Retirement savings: Are you on track for your age?

The older you get, the more urgent the question becomes: Will I have enough saved for retirement? Because many of us wonder, how much is enough?

It’s a question without a precise answer, since no one can know how long they will live, what their expenses will be like in retirement, or how healthy and active (or not) they will be as they age into their 70s, 80s, and beyond.

But just because there are a lot of unknowns doesn’t mean there aren’t some reasonable targets, and investment giant Fidelity has been promoting its rules of thumb on this topic for years.

Fidelity’s model starts with the idea that, if you retire at 65-67 years old, you should have savings equivalent to ten times your salary by that time. From there, they backtrack to what that means you’ll need in savings at different milestones along the way.

They suggest that by age 30, you should aim to have retirement savings equivalent to your current salary, that by 40, you should have three times your salary, by 50 you should have six times, and by 60, you should have eight times your current salary.

Of course, various factors can influence these goals. For instance, someone planning to downsize and live frugally in retirement may have plenty with just eight times their salary, while someone who expects to embark on a lot of retirement travel will have much higher expenses and should therefore target a goal of 12 times their salary.

The age at which you retire has an impact as well, given the differences in social security payments at different ages. Those retiring at 62, the earliest eligible age for social security, will need more retirement savings than those who maximize their social security payments by working until age 70.