[hessenwolf]

I've done a lot of work in human longevity estimates. I strongly recommend you think of your life planning as lasting 60 years after college. If you think you can work twenty and live for forty off that, well for you.

There is a demographic shift and a lot of things are going to be different in 30 years. Plan for life-long learning and be able to be valuable in a changing environment. My 2c.

[nilkn]

I think you might have misunderstood me (or I've misunderstood you). The whole point I was trying to drive home is that life is long--60 years after college is a good number--and so acting as if you only have 20 years of good work to prepare for that shows how important saving really is. Like I wrote at the end of my post, the idea isn't to literally retire after 20 years of working, but rather to get yourself in a position where you could suffer a large loss of income--say 50%--without a major impact on your retirement prospects.

The idea is to use the most productive and highest-earning period of your life (per the hypothesis that the tech industry is ageist) to amass savings, so that you don't have to worry about socking away for retirement later on in your career if you ever do face problems with your age.