domingo3

giacona,

If you're just taking a survey, here's my response:

In my 20s, I saved about 40% of my income towards retirement. Just after college, I felt like I was rich with a steady income stream, and it was easy for me to save.

I'm in my mid thirties now, and I'm down to about 15-20% of my income towards retirement. While my income has grown, my expenses have grown faster. We have two kids now, and more concern for expensive things like living in a nice neighborhood and having very reliable cars. I fear my savings rate may drop a bit more as time goes on, but hopefully not too much more.

A few things to point out: 1st, asking at a Kiplinger's retirement board is surely not a representative sample of the population. People that come here are likely to be more concerned about saving for retirement that the average Joe. 2nd, it really matters very little what others are doing. Getting to retirement is not a race where the person ahead of their peers wins. You need to have enough money to cover your expenses, period. 3rd, others are right, DIY tools or a financial planner are really the best references for determining how much to save.

A final point: It seems many people disagree on my philosophy, but here it is. Of course, everyone would like to get better rates of return, but to me, the two greatest variables in determining what kind of retirement income you have are how much you save each year, and when you retire. I try to save as much as I can every year while striking some kind of balance with current quality of life. Regardless of how the numbers play out, I wouldn't be willing to sacrifice any of the things I do now for a better/earlier retirement. In my perspective, that reduces my situation to one variable: when I retire. I'll keep saving as I am until I have enough to retire in the style that I want to. When I hit that point, I'll stop working. Others choose to come up with an age they want to retire, and guess rates of return to figure out how much they need to save each year, then adjust their lifestyle accordingly. That's not me. It's still fun to play with the numbers while I'm relatively young to make a guess at when I can retire, but doing it the way other people do just isn't my style. Of course, as I get closer to retirement, I still have to do serious number crunching to know if I've hit the point of viable retirement yet.

Best of luck,

d3

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