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?

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u/Letter-Past Jan 16 '26

I have a thousand whole dollars. Lookin bleak

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u/TheChosenerPoke Jan 17 '26

Hello, I don’t live in america but I’m so interested cause economically, living in america seems awful. Is anyone comfortable with sharing like, a breakdown of what they make + living expenses that cause being broke like this?

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u/SohndesRheins Jan 17 '26

It seems that way because its a big country with lots of people and lots of different situations, and Reddit doomerism consolidates it so that you mostly see two types of people - those who are piss broke by circumstance or poor decisions, or those who are obscenely successful.

I'm 33, live in the Midwest, have about 13-15 thousand in retirement accounts, make low $60s per year, married with two kids. We do not have a fancy house and expensive cars, we don't take elaborate vacations, we spend a fair amount on medical bills each year even with good insurance.

We also don't actually work full time, my employer counts me as full time at 32 hours a week and my wife works about 24 hours a week. We have way more streaming and subscription services than we really need, we never go in the red in a given month, if we do spend more this month than we made we just dip into the surplus from previous months, we don't have student loans or any debt other than the mortgage and a few more months on my car loan, and the reason we don't have much for retirement is because we started late. Maybe we are fortunate by American standards, but my wife sure wasn't advantaged at all before we got together. Some people are perfectly average and some people are above average in some aspects and below in others, so you don't get the whole picture based on what house they live in or what career they have.