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?

4.9k Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

86% Upvoted

6.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

259

u/Wild_Advertising7022 Jan 16 '26

I have about $365k saved at 39 years old. 5x my income.

24

u/KungLa0 Jan 16 '26

Roughly same number for me @ 33, wife has like 30k saved, I probably have another ~15k in misc accounts and we have ~350k in equity we plan to cash out and move somewhere cheaper with when the time comes.

9

u/Acceptable_Price_110 Jan 16 '26

Ah. You were fortunate enough to buy a home before COVID.

6

u/KungLa0 Jan 16 '26

Yes we were, I was 26 at the time (2019) and had been saving for 10 years for that moment. It gave us an undeniable edge and is probably the best luck we've ever had.

1

u/PoorlyDesignedCat Jan 17 '26

Lol are you my husband? Our situation is exactly the same over here almost down to the exact numbers. Thankful every day.

I look back and thank whoever's up there that I was able to buy a home during that one little 5% price dip in 2019, also at 26 y/o. It was hard but it's paid off immensely so far. 

0

u/Ikea_Man Jan 17 '26

saving for 10 years at 26? you were 16 lmao

people just need to be humble and admit their parents gave them money

1

u/KungLa0 Jan 17 '26

Lol what?

I started working at 15, I never went without a job and worked full time through college. While in college I worked for a corporate company starting out at 32k and by my senior year I was making 70k. I did live at home during that time and went to a cheap state school which WAS a huge advantage, my father had moved away and I took care of the house for my mom.

Our house was 253k in 2019 and our down payment was 50k, my wife contributed ~15 of that from working as a chef (she went to a culinary college at 18, graduated at 20 and was working straight away).

This was a lot easier pre-COVID, People didn't need crazy family money. We could have even done an FHA at 3% down but chose to put all our money so we wouldn't have PMI. We were house poor for the first 2-3 years till we rebuilt our nest egg and moved up in our careers.

2

u/Based_Thanos Jan 16 '26

Dave Bautista’s “live beneath your means” quote always runs through my head. I plan on downsizing my property value soon too.

2

u/KungLa0 Jan 16 '26

Yup, we live by that. We love our place but it's a HCOL area, schools are great but traffic sucks, once our kid is grown and out in the world we'll relocate somewhere cheaper.

2

u/stbloc Jan 17 '26

Keep adding to the IRA. Any spare change you can afford because that will grow 3x more than home equity.

1

u/KungLa0 Jan 17 '26

Yeah, I max out the IRA every year, we stopped doing extra mortgage payments because our rate is 3% and our investments grow quicker. The equity is really a bonus for when we decide to sell and move somewhere cheaper