re: What retirement savings balance is your goal, and by what age?

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I appreciate the replies, and I do find a lot of benefit reading about other’s successes.

I’m around 10 years from retirement, and I find that while I’m good at the saving part of retirement planning, I’m not very good at determining goals and changing plans.

I have $2.4M in retirement funds and $800K in post tax accounts. My original goal was $5M in liquid retirement funds by age 60. I think I’ll achieve my original goal, but now need to decide to either retire earlier than planned or increase the goal. While I don’t love everything about my job, there are certain aspects that I greatly enjoy, and I’m very good at a highly technical, specialized job that pays me well. I’ve worked my whole career to get to this point, and have guilt about giving it up before I planned to.

Consulting financial advisors are useless in my opinion, and I’ve started seeking advice from others that have faced a similar situation

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I retired 6 years ago. If you are debt free and unless:
- you have really expensive habits/hobbies
- and/or live in a very high cost of living area
- or you or someone in your family has high medical bills
then you have plenty of money saved.

One of the first things I realized, with the help of a financial advisor, is that in retirement the goal is to manage the tax bracket you are in. The more you can put into a Roth now the better that will help keep you in a lower bracket.

Another thing I realize now, and you alluded to this, is I should have reevaluated my investment strategy when I was about 55. I should have taken advantage of a Roth sooner but I just kept doing what I had always done. Now, between SS and RMD there is no way I can stay out of the 22% tax bracket going forward. That means you lose the advantage of paying 0% taxes on capital gains.

I started my career about when the DOW was at 1,000 on this chart. My advice for the younger folks is DO NOT bail out when the there is a significant market correction. When the market falls 50% it is a buying opportunity. I don't know who made this chart, I just found it on the internet.
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Some people are ecstatic earning 18% in a mutual fund in a year. If you are in this boat, you will probably retire in your late 60's

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Poor broke bastards.

Just ran a FIRE calculator I found on reddit. Do these numbers make sense?

32
600k NW
300k income post taxes (tough to estimate year to year since I'm SE)
120k spending (business and personal)

Target = retirement spending of 100k

I can retire at 38? Seems way too early...

Goal is 3X annual income by age 45.
I've been increasing my 401k contribution by 1% every year for the last 6 years.