Let’s say your annual salary is $100,000. (For a nice, round number.) Fifteen percent of that is $15,000, which is how much you’ll want to put into your interest-earning account each year ($1,250 a month). So, with 4 percent interest, the $15,000 you put in this year becomes $15,323 next year, which then becomes $31,259 the year after that (the $15,323 balance, plus the new $15,000 plus $936 in interest). Each year, as your 401(k) balance grows, you’ll earn more and more in interest. In seven years, you’re making more in interest each year than the $15,000 you’re depositing from your paycheck. And after 40 years (if you work from age 22 to 62), you will end up with over $1.4 million.
(If you want to play around with a compound interest calculator, you can click here.)
Taylor estimates that your retirement savings—your 401(k) plus any pensions or other savings you have—will make up about 45 percent of what you’ll have to live on in retirement. The rest will come from a monthly Social Security check.
One last thing: That 15 percent goals includes any matching contributions your employer is willing to make, according to Taylor. So if your employer is willing to match 5 percent of your 401(k) savings, you only need to contribute 10. If they’ll match 3 percent, you only need to contribute 12—and so on. Just make sure what you’re contributing plus what they’re contributing equals 15, and you’ll be good.
If you can’t (or don’t want to) put 15 percent of each paycheck toward retirement right now, you can still start saving up for retirement in a meaningful way.
Everyone’s financial situation is unique. So rules-of-thumb—like that 15 percent rule we just went over—might not work for everyone. With student loan payments, bills, and other necessary expenses looming overhead, squeezing 15 percent out of your paycheck just might not be viable for you right now—and that’s OK.
“It’s no surprise to me that retirement is getting further placed on the backburner,” Douglas Boneparth, a certified financial planner, president of Bone Fide Wealth, and coauthor of The Millennial Money Fix, tells SELF, noting the myriad expenses millennials face the moment they graduate from college. His advice: Look at your financial situation holistically before committing 15 percent to retirement (or feeling bad about not doing so).
Do you have student loans to pay off? If so, how aggressive is the interest rate on those loans? It’s possible that the rate of return on your 401(k) won’t outpace the rate of interest on those loans; in other words, it might actually cost you more to put money toward retirement right now when you could be paying down that debt.
Another thing to consider: Do you have a rainy day fund? Boneparth recommends saving three to six months’ worth of expenses so you have them in case of emergency. You might not want to forego retirement savings entirely while building up this cash reserve, but it might make sense to split your savings between your 401(k) and emergency fund until you’ve amassed between three and six months’ worth of savings.
