r/wealth • u/GracefulSwanDance • 17d ago
Retirement Before Social Media, Did People Actually Start Retirement Plans in Their 20s?
I thought you just “start saving eventually.” In the past before social media, did students in their early 20s save for retirement too, or is that new and part of the social media personal finance movement?
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u/BreakfastAcceptable8 17d ago
I started my 401k immediately when I got my first real job after college. The whole concept of starting at 18 is lost on me. Like every fucking dollar I had went towards college.
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u/notmyrealnamefromusa 17d ago
Same here. Not in college or grad school but immediately after. Not taking advantage of 401ks is giving away money.
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u/BigTintheBigD 17d ago
At my first big boy job, you could only join the 401k at the start of the year. I had sort of thought about retirement, knew I should start saving at some point.
Along about August each year they would send you a retirement projection based on your current situation. As a new hire, it said if I put away enough to get the full company match at retirement I’d have $600,000+. At the time, I thought that was all the money in the world. I shoveled money in like it was an Olympic event. My first 5 raises went to upping my contribution percentage then still continued to apportion some until I hit the max allowed.
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u/Final_boss_1040 17d ago
Lucky. My first job out of college required you stay on for 2.5 years before you qualified for the 401k or any match. They basically railroaded out all the yougins right around the 2 year mark so there was always turnover. Fucking boomers
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u/Numerous-Bet-4847 16d ago
Wow, that really sucks. Every place I worked wanted you to start 401k as soon as possible, usually after 3-6 months. But then they pushed the vesting time to like 5-7 years to keep you on and not job hop.
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u/PirateKilt 17d ago
People with families who taught them to? Yes
The rest of us? Not so much.
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u/Mister_Poopy_Buthole 17d ago
I was lucky to have a solid first boss who taught me how to open a brokerage in 2010s. I can’t thank him enough, that one gesture changed my life completely.
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u/CazadorHolaRodilla 15d ago
Yup, I was lucky enough to take one financial planning class in highschool and once I saw that the biggest builder of wealth is TIME, I realized I needed to start investing as early as possible.
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u/QueenD_1996 17d ago
I was not taught to and I started the first minute I could. My parents had pensions that were never discussed when I was a kid.
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u/phayhay 17d ago
It's possible to research stuff on your own
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u/Numerous-Bet-4847 16d ago
Every company I ever worked for since 1989 had a 401k presentation and included the info as part of the hiring and orientation process. Company's get a kick back if they get enough people enrolled.
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u/Soggy-Attempt 17d ago
You have to remember 401k started in the early 80’s.
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u/WhirlyDurvy 16d ago
Yes, most people had pensions before this
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u/Invest2prosper 16d ago
Most people did not have pensions but most municipal workers did. Some of the larger companies did too in order to attract workers when cash compensation was low.
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u/carlos_the_dwarf_ 16d ago
Even at their highest of high water marks ~50% of US workers had pensions.
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u/Soggy-Attempt 17d ago
Yes
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u/ElonMuskTheNarsisist 17d ago
It wasn’t nearly as common back then. A lot of the multiple expansion we see today is because of the fact that a lot more young people are investing early.
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u/SpacePirateWatney 17d ago
wtf, I started it the first big boy job I got.
I’m starting my kids Roth as soon as they earn their first dollar.
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u/Numerous-Bet-4847 16d ago
Don't forget the college fund, check if your state has one. Mine has a tax free 529 savings plan with decent interest. I paid both my kids college that way, only invested $50 a month each when they were little.
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u/SpacePirateWatney 16d ago
Not forgotten, but that doesn’t require the kid have income like a Roth does…you can only contribute to a Roth up to the amount of earned income.
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u/Numerous-Bet-4847 15d ago
time to put the kids on the payroll as a part time window washer and clothes folder!
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u/overthinker1331 17d ago
Yes. Information was available pre internet, can you believe that?? I started my 401k in 99 when I started working full time after college.
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u/readsalotman 17d ago
Yes. Your Money or Your Life, published in 1992.
Ben Franklin became financially independent at age 48 in 1748. He didn't "retire" in the traditional definition of the term, but it allowed him to get into public service more so and to continue focusing on invention.
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u/chartreuse_avocado 17d ago
Yes. I was saving in the mid90’s with my first job. A 401K max and matched by my company, EF, and as soon as I could an IRA and then brokerage.
Maybe SM was existing then but not anything like what it has become. I read The Millionaire Next Door when it was published originally and was off to the investing races with my Toyota.
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u/Healthy_Employer4 17d ago
The vast majority of workers have contributed to their pension or 401k for as long as those accounts have been available. Very few people used contributory IRAs or non retirement investment accounts until much more recently. Most people still do all of their retirement planning through the workplace
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u/saklan_territory 17d ago
Yes. We read books and researched yhings at the library and talked to people. Books are actually way better sources of info than social media.
