What is your HHI and how much do you save?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand how people are say, in their 40s, with roughly a $200k income (assume didn't earn that the whole time) and have multiple millions of dollars in investments....? Were you able to max 401ks or something from day 1 at age 21?

Even if you max your 401k from age 21, it would take 20+ years to get to "multiple millions" with compounded interest

"Were you able to max 401ks or something from day 1 at age 21?"

Married at 23, and then...yes.

"it would take 20+ years to get to "multiple millions" with compounded interest"

Correct.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand how people are say, in their 40s, with roughly a $200k income (assume didn't earn that the whole time) and have multiple millions of dollars in investments....? Were you able to max 401ks or something from day 1 at age 21?

Even if you max your 401k from age 21, it would take 20+ years to get to "multiple millions" with compounded interest

"Were you able to max 401ks or something from day 1 at age 21?"

Married at 23, and then...yes.

"it would take 20+ years to get to "multiple millions" with compounded interest"

Correct.

Well dang, hats off to you. Got till my 30s before even starting a 401k or accruing much savings at all (and then.... kids and daycare).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand how people are say, in their 40s, with roughly a $200k income (assume didn't earn that the whole time) and have multiple millions of dollars in investments....? Were you able to max 401ks or something from day 1 at age 21?

Even if you max your 401k from age 21, it would take 20+ years to get to "multiple millions" with compounded interest

"Were you able to max 401ks or something from day 1 at age 21?"

Married at 23, and then...yes.

"it would take 20+ years to get to "multiple millions" with compounded interest"

Correct.

Well dang, hats off to you. Got till my 30s before even starting a 401k or accruing much savings at all (and then.... kids and daycare).

Were you a perpetual student?

[Anonymous]

$650k and $100k/yr after maxing out retirement.

[Anonymous]

$350k, save just about $100k/year. $48k to brokerage, $57k to retirement including matches & Roth.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand how people are say, in their 40s, with roughly a $200k income (assume didn't earn that the whole time) and have multiple millions of dollars in investments....? Were you able to max 401ks or something from day 1 at age 21?

Even if you max your 401k from age 21, it would take 20+ years to get to "multiple millions" with compounded interest

"Were you able to max 401ks or something from day 1 at age 21?"

Married at 23, and then...yes.

"it would take 20+ years to get to "multiple millions" with compounded interest"

Correct.

Well dang, hats off to you. Got till my 30s before even starting a 401k or accruing much savings at all (and then.... kids and daycare).

Were you a perpetual student?

Me, yes, I returned to school for a 2nd degree BSN because I despised the corporate world (best decision ever so no regrets).

DH, no, he worked for nonprofits in DC for a decade while paying off student loans, then finally switched to a marketing agency. However, marketing agencies don't honestly pay that well even in DC despite having fancy name, top brand clients. People make money on the brand side. This was also true for me (I used to work in the marketing world before my BSN and most of my colleagues jumped ship from the marketing agency to the brand side in part because of money, and in part because client service s*cks for work life balance)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand how people are say, in their 40s, with roughly a $200k income (assume didn't earn that the whole time) and have multiple millions of dollars in investments....? Were you able to max 401ks or something from day 1 at age 21?

Even if you max your 401k from age 21, it would take 20+ years to get to "multiple millions" with compounded interest

Yes. I make $85k/year at my first job out of undergrad in a MCOL area.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't understand how people are say, in their 40s, with roughly a $200k income (assume didn't earn that the whole time) and have multiple millions of dollars in investments....? Were you able to max 401ks or something from day 1 at age 21?

Even if you max your 401k from age 21, it would take 20+ years to get to "multiple millions" with compounded interest

"Were you able to max 401ks or something from day 1 at age 21?"

Married at 23, and then...yes.

"it would take 20+ years to get to "multiple millions" with compounded interest"

Correct.

Well dang, hats off to you. Got till my 30s before even starting a 401k or accruing much savings at all (and then.... kids and daycare).

Most people are like you PP. If I would have maxed out my 401k at my first job out of college (at age 22), it would have been 42% of my gross salary. That's not realistic for most of us without parental help.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We make 360k and save 3k per month.

That seems rather low. You make 30K/month. Even with 401K and taxes, you are bringing home 15K.

[Anonymous]

Is this outside of retirement savings? We make $250k combined, max out 401ks, have a 6- month emergency fund and that’s it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm excited to see honestly. We just went from HHI $150k to $260k. At $150k we were saving about $12-15k per year (2 kids in daycare).

You were living on 150K, so you ideally should target 50%+ of the increase to savings. That is how you get ahead. DOn't just change lifestyle to reflect the full new salary

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We make 360k and save 3k per month.

That seems rather low. You make 30K/month. Even with 401K and taxes, you are bringing home 15K.

OP probably lives in a $2M house and has kids at big 3 privates.

[Anonymous]

44 and 41. Currently earn 420k hhi, but that's recent, and we both started earning late because we got professional degrees after working inconsequential jobs for a few years out of college. It's also unlikely to get much higher since we are both close to topped out in our current jobs.

We max our 401ks, so with match, about 60k per year. We also do 1 backdoor Roth per year, and currently an additional 1k per month into brokerage. So about 78k per year before 529s.

We have 3 kids, 10, 7 and 1. We put 3k per month total (not each-and biased to the older child) into those. Although it seems like we save a decent amount, all account balances are very modest because we only started saving this much recently.

So in total we save about 115k per year? Would like to do more but both older kids are in parochial, and the littlest has a nanny.

It's crazy how numbers that should look good on paper feel very insufficient in real life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We earn $225k and save about $50k. And then whatever earnings are generated off of $3.5M in investments also get "saved."

I point that out not to brag, but only to comment that, at some point when you start accumulating actual wealth, the savings from your earned income become increasingly irrelevant.

How do you have $3.5M in investments? How old are you and how long at $225k?

I'm 45. We married right out of college, which DCUM insists is a horrible idea and makes us trashy. We always lived on just one income, and we had some very fortunate real estate timing for buying, selling, renting, and buying again surrounding the 2008 crash.

Excellent job. Living off of one income is an amazing way to get ahead. We did the same thing .

Kids or no kids? just curious

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is this outside of retirement savings? We make $250k combined, max out 401ks, have a 6- month emergency fund and that’s it.

That's us too, early 40s.