[ChuckMcM]

It is sad on many levels, but it is also understandable. I've met people who consider their maxed out 401K savings as "meeting their savings goal" and so they spend excess income of frivolous things. Hardest thing in the world to explain to someone looking at an unexpected end of the year bonus of $50K that even though they saved the 'maximum' of the about $25K in their 401k they should also put at least half of that $50K into savings as well. Unless you have 10x your annual salary in a savings account you really can't say you have 'saved enough'. Even then there are so many things that can and do hit you in life that aren't part of the plan. Your house burns to the ground, your kid develops cancer, your wife decides she likes someone other than you better, Etc. It goes on and on.

My grandmother was a daughter of the depression and was really paranoid about future losses (when she passed we found vegetables and fruits she had canned 'just in case' in the cellar that were decades old!) But she also had an expression I liked. I would ask her what she was saving for and she would say "I don't know but I'm sure God will tell me what it is when the time is right."

[nine_k]

Saving 10x your annual salary means saving half of your salary for twenty years. This is, to my mind, not very realistic.

You need to invest into something highly profitable to hit this goal without being so drastic, e.g. to have bought some Bay Area realty in 1980s, or some Apple stock around that time. This is not a common option, and it's mostly unavailable now.

[kayhi]

I think this is why people recommend starting early and having a 40 year window.

I’m considerate of the fact that many have student loans, etc. and this isn’t feasible.

A blogger Mr. Money Moustche pushes hard on having a high savings rate compared to the norm.

[ChuckMcM]

This is absolutely true. Student loan debt is a huge burden. If you're burdened by debt then most financial advisers in a low inflation scenario suggest you pay it off as quickly as you can. If we suddenly get 8 - 12% annual inflation and your salary is tracking that, then by all means stretch out your repayment so that you can pay it off with inflated dollars.

[ChuckMcM]

It is important to consider that once you put something away it can start earning money on its own. So if you work backwards, lets assume you save your 25K/year in your 401k and you add 25K/year in just part of your income. That is 50K/year which when you are young is perhaps half your salary and 20 years later is perhaps 1/4th or 1/5th (assuming you go from making $100K / year early on and eventually get to $200K /year). If you look at the S&P500 [1] and no-load or zero load ETFs, you can get an average annualized rate of return of ~ 7%. Do the math (here is a convenient web site: https://www.budgetworksheets.org/invest/) and after 20 years you've got $2.1M saved. You started at 22 and you ended at 42 and now you have 10x your ending salary of $200K/year saved. When you are young and have no dependents you can save a ton of money, and the more you save, the earlier you save it, the more it piles up at the end when you need it. A couple of big signing bonuses when changing jobs, a bit of gain from the stock purchase plan. It isn't as far out of reach as you might imagine.

The other thing to be careful of is the who "bought real estate in the '80s, those days are long gone" kind of things. If you bought real estate in Denver in 2010 you're doing pretty well right now. If you bought 10,000 shares of Facebook stock when they IPO'd and held it (that was only 6 years ago) it would be worth over $1.75M today. I'm not trying to exploit my hindsight, I'm trying to share with you that large changes in investment value happen all the time, markets change. So you should not tell yourself that such opportunities are "mostly unavailable now" they are just as available now as they were then. Sometimes you will win and sometimes you won't but if you are reasonably diversified in your investment plan you can take advantage of a growing economy.

[1] https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/042415/what-average...

[jogjayr]

It's entirely possible for any household earning 2x median income. That means you can have the lifestyle of the median household (with 0% savings rate) and save 50% of your income.

Of course 2x median is quite high for most people; that's sort of baked into the definition of "median". I'd expect HN readers to be close to that because of higher tech salaries but acknowledge it's hard for everyone else.

Even with a salary 1.5x of median, you could live the lifestyle of someone making ~0.8x of median income i.e. a lower-income, but not poverty, lifestyle and save 50% (I think my math is right here). You can still lead a happy and fulfilling life at this spending level. There'll be no eating at nice restaurants, drinks at pubs with friends or annual foreign vacations. But plenty of weekend hiking, DVDs from the library, home-cooked meals, and boardgames with friends.

In a nutshell, it's possible but you'll have to change your entire way of living.