How Much Should You Save for Retirement by Age?

There's no single number that means 'enough for retirement,' but there are useful checkpoints. This guide covers the two rules of thumb worth knowing — the multiple-of-salary benchmark and the 4% rule — and how to turn them into a target you can actually track.

The salary-multiple benchmarks

Fidelity's widely-cited guideline expresses savings as a multiple of your salary at each age. They're rough, but they make an abstract goal concrete:

• By 30: about 1× your salary saved.
• By 40: about 3× your salary.
• By 50: about 6× your salary.
• By 60: about 8× your salary.
• By 67: about 10× your salary.

If you're behind, don't panic — these assume saving from your early twenties. The lever that matters most is your monthly contribution rate, and it's rarely too late to raise it.

The 4% rule: how much your savings can pay you

The 4% rule estimates sustainable retirement income: withdraw 4% of your starting balance in year one, then adjust for inflation each year, and the money has historically lasted 30 years in most market scenarios. Flip it around and it becomes a target — to draw $40,000 a year from savings, you need roughly 25× that, or about $1 million, on top of Social Security.

What actually moves the number

Three things dominate the outcome: how much you contribute, how early you start, and the employer match you capture. Time does the heavy lifting — a dollar invested at 25 can become far more than a dollar invested at 45, because it compounds for two extra decades. Capturing a full 401(k) match is free money that accelerates everything.

Turn it into a plan

Use the retirement and 401(k) calculators below to project your own path: enter your current savings, monthly contribution, and expected return to see where you land by your target age, and the monthly income the 4% rule suggests it could provide. Then stress-test it at a lower return — if the plan still works at 5%, it's robust.