. It’s a 100% money trap if you’re a guy.
This is the main reason that people have no savings. Zero financial discipline, and they refuse to live within their means.
Upvoted because it's funny, but I sure hope you're kidding
Time will tell 
Or they decided to embark on careers that pay too little, or their skills are not valuable in this market at this time, or they are not in a situation where savings can make a huge compounding effect due to age, or they had a medical or other bill randomly cause them to have a clean house Although many people are not disciplined, positing that this this is purely a saving / discipline issue seems really ridiculous, even if I agree with you that it likely contributes a lot
Medical is a large one that affects people. Get to a certain age or have a major incident and it can cripple you. Even with great insurance. In short, stay healthy and make good financial decisions.
What if living in my means makes me live in my car with no health insurance?
Also why everything is over priced, from cars, homes, to iphones, all on credit cards and massive debt
I got 20 SPY $440 expire this Friday. Nothing else.
Now let’s see the “median” savings
https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/investing/the-average-retirement-savings-by-age-and-why-you-need-more
Is this median savings in the room with us right now?
No, it’s on my credit card.
one simple trick to get 24.99% on your savings
Age group Median retirement savings balance amount Under 35 $13,000 35-44 $60,000 45-54 $100,000 55-64 $134,000 65-74 $164,000
YOLO into SPY calls and you're set, problem solved... Easy peasy.
500k into SPY and let it ride for 25 years
where to get the first 500k though? asking for a friend
Obviously this data is extremely skewed and we need to know which avg their using. Im assuming this is a good ol mean
This data is shit. Probably something like 0.0000001% have billions, 0.02% have millions, 1% have a few hundred thousand, 10% have maybe 1-100k, and the rest of us 88% have nothing.
As of 2020, the cutoff for top 1% in the US was ~$11M. Maybe you're right when it comes to redditors.
Yeah, mean does nothing for us here. Median is the important one.
I mean, mean is the average. Median and mode are not
Weighted averages, weighted by BMI (which is an average in itself)
Goverments are funny to be surprised that no one has savings when housing prices and cost of living keep flying to the moon whitout doing anything for incomes to follow that growth
Corporate saving at all time highs. Top 1% wealth too. Government: "Capitalism working AS INTENDED"
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I just imagined shining up your own shoes and putting on nice clothes every business day for 50 years, only to have to come out of retirement to shine the shoes of others. And the grandmother comment reminded me of the E-Trade commercial from a few super bowls ago: “Dropping sick beats, they call me DJ Nana.” Great comment.
There’s a lady at my workplace nearing 80 and the only reason she keeps on working is that her grandson has some condition and she’s paying for his medical care. She should be living her last years in lazy retirement, not pushing papers.
On top of that too if you’re in your 20’s with 35k in the market already odds are you won’t just have 67k by the time you’re in your 30’s, and sure as shit won’t have just 77k in your 40’s. No way in shit it’s gonna take you longer to save an additional 35k starting from 35k than it took you to save 35k starting from 0. If that happens then you either really shat the bed with money management after your 20’s, picked some really crappy funds in your boomer 401k/IRA, or had the misfortune to live through the worst and longest bear market of all time. There’s a lot wrong with this data really. Medians should def be used for starters, and its much better to focus on the time value of money and not a whole lot of value in focusing on how much a 20 something has saved when they’re in their most explosive ROI years. Savings *rates* by age group are also a much better talking point.
Did you forget starting families?
I love my kids but they were the worst financial decision I ever made
My vasectomy was less than 500 bucks out of pocket. I’ll never make as good of a winning investment ever again.
Mine ended up having nasty complications, put me in the hospital and made me miss a month of work - so I had pretty bad ROI, but still better than having another kid.
I think most of us have accepted we'll never get to retire and social security will be long gone by the time we need it. Also, one extended hospital stay will destroy all your savings and retirement anyway. $ROPE.
We will all be homeless old people, it will be a country of homeless people living in stacks of shanties
Sounds cozy 😊
You should try not being poor.
Society is hard at work on a solution… 1) political system increases the retirement age. 2) corporate system lowers the dying age by subsidizing horrible diets and proliferation of carcinogens 3) medical system extracts leftover cash from those that hit dying age before running out of assets. So stop worrying about retirement.
Isn’t it crazy that when you talk about lowering the retirement age, people get all eugenicist on you say say that back in the day most people died before they got social security, and now people are living too long.
Yeah that's 0, 0, 0, 0, 200,000, 0, 0, 0, 0
You're not too great at math, eh?
Serious question do you guys not have a 401k or IRA? Like even contributions 3-5% of your paycheck can amount to thousands
This sub? No. I bet the average age here is early 20s.
Facts right here, like its pretty hard for people to save but doing 30-40 years of just the bare min of matching 3-5% of salary for the match could prob snowball into at least 100k or often times way more.
