Fidelity, a big name in the financial industry, recommends having 10 times your salary saved for retirement by age 67. But figuring out how much to put away for retirement on a yearly basis is a bit trickier.
Financial experts often say to aim for 15% to 20% of your income. But if you can’t afford that, you’d certainly be in good company — especially if you earn a $75,000 annual salary. To be clear, $75,000 is a respectable income. It’s just that you might need most of it to cover your bills, making that 15% to 20% savings target less feasible.
Here’s an idea of what you could be contributing to your retirement savings each year — and the balance it might produce.
Small contributions can go a long way
If saving 15% to 20% of a $75,000 salary sounds tough, how does saving more like 3% sound? If you contribute $2,400 a year, or $200 a month, to an individual retirement account (IRA), that’s roughly 3% of your salary. And it’s a sum that could also go a long way over time.
Over the past 50 years, the S&P 500’s average annual return has been 10%. That 10% represents years when the market did exceptionally well and years when it crashed. This should tell you that if you invest your IRA in stocks over a long period, you could conceivably end up with a similar average return on your money.
So let’s get back to that $200 a month. If you’re 30 now and you contribute that sum to your IRA through age 67, you’ll end up with a balance of about $792,000 if your investments grow 10% per year.
Not only is that a lot of money, but it may be enough to represent 10 times your salary by age 67 like Fidelity recommends. So all told, this sounds like a win.
Get started today
The amount of money you should be contributing toward retirement savings hinges on what you can afford. Experts can recommend 15% to 20%, but if that’s not possible without falling behind on bills, then that guidance clearly won’t work for you.
But with a long enough savings and investment window, you can turn a series of smaller contributions into a large sum over time. If you haven’t begun saving for retirement yet, check out this list of the best IRAs and open one today. The more time you give your money to grow, the less pressure you have to save a large amount on a yearly or monthly basis.
Case in point: Say you only have 27 years to save for retirement instead of 37 years like in the example above. In that case, it would take $545 a month to end up with about $792,000 in retirement savings instead of just $200 monthly contributions.
That may be harder to swing on $75,000 a year. But if you start funding your IRA early enough, you won’t have to push yourself to part with an uncomfortably large chunk of your income to get great results.
