Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:530k HHI

Not saving much outside of retirement and 529s

Retirement is around 100k into 401ks + 120k deferred comp.

We spend a lot maintaining our house and enjoying our life. My parents will pass a large brokerage account to me when they die and I find it sad they didn’t enjoy the money when they were young. I’m not interested in skipping vacations and wearing bad clothes so my kids can inherit my money.

Totally agree. I’m the poster above with 500k cash comp. My parents pinched pennies their whole lives. They inherited a lot from my grandparents, adding to their brokerage accounts, but never leading them to spend more. Now in retirement they still don’t spend and act like replacing a 50 year old chair would lead them to financial ruin. Now they’re aging quickly and rapidly losing the opportunity to use their money.

It’s pathological.

My goal is to bring some balance between now and later, because later may never come.

This. it is pathological. I’m so sick and tired of hearing about how I parents with a 4 million net worth can’t afford to install a new fence. Or my dad stealing my newspaper every day because he doesn’t want to spend money subscribing to the WSJ.

What’s sad is I’ll inherit all of the money. I save properly for retirement and college is already funded. I’ll be purchasing an apartment in NY, Porsche panorama, large boat and putting $250k into an account for each child as a down payment fund. I have no interest in dying with an enormous brokerage account. I want to enjoy ski trips, a safari with my family, new boobs etc.

Is the question how much you save overall including retirement or other savings? Questions like this are vague and can be interpreted multiple ways resulting in responses that are all over the place.

45, single, 158k, and I save 1500 per month.

Our income only went up in our 50's so not much savings before. It was a struggle to pay mortgage.

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

When we had mortgage and when our kids were in college, we saved nothing. Now we save 20% of our savings. We also paid household and healthcare expenses of my hubby's parents which is a huge expense most people don't have.

We have a $280K HHI and probably are saving around $30K. It has been a little higher but with two kids in college we’re only contributing to retirement. We’re also late savers, so only have $1.5M or so. With graduate school and postdoc appointments I didn’t save a thing or even pay into social security until I was 31.

Anonymous wrote:530k HHI

Not saving much outside of retirement and 529s

Retirement is around 100k into 401ks + 120k deferred comp.

We spend a lot maintaining our house and enjoying our life. My parents will pass a large brokerage account to me when they die and I find it sad they didn’t enjoy the money when they were young. I’m not interested in skipping vacations and wearing bad clothes so my kids can inherit my money.

Totally agree. I’m the poster above with 500k cash comp. My parents pinched pennies their whole lives. They inherited a lot from my grandparents, adding to their brokerage accounts, but never leading them to spend more. Now in retirement they still don’t spend and act like replacing a 50 year old chair would lead them to financial ruin. Now they’re aging quickly and rapidly losing the opportunity to use their money.

It’s pathological.

My goal is to bring some balance between now and later, because later may never come.

We have a cash HHI of about $500k, plus about 160k in equity/match - but with how it vests/realizes, we get hit with pretty high taxes as we tend to earn more of the equity than we sell - this skews our taxes and in effect we are adding to our “savings” paying more taxes out of income rather than selling more equity to pay taxes. It’s a gamble but the equity has outperformed the s&p over the same period.

In addition to the equity, we save around 160k per year including in the 529.

Our debt to income is about 8%

We aren’t super aggressive savers because we pay cash for a lot of upgrades to our house - rather than take out loans. We are perpetually doing an upgrade here or there - it’s not always adding 1:1 to our house, but we live in a place that was very well priced and we wanted to customize - it’s also partially a hobby, which I find especially rewarding.

We also travel a lot and spend a lot on other hobbies.

The place we really squeeze our expenditure is on cars. We have purchased 3 cars total in the last 18 years, 2 of which we still drive.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:FWIW, it's also important to keep things in perspective.

One of my colleagues found out about a terminal stage IV cancer diagnosis in her late 50s. Someone who had lived conservatively and done everything by the book, to a tee, seemed relatively healthy for age, and thought she just had GERD till imaging said otherwise.