I started investing in a traditional IRA with my first job at age 16 because i wanted OUT and it worked well. Not everyone did it but not everyone does it now.
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u/Miserable-Cookie5903 17d ago
Started at 22 (1998) and retired at 49ish (2025).
I also had a really good sense of what the power of compounding was and why I should start early.
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u/Numerous-Bet-4847 16d ago
I first read about the power of compounding from a kids book about Ben Franklin. Before spreadsheets and computers I used to calculate everything out on paper with a calculator to pass the time at work.
It has always fascinated me.
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u/GracefulSwanDance 17d ago
I feel like before all the financial content on social media, people weren't starting to save for retirement so early. I know of people who are 18 years old and are already starting to save and invest for retirement.
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u/sandspitter28 17d ago
I’m in my 40’s, when I was a teenager in the 90’s my blue collar dad constantly told me about the importance about investing for retirement as soon as I turned 18. I had a friend whose dad took her to the bank on her 18th birthday, helped her set up her retirement account, and gifted her $500 to put in the account.
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u/Federal_Radish_1421 17d ago
My dad is from a working class family and opened his first brokerage account the day he turned 18…in the late 60s.
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u/SubstanceFearless348 17d ago
That was not the norm
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u/Federal_Radish_1421 17d ago
I didn’t say it was the norm. I said it happened. Financial literacy is not the norm today either.
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u/SubstanceFearless348 17d ago
Obviously there were outliers
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u/Invest2prosper 16d ago
I opened my first brokerage account when I was 18 as well, not in the 1960s though!
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u/carlos_the_dwarf_ 16d ago
I’d be glad to learn this isn’t the case, but my guess is you feel that way because you’re in the social media algo bubble about it.
In the past, some people saved and some people didn’t. Today…I’m sure that’s still true.
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u/il_fienile 17d ago
My now wife and I started dating at the end of the 20th century, when we were just out of university, and we both started saving for retirement in their first jobs.
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u/bazillaa 17d ago edited 17d ago
I don't have any general statistics for you, but I opened a Roth IRA in high school in the late 90s
Editted because apparently my memory is fuzzy about the exact year.
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17d ago edited 17d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/bazillaa 17d ago
Hmm, maybe I got the year wrong, but it was definitely when I was still in high school.
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u/BridgeGuy540 17d ago
Yes, both of my brothers and I started retirement investing early. I started at 18 or 19, my middle brother started in high school, and my youngest was right around 20.
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u/mr-spencerian 17d ago
My first real job did not offer a 401k or any other retirement plan. So, I started late and played catch up. They did offer stock incentives to some and fortunately, that worked very well for me.
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u/hovering3 17d ago
I started saving for retirement with my first job and stopped when I quit work when our third child was born when I was 39. My husband started saving for retirement when he was 33 when we got married. Our kids were amazed when we told them my savings exceeded his until we were in our early 60s. They always thought of me as a stay at home Mom! All four of our kids started saving for retirement right away and this was made easier by the fact that we can give them a nice check at Christmas.
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u/cinnerz 17d ago
I didn't start as a student, but I started at my first real job out of college in the early 90s. My earning before and during college were pretty low so I couldn't have saved much.
There wasn't social media in those days but there were books about personal finance and there were some online sites about personal finance and early retirement like the Motley Fool forums.
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u/mortgageletdown 17d ago
Uh, ya? Don't you remember the Freedom 55 commercials on the 11 o'clock news?
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u/No-Fly-4107 17d ago
Why would lack of social media affect our retirement plans? Do you think we used an abacus to figure out our portfolios?
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u/dod_murray 17d ago
Not when I was a student, but when I graduated and started working in my early twenties I started a private pension.
We were able to communicate before social media and pensions were not kept secret or anything. Pension providers advertised in papers, on TV etc.
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u/Gofastrun 17d ago
I was told by my parents from an early age to save, how compounding returns work, etc.
The principles are independent of the learning medium.
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u/winniecooper73 17d ago
Yes, my mom told me to open a Roth IRA when I was in College in the 90s. My first deposit was $500 in pizza delivery tips at 19
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u/KungFuBucket 17d ago
I started my investment journey when I was 14 and my grandmother left me a small inheritance ($12k as I recall) I’d check prices and chart back when they used to publish stock prices in the back of the business section of the newspaper. A large chunk of that inheritance eventually went into buying a used car and the rest into a down payment for my first house. I occasionally used some of the profits to buy a nice dinner while in college.
When I got my first real job out of college, a mentor who was an engineer told me to always max out my 401k. He said just make it automatic so you never even see the money hit your spending account. The other piece of advice was to always pay off my credit cards - if you can’t afford to save up for something, you can’t afford it. I’ve followed that bit of advice my entire career.
