Your Retirement Savings

I am retired now. My answer will no doubt ruin the curve.

I contribute the max 18,500 every year and currently have $140K total. At 36 with a good twenty years to go I think I’m sitting pretty. Thank you Thrift Savings Plan. And I guess thank you Ohio for having such a low cost-of-living.

i have $1000 saved dollars and i am so fucked forever.

You have saved dollars?! So jealous right now.

P.S. I am powerfucked times infinity.

I do have a change jar at home that's like a quarter full atm, so it isn't technically true to say I have NO savings.

$0 but the only person in my family who's ever "retired" was my grandmother who worked for the post office and even then she worked 30 hours a week as a Wal-Mart greeter until she died, so the concept is fundamentally foreign to me.

the $1000 i have saved is because i tried to save some money while i was working a bit extra, and then i gave it to my wife for safekeeping.
i 100% live paycheck to paycheck, and my 2 days/week regular work doesn't cover my rent.

I think my mom is the first person in my family to retire and stay retired (so far, it's only been a couple of years). Thoroughly expect to still be working as a brittle nonagenarian.

We were pretty rich when my daughter was born. Her college account balance is twice (twice!) my IRA balance. She's 10.

Some folks say it should be the other way round, because you can borrow for college but you can't borrow for retirement. Welp, too late now.

I may have to ask my daughter if I can crash in her dorm for a while.

a big tent and a one-way ticket to Uzbekistan should do me

i'd love to visit bukhara one day

I've been to Uzbekistan, some cool stuff, madrasas, Samarkand, Bukhara, Tashkent, etc., but it's pretty hardcore there right now. Great bread, great plov!

'Zero student loan debt' is second only to 'life' in the list of greatest gifts you can give to a child.

ie I have no savings largely thanks to student loan debt. Thanks, college (and, tbf, my complete absence of financial acumen).

i live paycheck to paycheck. i currently have about $800 credit card debt, that's the extent of my worldly debts. i have no savings, and while i do have a decent enough pension in my current job - where I've only been 18 months - i am extremely unlikely to stay here long-term as i don't want to live where i am longer than perhaps a year or two more.

oh i have student debt in scotland of about 1500 pounds but a: they don't collect it from me since i left the country, b: it's interest are,. c: they take it directly out of my paycheck when I'm in scotland in very reasonable (i.e. small) installments so i basically don't even think about it as being a thing that exists

yeah, my retirement savings pretty much == my student loan debt. i'm hoping that the savings appreciate at a faster rate than the debt, but who knows.

I may have to ask my daughter if I can crash in her dorm for a while.

― I will finish what I (Ye Mad Puffin), Friday, February 9, 2018 1:58 PM (fourteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

throw keggers to fund your retirement!

it's probably been addressed in the uncool conservative beliefs thread, but the student loan debt problem is related to a higher education bubble, which could be helped in the future by reducing the number of people going into debt to go to college, and reducing the number of people going to college, period. Many of them get little professional or financial benefit from higher education. If they are going to be Wal-Mart greeters or Uber drivers or Amazon warehouse workers, or even many computer programmers, the only real role of college is to prolong childhood/youth, postpone the meaningless drudgery of adulthood, and to give a basic overview of social justice issues.

I have a lot of money saved. This is due to me being cheap as shit, saving a majority of every paycheck since I was 16 and never having student loans or any serious health issues yet.

also living somewhere cheap i suppose?

I took out a few grand in student loans to finish my master's thesis without having to have a day job, (after failing at that for 3 1/2 years) then I paid $60 a month for 10 years on autopay, and my credit is now "excellent"

Yeah. The student loan debt crisis is very real and it needs to be addressed asap.

By a strange coincidence that there is ~$1.4 trillion in outstanding student debt, and the recent tax bill is estimated to increase the national debt by ~$1.4 trillion, while it does nothing whatsoever to address student loan debt but pours most of its largesse into the pockets of the ultra-wealthy. We are so fucked.

making notes for my ILXor plundering spree 25 years from now

xpost Hard emphasis on the 'we'.

xpost. No, I lived in NYC for 13 years. Now I kind of live everywhere.

you entered the matrix

must have a hell of a job!