When she told us, one of her first comments after relaying the facts of the matter were, with voice trembling with tears:

"All those of years of saving so much in my 401k... for what??"

Thank you for posting this. People don’t understand how to have balance in life. People are either spendthrifts or deny themselves every little thing that makes life worth living. My dad was diagnosed with terminal cancer two years after retiring - after he spent decades looking forward to retirement. What’s the point in our lives? Frugality just so we can travel during retirement? How about traveling with DCs and building memories? We’ve traveled so much in our lives (together, as a family), I certainly don’t see the need to catch up when I’m 65.

I feel like this is generational. In my parents' generation, yeah it was about saving EVERY dime, toiling away, never having any fun because RETIREMENT. And then as you say retirement and how it goes for you is a roll of the dice. I'm not saying EVERY person currently in their 70s-80s is like this, but a far greater % of people lived that way then versus now. Amongst my current 30-40 yr old crowd, yeah people are saving big and yet every spring or winter break they're going places with kids and building memories. They aren't saving all then for age 65 or 70 when it gets harder to do those things, your kids may or may not want or be available to vacation with you etc. I feel like those in my gen, sure they'll travel in retirement, but it won't be in the OMG first time I've done a fun thing ever, type of travel. It'll just be a continuation of travel they've prioritized their whole adult lives, longer trips they couldn't necessarily do while working etc.

We make 300k dual income, have 4M in retirement savings, 500k college savings. We are 50 and 55. We think we have about 5 more years till we retire.

Anonymous wrote:Hhi is 255k (gross) . We save 55k in retirement; 12k in 529 (2 kids in middle/high). Should be okay for college esp since grandparents also have college savings g a for kids. We have about 1.3 m in retirement funds now; 200k in other investments. In our early and mid 50s. We also have 650k left on our mortgage though (gulp), with about 400k equity—and 3% interest rate. Planning to work until late 60s/early 70s if we are healthy. I think We are on track to retire but modestly, not extravagantly (2.5 million or so in retirement plus ss plus combined pension of c 75k year). I wanted to buy less house (we moved in 2020) but dh didn’t and I have a feeling we will want to downsize after kids grown.

If you accumulate $3M, by 4% rule, you can withdraw 120k plus 75k in pension is almost 200k plus any social security. I wouldn’t call the retirement modest if you earn 255k now.

Anonymous
$170k/yr salary

$87k/ yr savings (Including 401K

That’s super impressive if you have a family and smart either way.

I miss the leanness and simplicity of my life when I was single and childfeee. Before I got married at 35 I lived very frugally: cheap apartment no car cooked for myself and managed to tack vacations onto work travel. Being married with kids is a huge money suck: house cars childcare lessons their endless need for new shoes therapy and then paying for convenience (cleaners Instacart) because you have no fee time and then paying a lot because you can only travel at spring break etc and then marriage counseling because you’re too tired to have sex.

$170k/yr salary

$87k/ yr savings (Including 401K)

Hhi is 255k (gross) . We save 55k in retirement; 12k in 529 (2 kids in middle/high). Should be okay for college esp since grandparents also have college savings g a for kids. We have about 1.3 m in retirement funds now; 200k in other investments. In our early and mid 50s. We also have 650k left on our mortgage though (gulp), with about 400k equity—and 3% interest rate. Planning to work until late 60s/early 70s if we are healthy. I think We are on track to retire but modestly, not extravagantly (2.5 million or so in retirement plus ss plus combined pension of c 75k year). I wanted to buy less house (we moved in 2020) but dh didn’t and I have a feeling we will want to downsize after kids grown.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Currently DH is the only one working. His salary is about $200k, but his employer puts in 25% into a 401k - so $50k. Since we have over saved, he doesn’t add in more. $8k goes into a HSA, at least $48k goes to Fidelity each year, we each put in $6,500 into a Roth. We have paid off the house. We are within two years of his retirement.

What's your approximate net worth?

house + 401k/IRAs + Fidelity is $5+m. House is around $1m of that.