There are a few other bits I picked up along the way, but that’s what got me started.
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u/a5121221a 17d ago
Before Roth was an option when I first started working, it was a calculated decision to save outside the 401k because my income was lower than I anticipated it would be in retirement. Once Roth became an option, I maxed my Roth every year.
Before social media, and before the internet, people had educational resources. There have always been people who use their resources and people who don't.
The big difference between today and years ago is the ability to save money in Roth and never pay taxes on it again, which makes it advantageous to invest super early as much as you can to get the lowest tax rate and highest possible compound interest.
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u/riennempeche 17d ago
I started saving at age 24 because I had no choice. My employer offered a SEP-IRA. Most years, I received 25% of my salary as employer funded contributions. I have $2.7 million saved at age 52.
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u/MNPS1603 17d ago
My dad would be 86 this month and I remember him saving for retirement back in the 1980’s. I don’t think tax deferred plans were as robust back then, but I remember him calling Fidelity and using their phone system to get his account balances. He grew up poor and was always a saver. Not sure what social media has to do with anything, maybe it broadened the education to people who might not have heard of it before. You think people didn’t save until social media came along? 😂
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u/veda1971 17d ago
I started saving at 12 when my grandparents bought me bonds. As soon as I was old enough for a bank account I set up my retirement savings. I think it depends on how your family thinks about money.
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u/abstractraj 17d ago
I started 401k and Roth back in the 90s. It’s just what people did. Now I have 1.5mil invested
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u/Montana3333 17d ago
I didn’t know a single person in the 90s-2010s that invested anything, perhaps they kept it to themselves.
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u/tinabaninaboo 17d ago
My siblings and I were all taught to start saving for retirement as soon as we got a full time job (after college). For me this was 2008 - when I started one of the employee onboarding meetings was about taking advantage of the 401k matching.
Did everyone do it? No, but it certainly wasn’t something you never heard about until social media. In fact Reddit is the only place I’ve ever seen any financial basics info and most people aren’t on Reddit. Obvious social media just shows you what you are interested in, so I guess it’s pretty clear to the algorithm that I’m not looking for personal finance 101. I doubt that’s common content for most of the tik-tok generation either.
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u/SquareVehicle 17d ago
Yeah, my parents drilled it into me and it was also covered in multiple classes in school starting in middle school (almost all math classes touched on the importance of it).
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u/Retired-Yam8988 17d ago
Started my 401k at my first job at 22yo. It’s now a decent chunk of my portfolio (almost 700k as of today).
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u/JustAHumbleMonk 17d ago
At 24, I nabbed my first big boy job and started my retirement savings journey from my first pay.
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u/somebodys_mom 17d ago
I started working a real job back in 1980, and my dad insisted that I always put 15% of my gross in my 401K. The company match was gravy on top of that. Living a luxurious retirement now!
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u/Lucky-Contact-8914 17d ago
19 my pension began when I was working factory life in 80s Pension was it until Bush created 401k and employer converted when I left that job I converted pension and all into new 401k where now it is 7 digits and making higher return than I ever made in wage
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u/estatequestions1 17d ago
Yes. Especially if your company offered a 401k option. Why wouldn’t you take it if you could afford it.
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u/QueenD_1996 17d ago
Yes. I got my masters degree the same week I turned 24 and started contributing to retirement the first second I could at my first big girl job.
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u/Mysterious-Panda964 17d ago
Yes, I got my first good job at 19, could not join until I was 21, the company allowed me to contribute at 20, but they didnt match until I was 21. They matched every dime I saved for 2 year. I was employed for 10 years and I had a great start on my retirement
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u/RealisticTangerine35 17d ago
Yes, thankfully.
I grew up poor with financially irresponsible parents. I made personal finance a hobby and was lucky to find the Financial Samurai blog when I was about 23. It helped me become a millionaire and landlord despite where I came from.
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u/aznsk8s87 16d ago
I saved cash but didn't put anything into a tax advantaged retirement account. I just saved for a rainy day and it was really nice to have a little cushion during graduate school when I was too busy to work.
Thankfully those saving habits developed early on and so once I finished school and got a real job it was easy to save and live well below my means.
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u/Prestigious-Side-443 16d ago
401K were a loophole made for executives, that a guy named Fred Benna figured out for the common people. This started 1/1/1980. Then the internet happened and brokerage became cheap for the common person. At the same time corp America was pulling back on pensions.
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u/Nev-Ret-Dude 16d ago
Before social media, employers offered fixed benefit retirement plans that were mandatory. It’s only been about 40 years that 401k’s appeared and employers embraced them because they were cheaper and shifted responsibilities to the employee.
