What's considered a "good" amount of invested $$ for different age brackets?

[vi edit]

Obviously the answer is "you basically can never invest too much", but realistically, how much is considered a "reasonable" investment amount by the time you are 30? What about at 40?

I'm 27, my wife is 25, and she won't even start drawing a true fulltime paycheck until this summer (pharmacist). We've got what we feel is a fairly reasonable amount saved up given our age, but really don't have a benchmark to put it against.

I know that everyone has a different comfort level of living and that what you should be saving is completely dependent upon how much you want to draw in retirement, but I've never really seen a good breakdown of "At XX Age you should have $XX,XXX in your portfolio, at XX age you should have $xxx,xxx in your portfolio.

Assuming moderate returns of 5%-8% is there a chart for things like this?

 

[Pliablemoose]

LOL, what is this investing you speak of? Americans don't save $, they have credit ratings & massive debit...

Seriously though, automatically start with 10% of your salary into a retirement account, and try to save an additional 5-10% for your nest egg.

Don't worry about what everyone else is doing, the truth is, most of us in the US are really screwed when it comes to investing/saving.

 

[ponyo]

People make different amounts and have different expenses. So you can't compare amounts.

If you can save, you're doing better than many americans who are living paycheck to paycheck and drowning in debt.

Just check the number of bankruptcy cases each year.

 

[GasX]

Forget eveyone else. Set your own goals and do your own math and stick to the plan as best as you can.

Oversimplified Retirement Planning:
1. Pick an age you want to retire at and calcuate what year that will be (year X)
2. Figure out what income you would need to have (in today's dollars) to live comfortably
3. Calculate how much money that translates to (in year X dollars)
4. Determine your current savings
5. Calculate the required savings rate to reach your goal.

 

[dandruff]

before anything: SAVE LIQUID CASH = 6 months salary
1. SAVE 20% of your annual household before Tax income
2. invest 50% of that in moderate/ aggressive as feel comfotable
3. put rest in conservative places

thats what we do! HTH!

 

[spidey07]

10-15%, after savings and everything else (bills, retirement, no revolving debt, etc) is taken care of would be a good start.

 

[tw1164]

Go visit a fee based financial advisor.

 

[FoBoT]

just depends on how much $ you want when you retire and what age you want to retire at

if you max out your 401(k) you'll be ahead of 90% of the rest of us

 

[shadow9d9]

At the very least you should be maxing out a roth IRA of $5000 a year for each of you... My wife and I are 23... our roth iras alone total over 30k. Roth IRAs can be withdrawn completely tax free.

 

[vi edit]

Both my wife and I come from families that are very "cash" based in mentality. Pay for things in cash, always repay what you borrow, and put the rest in the savings account.

Great credit ratings, but virtually no retirement planning. My father has a great pension plan though so that took the place of a lot of their needed savings. My wife's parents both are military so they get government pensions.

So needless to say self planning for retirement was a bit of a mystery to both of us.

I've got some professional education and background on lots of the investment tools and services available, but no real world experience with it and how to apply it .

 

[Pliablemoose]

Originally posted by: vi_edit
Both my wife and I come from families that are very "cash" based in mentality. Pay for things in cash, always repay what you borrow, and put the rest in the savings account.

Great credit ratings, but virtually no retirement planning. My father has a great pension plan though so that took the place of a lot of their needed savings. My wife's parents both are military so they get government pensions.

So needless to say self planning for retirement was a bit of a mystery to both of us.

I've got some professional education and background on lots of the investment tools and services available, but no real world experience with it and how to apply it .

Do your employers offer a retirement plan & do they match any of it?

 

[ponyo]

Well if you're worried about retirement, just max out your 401k and Roth IRA if you're salaried and earn less than the income limit. If self-employed, max out SEP if you can.

 

[vi edit]

My wife doesn't have a retirement plan (401k or 403b) available to her this year. Starting this summer she will when she is no longer a resident.

My employer has a 401k available, but doesn't match. I've got about 75% into my Roth for the year and most likely won't max out the contribution because of some short term debt we want to knock out with that extra $1000. We'll maybe knock out my wife's IRA this year depending on tax returns (her school costs and a lot of moving deductions will help out a lot).

This year has been a bit awkward because we had to move to another state, buy a home, pay for moving costs, and we both switched employers...neither of which are long term.

 

[alrocky]

Originally posted by: shadow9d9
At the very least you should be maxing out a roth IRA of $5000 a year for each of you... My wife and I are 23... our roth iras alone total over 30k.

Vanguard website

$3,000 for tax year 2004.
$4,000 for tax years 2005?2007.
$5,000 for tax year 2008

typo or are you two 'ahead' of the game?