Even though I have a lot of money saved in cash and I paid for my last apartment in Astoria in cash, I still won't take taxis/ubers, haven't had cable since 2003, my MotoG has been cracked for over a year, I am using a second hand laptop, I cut and dye my own hair...but I do drink expensive bottles of wine regularly. My mom was a waitress and dad military. I am just super good with saving money, making investments and being flexible with jobs.

less than it was at the beginning of the past two weeks

xpost -- Can't claim to be on Yerac's level but the importance of some kind of consistent frugality is key. Let the indulgences be just that, and sparingly rather than constants. (Obvious points but.)

voted 0

the student loan debt problem is related to a higher education bubble, which could be helped in the future by reducing the number of people going into debt to go to college, and reducing the number of people going to college, period. Many of them get little professional or financial benefit from higher education.

I'm super wary of this line of thinking. People with degrees still earn way more over a lifetime than people without, and that's not reversing itself any time soon.

As someone without a degree, there's a security to having that piece of paper that I don't have. If my business fails, I can go make $11/hr at an Amazon warehouse until I die of heat exhaustion.

i have a considerable amount in my 401k thanks to starting to contribute when i was 22, a nice employer match and profit-sharing contribution, and some cool portfolio management stuff we get (~20% return in the last year even with the recent dip). but i'm 30 years from needing that money so it's pretty uh conceptual at this time.

i have none which is dumb of me as I've been financially stable for a couple years and still haven't gotten around to setting something up

college is for networking

I kind of think everyone should be able to start a 401k at birth

I really wonder about US social security and will it be there or not when I retire

or shall I say "when I can no longer work"

I kind of think everyone should be able to start a 401k at birth

Hell yes they should.

are y'all who are putting 10%+ of income into a 401(k)/Roth/etc including employer match in that number?

I feel insanely privileged and jerkish for even asking that, I'm here thinking "am I way behind?!" when half my peers here are measuring savings in sandwiches :/

hahahah employer with a retirement plan??? riiigggght

carey, can i get a loan?

I'm going to lose some shit at some point from leaving this place or them finally restructuring the corporate crap long before I retire but I shit you not, I have some 401(k) matching _and_ a pension plan because I work for a dinosaur

the pension plan's going to disappear any moment

I don't loan money, ever. But I will invest with or just buy someone the essential thing they need. I am always happy to buy drinks.

always essential to buy drinks

I guess if we want to consider a record collection as savings, then I'm doing better.

I had to finally get rid of almost all hardcopy music besides what fit into two boxes two years go. Moving really makes you put what you own and keep in perspective. I had all my stuff in a 8x10 storage unit for a year and when I opened the boxes in another country it was amazing what I had forgotten about and what I was annoyed I hadn't already sold.

are y'all who are putting 10%+ of income into a 401(k)/Roth/etc including employer match in that number?

i put in 9% on my own and our match is 7% i think. i should bump to 10% this year prob.

is your company’s pension plan still open? like if i got hired there today would i get in w/some unvested status? when it goes away (and it will) you’ll still end up with a chunk to put in an IRA or something.

The only time I put money into 401ks is for the employer match. I feel like I can do better with the money outside of the preselected mutual funds the 401k holds. I like flexibility.

I had to finally get rid of almost all hardcopy music besides what fit into two boxes two years go. Moving really makes you put what you own and keep in perspective.

It does -- glad I grew up moving (like Yerac, military dad) as it's gotten me used to the idea, and to welcome both moves if needed and reducing what I have as necessary. Of the many books and CDs I've sold or given away or donated over time, I can't say I miss a single one. (Honestly the only exception would be The Alienist, and I've only thought about that recently given the TV version.)

yerac will you manage my money for me

About 15 years ago I worked for a company that contributed 3% of my salary to a 401K as a profit-sharing arrangement.

In my current job, I heard they matched 3%, and I was like, "cool, just like my old place." Then I realized they meant 3% of my contribution, which is a decidedly different amount.

everything crashes or inflates, and I'm penniless

...as would be everyone whose net worth could be written without at least a generous handful of zeroes. A general financial catastrophe can't be planned around. You just have to gut it out with whatever resources you can salvage from the fire. But it's always a good idea to have some tangible assets that aren't just 'paper' or digits on a bank's balance sheet, because those are the first to immolate.

There was a time when I thought I'd be able to get away with just selling my CD collection if I was skint.

My plan B is "Well, I can always move to Lincolnshire".

My story is similar to officer sonny bonds', but I had it in the bank where it all got eaten by rent during long-term unemployment