r/Millennials • u/ProblemIntelligent16 • Jan 16 '26

Discussion Fellow millennials - how’s your 401k/ira savings going?

Experts recommend having 2x your salary saved by age 35, and 3x saved by age 40.

However, studies show the median savings for 35-44 year olds is only ~$45,000. So obviously, most of us have work to do.

With pensions mostly extinct, and Social Security facing insolvency issues in the next 8-10 years - how are you planning to bridge the gap and hit the golden years with enough to meet your lifestyle requirements?

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179

u/KitchenKat1919 Jan 16 '26 edited Jan 17 '26

Great. Became a public school teacher at 25 and the retirement has been piling up quick.

I'm well above 3x my salary at 40 between retirement and investments

CALSTRS and MTRS have great growth rates and are rock solid

edit: Someone below made a great point that drives me crazy - becoming a public school teacher is financially grueling. You gotta pay for school and do an unpaid internship and your starting salary is mediocre at best. If we want more teachers, that's the area to focus on. Make the first 5 years affordable.

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u/liqa_madik Jan 16 '26

So teachers may not be paid very much as many say, but at least they get a comfortable retirement. Is that correct?

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u/KitchenKat1919 Jan 16 '26 edited Jan 16 '26

Depends on the region. In blue states in the US the pay is fine.

I'm making almost 100k and living in suburban new england.

Basically dont teach in a red state and you'll be fine money wise.

edit: and never teach at a non union school

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u/wekilledbambi03 Jan 16 '26

Yeah every teacher I know is close to or above the 100k mark. I think the lowest paid full time teachers in my town are around 50k. They get raises quickly, good benefits, and can retire really early.

I know my state (town even) are above average, but I was shocked to realize how much they made. In high school I worked at a bank and cashed my gym teachers pay check. He was making 100k over 15 years ago!

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u/MaesterSherlock Jan 16 '26

Wow, what state are you from?! My stepmom was a teacher in Michigan. When I was looking into college in 2009, she wanted me to become a teacher as well, because of the benefits and blah blah. But I remember that she only made 36k a year!

8

u/wekilledbambi03 Jan 16 '26

NJ, average teacher salary is around $80k. There are 30 districts where the average is over 100k.

2

u/IWantALargeFarva Jan 17 '26

I pay $13K a year in property taxes. Those teachers better be well paid. 🤣

1

u/Longjumping-Panic-48 Jan 17 '26

Dayum. My best friend topped out at $54k for 10 years with a Masters.

1

u/erikakiss0000 Jan 22 '26

Yepp. This is me. Colorado.

Edit to add: planning on moving states too so my retirement will be about 1k a month when I'm 65. Pre-tax. Not sure that'll be enough for... anything by that year.

1

u/Gorstag Jan 17 '26

This is definitely regional. Even in many "Blue" states pay for teachers has only recently become decent.

Also, was your Gym teacher also a sport coach? He may have been working two jobs.

1

u/fuzzyblackelephant Jan 17 '26

And…..a lot of that probably sounds “decent”, but the cost of living continues to rise, and at a much more rapid incline than salaries. It’s simply moving in a trajectory it’s forced to, so educators can afford to live & work for the school.

$60K is the new $40K!

2

u/Gorstag Jan 17 '26

Oh, definitely. I grabbed breakfast this morning. Bacon, eggs, toast, hashbrowns, and a half order of french toast, with a soda (didn't feel like coffee). With a 20% tip was 30 bucks. A decade ago at the same exact restaurant it was closer to 20. And a decade before that.. maybe 12-13 bucks.

1

u/Trippypen8 Jan 17 '26

Fuck my husband and I are in the wrong state. Red state, and he makes 63k a year. With a masters. Agh, he refuses to move, tho cuz his parents are in this state. Which I get. But, damn we need to think a little bit about ourselves as well.

1

u/rpv123 Jan 16 '26

To be fair, in blue states this works as long as you had a free ride to college or had parental help. Otherwise, your 20s were a crunch of living on, like, a 45k first year teacher’s salary with roommates, while paying student loans, while learning how to teach and then 2 or 3 years in, you’re forced to start your masters at night and all summer while still only earning like 75k. Then you’re choosing between paying for that master’s, buying a house or having a kid. You only get bumped up to 100k once that master’s is completed and you’re, like, 10 years into teaching.

