When did you start saving for Retirement

[LivingAlmostLarge]

How old were you when you started saving for retirement? How much did you save % I mean. Did you start at 1%? 5%? Have you increased it or just stayed the same?

I was 21 right out of college into a Roth IRA $2k/year. No 401k at that time. DH had neither but then once he got a job we started saving both into Roth IRA and maxed out his 401k back in 2006, 2005 we saved a little but he started working in November 2005 so not much time.

We just invested and forgot about. We saved other money but that's when started saving for retirement. Now in our 30s we'll just continue. I wish we had saved more earlier and had more options.

[bjl584]

Well, I've always been a saver. Even in high school and college I saved most of the money that I earned from the part time jobs that I had.

After college I basically saved cash for a few years.

For retirement, I guess that would have been when I turned 25 and was eligible to participate in my employer's 401K program. I put in 10% and have ever since.

When I turned 28 I opened up a taxable brokerage account and started a ROTH IRA.

The rest is history. My investments have been dollar cost averaging every month since then.

[Jluke]

Age 23 - 401k and Roth (1800/yr). That 401k was for 1 year. I cashed it out many years later for about 2k.

Age 24 - new 401k (8 to 12% varies); continued Roth at (1800/yr)

In between, bought house, bought stocks in taxable account, aggressive payment towards mortgage and aggressive cash savings.

Age 37 - increase Roth but not maxed - moved to investment account.
Age 38 - max Roth
Age 39 (Present) - 16% 401k; max Roth.

with the market fluctuating I'm in the ballpark of 250k +/- 20k for 401k and 28k in Roth

[97guns]

ive always been a saver too but didnt start saving for retirement until i hit 26 and landed my first corporate america job, i saved by way of the company stock plan and quickly accumulated close to 100K thanks in part to the dot com run up and 3 splits in 3 or 4 years, dumped the stock and bought a triplex in las vegas

[corn18]

I was bad and didn't start "saving" at all until I was 42. I was fortunate to get a very nice pension from the military that is inflation protected (with survivor benefits) that started paying at age 42. I also get very affordable health care for life for both my wife and I. I calculate the pension was worth around $1.8M at age 42 (SPIA w/ COLA and survivor benefits). The health care is harder to value, but I priced an equivalent plan on obamacare and I figure it's worth about $500k if I live to 85.

So, I had no savings, but a nice safety net. Now I max everything and dump a lot into taxable savings. All set to retire in 7-9 years.

Tom

[creditcardfree]

I believe my husband was 21. He put 10% into his 401K because he just heard that is what you should do! I was probably 23 or 24. I don't remember the percentage, maybe 6%. I know I increased it closer to 10% when I had a better paying job.

[MonkeyMama]

Post college (age 22) we always did a minimum 10% to retirement.

We did closer to 20% when my spouse stopped working (age 25), because I had a good retirement work benefit and our income was cut in half. (So kept saving at the same pace, but was a bigger percentage of a smaller income). But we did fund IRAs at the time with money we had saved during times of higher income.

I lost a 10% match in 2010 (kids were 5&7) and so we have since been focused on maxing out our retirement vehicles. I don't know exactly the percentage early on, but always at least 10%. More like 15% in recent years. This year it is 16% with my spouse getting a job/401k. We are just putting the max allowed into retirement vehicles. We are also investing 10%+ of our income in taxable accounts, to supplement retirement. I am 39. I'd say that we already did the heavy lifting for retirement savings. Investment gains should be more than contributions, and has been for a few years. If we entirely stopped saving for retirement we'd have a comfortable/average retirement at 65. I didn't really understand this at 22, and we always kind of figured we'd have more money later, when our kids are older. Like we are doing this year. So I am kind of in awe with the, "Nevermind, we did most the work already" feeling abut it all. We are extremely conservative though and working towards early retirement, so will keep saving. Will save as much as we can until we don't have to work any more. Life happens, I am more than aware. Which is the other reason we stick with this savings pace. We haven't had such a good income/savings year since we were in our early 20s.

[FLA]

22- 10% in 403B increased over time to 15% fairly quickly, never stopped

20s-40s- half hearted Roth contributions, put in 14k, worth about 37k now

30s- received IRA in divorce to make our accts equal, so we were both on the same footing retirement wise

45- became ill and disabled, can no longer contribute and that is killing me. Just before getting sick was told I could easily retire at 55. Now I need to make that money last 10 more years without the 10yrs of contributions, ugh

starting at 22 saved my bacon and also investing aggressively in low cost index funds. I bought and held, when the market was down, that was a "sale" and I increased my contributions. I can never re-pay the nurse who dragged the baby nurse to a seminar on our 403B, the Personal Finance for Dummies book and the huge doorstopper book by Jane Bryant Quinn. And later, the Bogleheads. Investing was intimidating at first but eventually it was old hat.

