how much should I be saving and investing how much money should I have by this age how much do I need for a comfortable retirement these are questions I get asked all the time and so in this video I wanted to cover the answer to each I warn you now some of these numbers might surprise you they certainly surprised me when I first saw them but there is a little trick to Fast Track your progress which I'll share later on in the video let's start with the decade of your 20s you might be fresh out
of University with a mountain of student Deb maybe you've done an apprenticeship or a training program instead and you likely have an entry-level paycheck the average 20-year-old in the UK has less than £1,000 saved and in the US that number is less than $1,800 at this stage it's not exactly about the dollar amount that you've got saved up but actually about building the right financial habits that will pay off big time for the decades to come so that said some of the key things to focus on in your 20s are number one get rid of
any High interest rate debt Consumer Debt like credit cards can very quickly spiral out of control growing faster than your money would make in Investments so if you have high interest rate debt the best way to keep more of what you make in your pocket is to pay that off make that a priority number two track your spending knowing where your money is going is the very first step to being able to save more of it so the simple Act of doing this is going to put you further than most people in this age group
and number three work towards saving up at least one month of your living expenses and then once you've got that covered then do number four and that is opening up a tax advantage investment account and invest even the smallest amount $10 or equivalent even if you don't have that much in your 20s it doesn't matter the reason you just want to get started is firstly to start building financial habits into your identity from early on and secondly because you have time on your side so even the smallest amount can start compounding you can get started
by using the trading 212 Link in my description and get a free share worth up to £100 just by depositing £1 moving into the 30s hopefully by the age of 30 you have a bit more to your name than you did in your 20s the guideline according to Fidelity is to have one year of your salary saved up so if your salary is 50,000 by age 30 you'd have 50,000 saved up so that amount includes the money sitting in your savings account your retirement account and or your investment account now I don't want you to
look at this guideline and feel bad or feel behind because that's not the point and I myself hadn't reached this guideline but what I do want to show you is where these guidelines are coming from why they exist and how will they will translate into your retirement savings so according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics the average annual salary for people in their 30s in the United States is around $50,000 and in the UK it's just under £40,000 so if someone in the 30s who is making 50,000 per year were to invest that 50,000 and
then contribute an additional 500 per month from that point on assuming an 8% average rate of return they would have approximately 1.77 million saved up by the time that they reach 65 that's that's pretty decent that's what the compounding growth for a 35e period from age 30 to 65 looks like the three goals in this decade is number one save a bigger percentage of your income aim to save and invest at least 10 to 20% of your income every year even more if you can your 20s is more about finding out what you want to
do exploring as many things as you can focusing on building your career Capital so the skills and the credentials and what you need to then in your 30s find out what has worked for you and then double down on that to make more money number two avoid lifestyle inflation an easy trap in your 30s is to increase your spending in line with your income maybe this wasn't a thing in your early 20s because you didn't have much money to start with to spend but in your 30s you've really got to watch out for it and
number three work towards becoming debt free except for your mortgage this will free up more of your income to dedicate to Investments and to retirement savings by the way if you do want to learn how to invest then I have a completely free Master Class where I go into more detail about how to multiply your money by knowing the right things to invest in the biggest mistake beginners make and how to avoid them and how to set yourself up financially for a WorryFree future it's completely free and the link is in the description and then
we move into the next decade 40s so we've seen that the guideline is to have saved one years of your salary by age 30 then the aim is to save one more from 30 to 35 and then another from 35 to 40 so when I read that guideline my first instinct was okay that's a lot of money how many people will actually be able able to do that but actually the key Point here is that the savings Target is not just about the amount it accounts for the compounding growth of the money that you've already
saved as well so let's break that down the goal is to have saved three years of your salary by 40 let's say your salary is 50,000 the total Target would be then 3 * 50,000 150,000 however you've already saved one years of salary by age 30 so this 50,000 will grow or will have grown to around 107,000 so now the remaining amount you need to save from 30 to 40 is 150,000 minus 107,000 so 43,000 dividing that 43,000 over the 10 years from 30 to 40 that comes out to only needing to save about 360
per month not the full 830 per month that you might have initially calculated so the key point is that the compounding growth of your initial savings make a big difference in how much additional savings you need to hit the overall Target so the earlier you invest the easier it is to then meet the rest of the guidelines the three areas to focus in your 40s are number one start maxing out your retirement contributions aim to invest at least 15% of your gross income for your retirement these are probably your best earning years in most cases
so save as much as you can both in your employer spons and retirement account as well as your own investment account number two be proactive in your tax planning meet with a tax adviser who will help you maximize your deductions every year and number three understand how you're going to prioritize your expenses if you find yourself taking care of your parents consider their needs in the context of all of your other and your own Financial priorities as well Home Health Care assisted living is expensive and those costs need to be weighed against saving for your
own retirement and for your children's savings and education as well so now is a time to factor in everything and how you'll make it work then as you approach your 50s the savings goal becomes a bit more ambitious experts generally recommend having six times your annual salary saved up by this age for example if your salary has been around 60 ,000 per year the target would be to have 360,000 saved and invested by 50 I don't know how realistic this is and looking at the history of the stock market and the average rate of return
it seems doable but if you're in your 50s and you're watching this I'd love to hear from you and I'm sure so would everyone else let us know in the comments how realistic this is and what you would have done differently if you could go back in time and tell your 20 or 30 or 40 year old s things you want to look at in this decade of your life include number one reassess your Investment Portfolio as you start approaching retirement you want to begin thinking about wealth preservation not just wealth accumulation so it's recommended
to make your Investment Portfolio less risky consider investing in more stable Investments like bonds to balance out some of the risks that you may have taken for your portfolio in the early decades number two think about how you can turn your investments into a steady stream of income in retirement this would be a good time to talk to an adviser who specializes in helping people turn their retirement assets into income they'll look at important Financial factors such as whether you might outlive your retirements savings they'll consider inflation best and worst case scenarios Health expenses that
you need to take into consideration and a lot more then we move into age 60 and Beyond by age 60 retirement hopefully is on the horizon you want to make sure you have now enough saved up to maintain your lifestyle ideally the guideline is to have saved up at least eight times your annual salary some things to consider at this age number one review your Investments look at your risk tolerance to maintain the savings you built and not uer a big loss right at the beginning of your retirement find out more on optimal ways to
invest your retirement savings to make sure you don't outlive it number two ensure you have a clear retirement plan this includes understanding your expected income sources such as pensions savings and Investments and adjust your plans as necessary to meet your goals so you also want to be thinking about health expenses how you're going to pass on any savings Investments assets to your children and taking into account those plans as well so those are some very high level guidelines for you to consider before I close off I do want to leave you with a final thought
these numbers are all well and good these guidelines are all well and good but they tend to box everyone in into the same lifestyle which is really far from the reality and the situations or circumstances each of us have an article by go banking rate actually found that most Americans have less than $1,000 in savings and almost 50% of those living in the UK have less than 1,000 this massively contrasts with the guidelines and the numbers that I've said earlier in the video so even if you have more than that saved up at this point
that is you doing better than most people at the end of the day these guidelines and these videos are great to get knowledge and education fromom and then you want to tweak it and apply it to your situation thank you for watching if you like this video you may also enjoy this video right here which explains in more detail how compounding works and how the first 100,000 is the most important when it comes to your savings thank you so much for watching and see you back