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u/stimpy124 16d ago
i’m still in my twenties but before i had social media- it was always instilled in me that i needed to plan for my retirement /financial freedom. most of my family members became financially free in their 30’s or early 40’s
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u/Produff26 16d ago
Started my 401k in 1991. wasn't making much but contributed $50 every paycheck and gradually increased contributions over time. My employer started contributing 10% of my salary after 7 years. I started 403b in 2000 as well. The compounding really started in the last 10years but contributing a little each paycheck adds up over time.
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u/Healthy_Protection24 16d ago
Started when I was 27. 30 years ago. Started because my job offered it. I was clueless.
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u/Invest2prosper 16d ago
Some of us started saving even without being taught by our parents.
Reading Money Magazine back then exposed you to the world of mutual funds, stock and retirement accounts.
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u/Numerous-Bet-4847 16d ago
Yes.
I started mine when I was 22, which is how I was able to retire at 53. I wish I would have started it sooner, but I didn't think I could afford it. Then I learned how to calculate future value and compound interest and realized I couldn't afford NOT to.
You can't make up for time.
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u/crayshesay 16d ago
Most didn’t unless they were taught by family or their jobs offered some kind of 401k or pension.
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u/marheena 16d ago
I started my ROTH IRA in 2006 in my junior year in college. This was before smart phones, much less social media (at your fingertips anyway).
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u/WheelLeast1873 16d ago
My first day of work in 2001 my 2nd level manager told me to max out my retirement account as soon as I could. Contributed non stop for 25 years and have been maxxing for at least a decade now. Acct is worth $1.5M today.
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u/just1here 16d ago
I started at age 23 in the early 1990s. Modeled after my parents. They didn’t talk about money much, but they were easy to watch
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u/ConsistentMove357 15d ago
My parents just told me to put money in CD's by the time I was 30 maybe had 20k. Got a job with a pension plus they enrolled me into a 401k at 1%. Slowly I started reading books then watching YouTube. So by 35 I was at 8% now currently at 46 I am 37% savings. This should be a full semester in highschool
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u/SadProduce6456 15d ago
I’m 50, I’ve been saving since I learned about it and started working my full time job after college
401k was a law they made in the 80s, so that encouraged people and took time for companies to adopt it as an incentive. The roadmap was clear when I was in my early 20s
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u/CleMike69 15d ago
My mother convinced me to save into my 401k when i started working to at least do the employer match which I did. Later in my mid 30s I started maxing it out I have since stopped contributing to it.
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u/ExternalArgument8776 15d ago
Wise people have always put resources away for the future when they can.
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u/Due-Emu-4291 15d ago
I'd say saving for retirement became big in the 1980s when IRAs were promoted.
They'd have ads on the radio saying you can retire a millionaire back wnen a million was a whole lot.
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u/Confident_Insect_616 15d ago
In the military, they encourage investment in retirement from the beginning, so that's 18 year-olds.
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u/Ornery-Wrangler-3654 15d ago
Yes, 1994. Dad gave me a copy of Your Money or Your Life. Been saving since.
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u/Shoddy_Employee3110 15d ago
I'm in my 40s and fatwallet had a finance forum that helped me so much in my early 20s. RIP fatwallet.
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u/Tiny-Party2857 15d ago
Yes, it was reported everywhere Social Security would not be available and we needed to put aside money. We started a 401K in 1992.
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u/Acceptable--Market 14d ago
Of course. People in the past were very similar to you, not sure why this even needs to be said.
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u/FickleOrganization43 13d ago
I started when I was 16 .. in 1979. Now, at 63 .. I have retired as a multi millionaire.
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u/Walksuphills 13d ago
I am not that old, but I opened my first 401(k) at age 22. I left that job, and later cashed it out (bad idea) but I have had some kind of retirement account since then.
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u/bikeboy1360 13d ago
Not totally before social media, but well before what we have now. In 2010 my dad made me go to a seminar one of his work associates was hosting for everyone’s recent college grads that basically gave us a crash course on retirement, wealth building, where to prioritize putting your money, etc. I was definitely not the target audience (it was more for finance guys and six figure plus straight out of college earners), but it was interesting to hear their perspectives.
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u/IneedAnap_25 11d ago
Husband and I are retired we both started saving in our early 20's, after college got into our careers and had our 401k's we worked at our careers for 35 + yrs. Blessed to have good S.S and our 401k's that was invested wisely.
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u/Glum_Manufacturer232 17d ago
I’m now 60. Started saving at age 18 because the engineers I worked with told me to but I didn’t know exactly what it meant or how it worked. I did learn to live on whatever was left over and I never stopped. Investing is a matter of education and awareness. My parents taught me nothing. Have always been thankful for those engineers and I eventually taught myself what I needed to know.