How much should you have saved for retirement by age?
Rough milestones by age, and why the amount matters less than when you start.
Estimate the nest egg you will have at retirement, and the income it could provide.
There is no single right amount to have saved for retirement, because it depends on the life you want and the age you plan to stop working. But rough milestones by age are still useful, because they turn a distant, fuzzy goal into a number you can check yourself against today.
How much should you have saved by age?
The best-known set of milestones comes from Fidelity, which expresses savings as a multiple of your yearly salary. It is not a promise, just a yardstick, and it assumes you retire around 67 and want to keep roughly 80% of your pre-retirement income (see Fidelity's retirement guidelines):
- By age 30: about 1x your salary saved.
- By age 40: about 3x.
- By age 50: about 6x.
- By age 60: about 8x.
- By age 67: roughly 10x your final salary.
So someone earning 50,000 might aim for around 50,000 saved by 30, 150,000 by 40, 300,000 by 50, and about 500,000 by 67. If those numbers feel high, that is normal, and most people do not hit every one of them. They are goalposts, not pass marks, and the next section explains the habit that actually gets you there.
How much of your income should you save?
The milestones are the destination; the savings rate is how you travel. The common guideline, again from Fidelity, is to put away about 15% of your pre-tax income each year, including any employer match, across your working life. If 15% is out of reach today, that is fine: start where you can and raise the percentage a little each time your pay goes up. Someone on 50,000 saving 15% is setting aside 7,500 a year, or 625 a month, which is the kind of figure that turns the salary multiples above from intimidating into achievable over a career.
If you have a workplace match, capture all of it before anything else. A 50% match on your contributions is an instant, guaranteed return that no ordinary investment matches, and leaving it on the table is the most expensive mistake in retirement saving.
Why starting early beats saving more
The single biggest factor in retirement saving is not how much you put away, it is how long that money has to grow. This is compound interest doing the heavy lifting: returns earn their own returns, and given enough years the growth dwarfs the original contributions.
Consider two savers. Ana puts away 200 a month from age 25 to 35, then stops and never adds another cent. Ben waits until 35, then saves 200 a month all the way to 65. Ana contributed for ten years, Ben for thirty. Yet at a typical long-term return, Ana often ends up with a similar pot or more, purely because her money had an extra decade to compound. Time in the market did what Ben's larger total contributions could not.
The lesson is blunt: the best time to start was years ago, and the second best time is now. Our guide on simple versus compound interest shows exactly why this happens.
Is it too late to start at 40 or 50?
No, but the maths gets less forgiving, so the response has to be bigger. A later start means a higher savings rate to catch up, often 20% or more of income rather than 15%, plus the two levers you fully control: working a couple of years longer, and cutting the income you will need in retirement by clearing debt before you stop. Catch-up contributions, which many retirement accounts allow from age 50, exist precisely for this. The worst move at 40 or 50 is to decide the window has closed and save nothing; twenty years is still plenty of time for compounding to matter.
What about a pension?
The salary multiples assume your own savings do most of the work. If you also have a defined-benefit or state pension, it effectively replaces part of that target, so you may need a smaller personal pot to reach the same retirement income. The honest way to handle this is to estimate your expected pension income first, subtract it from the income you want, and size your savings goal around the gap that is left. Because pension rules vary enormously by country and employer, treat the multiples as a starting yardstick and adjust for what your pension actually provides.
How to check if you are on track
Milestones tell you where you should be. To see where you are actually heading, you need to project your current savings and monthly contributions forward to your retirement age, using a sensible growth rate. That is what a retirement calculator does. Put in your age, what you have saved, what you add each month, and a modest expected return, and it shows the pot you are on course for.
If the projection falls short, you have three levers: save a little more each month, work a little longer, or aim for a slightly higher return by reviewing where the money sits. Small increases early are far more powerful than large ones late, thanks again to compounding.
The bottom line
Use the salary multiples as a quick gut check, aim for a 15% savings rate as the habit that reaches them, then run your real numbers through a retirement calculator to see your actual path. Above all, start now and let time do the work. This is general information rather than financial advice, since your own pension, taxes and goals decide the right number for you, but the calendar is a bigger ally than your paycheck.
Project any balance decades forward with the future value calculator to see how compounding does the heavy lifting.
Frequently asked questions
How much should I have saved for retirement by 30?
A common yardstick is about one times your annual salary by 30, so around 50,000 if you earn 50,000. It is only a guide, and building the 15% savings habit early matters far more than hitting the figure exactly, because early savings have the most time to compound.
How much should I have saved by 40 and 50?
The Fidelity milestones suggest about 3x your salary by 40 and 6x by 50, so roughly 150,000 and 300,000 on a 50,000 income. Treat them as goalposts, not pass marks, and use a retirement calculator to see your own path.
What percentage of income should I save for retirement?
A widely used guideline is about 15% of pre-tax income a year, including any employer match. If that is too much now, start lower and raise it whenever your pay rises, and always capture a workplace match in full first.
Is it too late to start saving at 40?
No. Later starts need higher monthly contributions to catch up, often 20% or more of income, but compounding still works in your favour over 20 plus years. The worst choice is to wait longer. Run your numbers through a retirement calculator to see what gets you on track.
What return should I assume?
A modest long-term figure is more honest than an optimistic one. Many people use a conservative real return for planning and treat anything higher as a bonus. Always sanity-check with a lower rate too, so a good decade does not become your only plan.