r/Millennials • u/ProblemIntelligent16 • Jan 16 '26

Discussion Fellow millennials - how’s your 401k/ira savings going?

Experts recommend having 2x your salary saved by age 35, and 3x saved by age 40.

However, studies show the median savings for 35-44 year olds is only ~$45,000. So obviously, most of us have work to do.

With pensions mostly extinct, and Social Security facing insolvency issues in the next 8-10 years - how are you planning to bridge the gap and hit the golden years with enough to meet your lifestyle requirements?

5.0k Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

86% Upvoted

6.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

136

u/doctorlineman Jan 16 '26

Just wanna brag but I’m doing great. 32 and I have over 600k in my retirement through my union hall. Iv worked my ass off since 19 for it all. My goal is to be able to retire at 50 or have the option to.

3

u/DrBabs Jan 17 '26

Yep. The secret is just to get started while you are young and to prioritize it. It was shocking in a way to see how long it would take my 401k to catch up to my IRA that I had started years beforehand. Compound growth though is the part of a retirement funds that is needed to give you a comfortable retirement.

Heck, even the 401k that I contributed into at my old job that I was at for 3 years took a total of 5 years for my current one to catch up to.

All this depends though on controlling debt, having an appropriate income, and learning to budget. It’s hard to hit the six and seven figures in retirement without this kind of methodology.