How much should you have saved for retirement by age?

The widely cited benchmarks, popularized by large retirement providers, run roughly: one times your annual salary saved by age 30, three times by 40, six times by 50, eight times by 60, and around ten times by 67. They exist because a percentage-of-salary target is easier to act on than an abstract number, and they assume you will need to replace a substantial share of pre-retirement income, with Social Security covering part of it. Falling short of a benchmark is extremely common and is not a verdict; it is a signal to raise the contribution rate.

Treat them as rough calibration rather than a rule, because the real determinants are your spending in retirement, when you plan to stop working, whether you will have a pension or paid-off housing, your health, and where you live. Someone who will spend far less than they earned needs a smaller multiple than someone maintaining a high-cost lifestyle. The variables you control most are savings rate and time, with the commonly cited target around 15 percent of income including any employer match, and starting earlier mattering more than optimizing investments. If you are behind, the levers are raising contributions with every pay increase, capturing the full employer match, using catch-up contributions after 50, controlling fees, and delaying Social Security, which permanently increases the benefit for each year you wait up to 70.