What percent of your income should you be saving to achieve an adequate monthly income at retirement time?
The quick answer is 15% of your earnings need to be saved until you retire. To explain why this answer, I take you back in history 40 years. Almost without exception, you graduated from college, or trade school and went to work for an employer for the next 40 years of your life. Ever heard of the gold watch award and the thing called a “pension?” Well that was because businesses ran the same way for years and years, without much change in technology. This allowed the employer to save money for you and you didn’t have to do one thing but go to work and plan vacations. Boy how times have changed. The gold watch is gone and 
sadly along with it the company pension.
Fast-forward to today and advancement in technology have made it so the average career only lasts six years. This is not the number of years you work for a particular employer, this is for just one career! Statistics show you will have six careers in your lifetime before your retire.
So now that we have reviewed history just a little bit and seen that it is up to you to save money for your retirement be aware that the percentage for most 35-45 year-olds is 15% of annual earnings. This will give these people enough money to receive two-thirds of the salary they made when working. This number includes Social Security income benefits.
Again…
- 15% of annual earnings
- Allows retirement for 25 years
- At about two-thirds of wages.
This is an alarming statistic when we know from the Social Security Administration that 91 percent of all retirees are totally dependent upon SS income and that this income is not enough to live on. In addition, as I have noted in recent posts, healthcare costs for the elderly will become so enormous over the next 10 to 20 years that all of Social Security benefits will need to be used just for those costs alone!
You can learn to save 15% of your income by going here and signing up for the Basic program that will give you access to a retirement planning worksheet. See for yourself how to save the amount you will need. We have helped thousands of people, and we can help you too.