[dczech09]

I started when I was 22 years old. I started out investing $50 per month into my Roth IRA. I did this while beating on my car loan.

When I was 23, I increased it to $100 per month. Then $200, then $250, then $300 per month. I did this while working on student loans.

By the time I was 24, I was maxing my Roth IRA while aggressively paying off my student loans.

It was not until I was 25 that I opened my 401k. I was making $55,000 per year, so I would max my Roth IRA at $5,500 per year (10% of income). I invested another 5% per year in my 401k so that I hit 15%.

I have since received some raises and increased my contribution to 6% for the 401k, while maxing the Roth IRA.

Today, I am 28 years old. I make about $65,000 per year (about $4,000 is variable based on bonuses) and invest 6% in my 401k and $5,500 in the IRA. I have about $55,000 in retirement assets.

Effective April 1, I will be promoted and will have a pretty sizeable pay-raise. At that time, I will need to increase my 401k contribution rate so that my total retirement contributions equal 15%.

My advice to others reading this - start as early as you can! Paying off debt is definitely important, but you do not necessarily want to sacrifice retirement for it. If you can muster it, invest at least a little while paying off debt. Even if it is like 3% in your 401k so you can get a match - GREAT! Just do it! If you read above, I started out investing a little $50 per month while attacking my car loan. It was one of the best decisions I ever made because it helped me build a great habit. In the end, investing for retirement is a habit that you need to develop.

[QuarterMillionMan]

Good question and thread. I too was always a saver but only saved enough in my emergency fund to last about 6 months to one year but never contributed into my retirement fund until about 38 years old. Like tomhole I started late. Once I hit 40 and saw retirement on the horizon in 25 years, I went into panic mode saving as much as possible into my retirement accounts. I'm currently 50. I guess it is better late than never but how I wished I had started my retirement accounts much sooner. These are my totals;

457, $120,000
Roth IRA, $40,000
Pension contributory plan, $65,000

[emilyliving]

Hi Everyone
Ideally, you'd start saving in your 20s, when you first leave school and begin earning paychecks.
I started when I was 22 years old. I started out investing $50 per month.

The sooner you begin saving, the more time your money has to grow. Every year's gains can generate their particular gains the next year - an effective wealth-building phenomenon known since compounding.

[corn18]

Hi Everyone
Ideally, you'd start saving in your 20s, when you first leave school and begin earning paychecks.
I started when I was 22 years old. I started out investing $50 per month.

The sooner you begin saving, the more time your money has to grow. Every year's gains can generate their particular gains the next year - an effective wealth-building phenomenon known since compounding.

Time is indeed the key to success. For every dollar that I did not save when I was 20, I now have to save $94.

[feh]

Not positive, but somewhere around 26 was when we started saving in a 403B (aka 401K). I think we were maxing that by about 30, then started maxing IRAs also. Again, not sure, but probably started putting excess savings in a taxable account around 35.

Household income has increased quite a bit over the years, but our lifestyle has not. The last few years, we've saved about 50% of our gross income.

[ua_guy]

I started saving for retirement around 25, but that was my first full time job that offered a tax-sheltered retirement savings plan. Back then, an IRA to me was a concept that was briefly discussed in a business law course of all places--it wasn't all that interesting. Wish I had known then what I know now. My perspective on being a college student has changed from when I was one, to now. College grads might know about a lot of things, but they are really just learning how to tie their shoes when it comes to earning money and corporate life.

So, starting around 25, I would match what my company was willing to give me, but I didn't have much else to save. I only really started upping my contributions in my late 20's. For about a year, I bumped myself back down to the company match because I was incurring some really big expenses with a previous house.

Now I'm putting in as much as I can.

[Thrif-t]

I started investing 6% in my 401k when I got my first job out of college at 21. I upped my contribution 1% every year when I got a raise. I made it up to 10% and then it stayed at that rate for quite a few years since I went part time and started having family. I eventually started upping it again and got up to 17% but then stopped there as we are now in the college paying years for 3 kids.

My DH started saving at the same time I did and employed the same strategy. He has a pension so we've not upped his contribution past the 20% rate.

We are 49 and 52.