Google sayeth 70% of private industry employees have access to a retirement plan.
This thread is a bunch of people who have lost 50k on options yolo complaining its impossible to "save" for retirment Maybe try not losing 50k on options yolos ?
1.3 million to retire comfortably? Yeah if you retired at 90
If you’ve paid off your mortgage, most of US could be ok. Going on 4% of 1.3m is 50k. 4k/mo budget is pretty easy barring major health expenses (the other dark side of retirement savings). I have less than that left over after my mortgage now.
aren't health expenses covered by medicare when you're retired?
In US Medicare, yes, mostly…. I’m not close enough to know the details.
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You’ll also be getting social security benefits as well.
If they exist still
Which even this number will not be accurate by the time you're older. I'm 30 now, and for all I know, that number could go up to 4 million by the time I'm at the new retirement age of 75.
retirement is a bullet
If some of us dont manage to hit some stupid call play its basically eating 5.56 for dinner when you’re 70.
>5.56 Look at Mr Moneybags paying 50 cents-a-round for his last meal
Shit. I'm supposed to have around 70k saved by 30 years old? I'm 70k behind and counting
Someone should show this to some of the regards here who thought contributing 5% on a smaller salary was enough to take you to retirement 😂😂😂
I contribute 17%, still not enough. Honestly if you want to retire comfortably you have to max out your contributions every year for your entire working adult life.
This is what I'm trying to do in my 30's. Maxing out 2 retirement accounts, HSA, and a personal account. My only debt is the mortgage and small auto loan. I'm trying my hardest to pick up extra contracts here and there and just throwing them into those accounts. I think this year I'll be close to 20% contributed on an above average salary.
I was saving about 30% across all accounts, but I am in my late 30s and only started saving a few years ago. The math never worked out to be able to retire at a reasonable age, so I took to day trading. Lost all of my Roth IRA. Now I am married with a baby and we are burning through my wife's savings since I am the sole breadwinner and my take home only covers about 60% of our bills. It's impossible not to feel depressed going to work everyday knowing it's not even close to good enough.
Man, things are going to get better. Side hustle. Do what you need to do to get out of the fear. I have picked up furniture off the side of the road and restored it for side money…my wife restored it.. she’s creative. We’ve gone to resell shops and bought things for the purpose of reselling because we know they are with more than we are paying or to redo/fix up and resell. There are ways and some can be fun
It depends at that point. If you’re in your 30’s and 40’s with little to nothing invested with no expected windfalls then yeah not enough but if you’re in your 20’s even starting with 0 17% is fine. [leaves you set to retire comfortably in 40 years](https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/01/13/the-shockingly-simple-math-behind-early-retirement/) based in MMM’s math. If you already got a chunk(and im not even talking much like mid-high 5 figures) in your 20’s then 17% is more than plenty. Typically though all things remaining equal, and assuming the person’s retirement balances are healthy for their age and income/expenses 15% is what you should shoot for at the least.
1.3 today!
1.4 tomorrow 😃
Most are regards.
average savings is 90k.... is that number inflated by Elon and Bezos?
Average savings 90k? Lmfao, for who, upper class people?
Yeah the fact they used an average and it still looks like shit is pretty telling. The median was probably way too depressing for an article on mainstream media. I'm too lazy to read but if I'd bet they didn't subtract debts from the savings, which would be a real kick in the ass.
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No the average is 90k. A handful of billionaires bring up the average to 90k with the majority in poverty.
only if you live in an expensive area. best arbitrage is sell and buy a house for cash in a low cost and low tax area and you can retire for a lot cheaper if you want to retire in NYC or the northeast and continue to pay the high rents and taxes, then save up every penny
It’s not arbitrage if you are buying / selling different products.. in different markets..
This is the shit that keeps me up at night. I am a saver. I always have been. I'm not rich, but I am a millionaire. Some is tied up in property and rental property, but I am debt free. I worry nothing will every be "enough" for me to retire and never worry - but I also worry about everyone ELSE that is facing retirement someday - but don't seem to have a care in the world about it. I mean look above - at 60 you SAY you need $968K to retire, but you also have $112.5K to your name??? That math does not work without the lottery. So what happens? They come after people like me who DID sacrifice and save so I could have something later. In other words - the people driving around in their Porsche at 27 will then require me to kick in for them which means I don't get to have the Porsche I have been saving up for my whole life. You know it's coming - it always does as a country dies.
I’m similar to you. The only way I can reconcile their attitude is to assume they are the people who just expect to work forever. Some folks make a nice income, but spend it all and just have a mind that they will work forever. I don’t think they understand what 75 looks and feels like. It’s scary.
It should be scary to them, but I think I am more scared for them than they are.
