Key Points
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Delaying Social Security until you are 70 will maximize your monthly payment.
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If that age is your target, here’s how to tell whether you are ahead of your peers in saving.
Saving for retirement is not an easy task. It helps to have some yardsticks to keep you on track. That said, Social Security will pay you more every month if you delay collecting past your full retirement age. That benefit ends at age 70, which makes it a good age to use for a final retirement assessment of your savings. Your goal, using other savers as a comparison, is around $600,000. Well, it’s actually not that simple. Here’s what you need to know.
Delayed gratification is hard
Saving is basically deferring spending today so you can spend in the future. It isn’t easy to do that. Not only do you have living expenses to cover, but the modern world seems designed to get you to spend money. It takes material discipline to put money aside for the future. Which is why it is notable that the median savings for those aged between 65 and 75 is around $200,000.
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The median means that half of the list is below that figure and half above. The average for that age group is, as noted, roughly $600,000. What this tells you, in conjunction with the median figure, is that many people saved very little and many saved a lot. If you are setting a retirement savings target, you should probably aim high and go for the average over the median.
If you have hit that number already, you are ahead of the game. Congratulations! Pat yourself on the back, you deserve it. But most Americans believe they will need more than twice that amount to retire comfortably. A total of $1.4 million was the average reported in a recent Northwestern Mutual survey on the topic. So if you have $600,000, you are doing better than average, but you may not be done just yet.
That said, there’s another rule of thumb that may give you a better estimate of your own situation. Saving 10x your salary by your full retirement age is a frequently used target. Only you can calculate that number, but there’s a progression to help you along the way if you aren’t ready to retire yet. The target should be 1x your salary by age 30, 3x by 40, 6x by 50, and 8x by 60. So if you aren’t at 10x, you have other targets to aim for.
Don’t get discouraged, get motivated
The idea here isn’t to hold yourself to some arbitrary savings goal. You need to consider your own personal situation. And, if you aren’t where you would like to be based on the comparisons and rule-of-thumb yardsticks above, don’t give up. Give yourself the challenge of saving harder to get closer to the goal. And if you are well ahead of the pack, maybe consider easing up and enjoying your money a little more in the present.
The $23,760 Social Security bonus most retirees completely overlook
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