I’m 40 and WAY ahead of the average 60-69 year old...according to this article!!
Same here, in fact most the people i know my age are in similar shape.
If I were you guys, I wouldn't look at any of those numbers, know that you are above those, and say to yourself... "Hey! I'm doing good!" Those numbers are surprisingly low in my opinion.
I am very fortunate to have a pension. I say "fortunate," I knew what I was doing and actively worked my ass off to get a job with one of the few companies that still had one years ago. That said, I am only counting on that pension for about a third of my retirement income. Another third will come from my 401k and the last third will come from my Social Security. That's at my current levels of contribution, yet I still plan on contributing more starting next month, just to have a little breathing room. And even after all that I still plan on doing some things in retirement that will bring in some cash flow. Things that I enjoy doing and that I can do sort of as a sideline hobby for fun.
I will have a fairly substantial Social Security check and a nice pension check, but I'm still shooting for trying to have at least $500k (Hopefully closer to $650k or $750k) in my 401k when I retire.
I think the things that folks (like the people in that survey) need to do is:
1. Work towards being debt free at retirement. (No car, house or credit card payments.) You can live pretty cheap if you don't owe anything.
2. If you feel that you can accomplish that then the next thing to do is to develop a budget that you will need to realistically live on in retirement under those circumstances.
3. Figure out a plan to come up with the level of income that you will need when you retire including your Social Security as a
supplement .
4. Start now to execute both of those plans.
I will also say to the above, it is not too late. Mrs. Irish and I both basically started over financially when we got married 11 years ago.