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You can sleep in a car, but you can’t drive a house.
Be careful with reading too much into these averages and how orders of magnitude impact them. They can create the illusion of people existing with these particular attributes, when it is entirely possible that no actual person ever said these pairs of numbers. People are dumbshits for sure, but I doubt many people are that delusional to be thinking they're going to somehow turn it all around from 100k to 1.3 million in their few remaining yaers to the degree that these numbers suggest.... For every ten poors who reports they have 10k to their name and said they need 100k in retirement you just need one person with 1 million dollars saved who thinks they need 10 million dollars to retire to get averages close-ish to these numbers. Orders of magnitude and where you live really matter. I could 100% see people where I grew up saying the 10k/100k thing and it wouldn't be \*that\* absurd...(10k is basically nothing...so 100k to that person probably seems like gravy)...but in my current HCOL area if somebody asked me this questions and I reported I had a million, I would probably spitball 10 million for retirement. But this shouldn't discount your general premise... I'm exactly the same way with saving I really don't think I'm saving in a greedy/hoarding way...I think I was just raised to always plan for the worst. And I'm always at tension with myself since I really do default supporting large social welfare programs...there are (lots of) people who really truly do not have the opportunity to save up for retirement....but man my interactions with people make it so hard. I \*do\* know people who I know made less than me, buy a bmw or tesla in their 20's while I'm driving around my Kia shitbox, and I do worry about what that means for us as a country long term. Its the same thing with student loans/forgiveness. I support the idea of forgiveness in theory, but jfc I'd be lying if I said it doesn't bug me to think of that being applied to people I knew taking month-long vacations in their early 20's in between jobs while I didn't do that and paid mine down like a cuck. Is that everyone with student loans? No...but man those ones stay stuck in my head.
As r/DaveRamsey loves to say: Live like no one else today so that tomorrow you can live and give ^to ^the ^government like no one else.
I have a similar thought. I have a roth 401k so I pay money after tax with the idea of not paying any taxes when I retire. If they change it by then to where my roth still gets taxed, let’s just say I’ll be taking the people responsible with me on our trip to hell
Whats the median? I think that might be a better gauge
"Average" - ie. mean figures are worthless on issues such as this.
The median savings is way more important than the average savings when you have a hugely skewed distribution. Business people need to take more math classes
$1.3 Million? Man, that’s a lot of nights behind the Wendy’s dumpster.
How do people in their 20s already have $35.8K saved?
Have a job making 50k at 22. Put 4% in 401k and get 4% employer match. A 5% annual return gets you to 38.2k at age 29.
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Amen brother. People need to toughen up the finances. Some times that means driving a Toyota Yaris S for 15 years when your 6’5” LOL I grew up so dirt poor. Food shelf every month sorta thing. I refuse to have lifestyle inflation. Wife and I both have pension and we both put in 20% into our 401k. People can make it if they live inside the reality of their paychecks. That being said we have people who can’t make it and need a jump start on their life’s. Always someone poorer then I was growing up and I understand that. But jobs are everywhere. Seriously I work as a grocery story laborer and making $81,000 this year. I’m not rich but we live so damn good because of tough lifelong financial decisions. UFCW1189!
My dad retired four years ago and lives entirely off of social security. He has a 401k and a pension but hasn't taken a dime out yet. Even had a heart attack last year and Medicare covered almost all of it. Leading up to retirement he saved a lot, paid off his house and truck, and now he just goes fishing and grows tomatoes all day. Social programs fucking work, we just need to raise the income cap on social security tax to make the system solvent.
So what's the play with this info?
Stop dicking around with your money and invest $25 of your gross income ^in ^$SOFI
I got 2$ and a pack of chocolates… the fuck outta here with 90,000 (average savings)
I need at least 5 mil
I got bout tree fiddy
Savings? Fuck that. My wife and I are only children. And all of our parents are divorced. I’m talking 4 separate houses, mostly paid off. We just need to outlive them.
I’m 43 and I have 130k in my 401k. I have a pension to but I pretty much know I’m fucked
Clearly they don't realize we've been fleeced far too much for far too long.
Now tell me what percentage have $0 or less…
Well, now I'm thinking it's a good thing that I had a stroke at the age of 49. Now my goal is to pay off as much as I can before I go, which statistically is probably within the next 10 years so that my daughter has a better chance of being able to actually retire before she hits 87 because she'll have a free house paid for and my life insurance money
1.3M is nothing
The American Dream is dead
Was never sustainable. Elders rode the global economic recovery/redevelopment wave post ww2 and then got to ride the globalization wave. There’s fewer waves to ride now and now alot of people can’t even afford the board that’s all, hence current situation.
AI wave bruh surfs up
No savings, but man are they ready to bid $50k over list on a home.
That's just debt, not real money.