Marketwatch put up an article claiming you should have double your salary saved by the time you are 35. People reacted negatively.
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-money-saved-by-age-35-experts-2018-5
That's not that much money. If we had saved twice our income at 35 there would have been a discussion at the mound and a little rough language.
Not that I'm not sympathetic with 30 year olds who spent 6 years in college accumulating debt and studying Latvian poetry because they were lied to by just about everyone in society. But holy crap do we have a savings disaster.
My name is Smurf Hunter and I have a problem.
I turn 42 next month and in my 401k+IRA I have about 1.75 times my gross salary saved.
I withhold 11% from each paycheck, and my employer matches another 3%. So 14% of my gross income is withheld.
I saved aggressively before I had kids, then my wife stopped working and at the time we lost 40% of our household income, so foolishly I pulled back from the contributions in those years. For the past decade I've been better, started with 5% and increased 1% annually to where I am now.
Though I've always thought when I retire my lifestyle would be considerably less expensive. There are SO many child related expenses that will go away after retirement. I wouldn't have to deal with commuting, buying overpriced convenience meals while working late, etc. Not to mention the hope of downsizing and relocating to a less expensive zipcode, or possibly even relocation to fly over country. I could replace a $600K west coast home with a $300K home with more property in much of the US.
The odd thing is, I'm a rockstar saver compared to my peers. There are a lot of engineers on my team in their mid twenties, and few do any retirement savings, not even to the point of the free 3% company match. I have gently, but firmly explained that's literally free money, but it has not clicked for them.