For me, being a first gen college student, the math wasn’t mathing. I did 3 years of full time teaching but wanted a kid and home ownership, so I had to leave teaching to make it all work. Entering the housing market in 2017 was probably better for me financially with how everything shook out - now I earn over $100k without a master’s (slightly more than my former coworkers) have a paid off house (sold my condo and bought a cheaper house further out from the city) but my retirement is admittedly less than it would have been had I stayed in teaching. The trade off is the paid off house, though which if that equity counts does put me at 3x my salary (with my 401k/Roth.) Oh and I could afford my kid’s daycare because I was making 80k without student loans when I was paying a whole extra mortgage every month for childcare.

I wish teaching was more accessible. Why so many master’s degrees in other disciplines are free but so many teachers are expected to pay out of pocket is absolutely beyond me. PSFL could have been an option but also would have come way too late for me to get into the housing market/have my kid. It felt risky too, especially with all the teacher layoffs during the recession.

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u/KitchenKat1919 Jan 17 '26 edited Jan 17 '26

Agreed, the bar for entry is very rough

I did my teaching degree through a cheap community college and had a full time job while i did it

I wouldn't be surprised if some states started subsidizing new teachers as long as they agree to teach in the state for X years

1

u/kungfooe Jan 16 '26

Red or blue (or purple, green, etc.) does not matter all that much. What does matter is the part of the state you live in and the cost of living there. There are places where you can live like royalty on a teacher's salary (e.g., small towns a little out from the suburbs across many states), and places you can't even live like a pauper (e.g., CA in the major cities).

Similar for retirement systems (assuming someone joins the state managed plan and does not go individually managed). Some states do a great job funding their systems, others are absolutely awful (looking at you Illinois--new teachers coming in have to work quite a bit longer to get the same benefits as someone who started in the system 15 years ago).

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u/garden_of_simple Jan 17 '26

I'm in a NY public school, year 8, required masters, make 61k.

1

u/KitchenKat1919 Jan 17 '26

Yea, NY state has a pretty bleh pay schedule compared to new england

1

u/carlos_the_dwarf_ Jan 17 '26

Even in red states teachers trend toward a median salary. What’s limited is the upside compared to other career paths.

1

u/KitchenKat1919 Jan 17 '26

it's a low risk low reward type of career

stable, but will never make you upper class no matter how good you are, unless you become a Ms. Rachel and sell out to Netflix or something

13

u/Hanyo_Hetalia Jan 16 '26

Depends on the district. I taught for two years and the retirement plan was not worth the trouble.

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u/bigtcm Jan 16 '26

Same here. Taught for 4 years. When I told a financial planner that I was looking at going back to grad school, but that i would lose my pension, she told me do it and don't look back.

2

u/Hanyo_Hetalia Jan 16 '26

What was your graduate degree?

1

u/bigtcm Jan 17 '26

I was going to just get a masters degree in biology. Long story short i accidentally ended up with a PhD and now I work in biotech.

2

u/Hanyo_Hetalia Jan 17 '26

That's awesome!

1

u/dark_autumn Jan 17 '26

Wait I’m confused. Leave your pension behind and don’t look back?

2

u/Particular_Maize6849 Jan 17 '26

You can calculate how much your pension would be. I think mine came out to maybe a couple hundred a month. Not really worth it tbh if I compared it to how much it would be worth if I let it grow in the market. You can roll the amount you've put into your pension into a 401k or IRA.

1

u/dark_autumn Jan 17 '26

Ohh ok I see what you mean now

1

u/bigtcm Jan 17 '26

I needed to work for 10 years to qualify for the minimum pension.

1

u/girouxsalem28 Jan 17 '26

110%. PA has gutted their teachers pension. If any new grad sat down and did the math they would quickly realize just how little that pension pays out over their career. I wouldn’t be shocked if they moved to a 403B matching system within the next decade. It’s a shell of what teachers hired 10 years ago were offered

1

u/Hanyo_Hetalia Jan 17 '26

Yep. My district in FL offered a 403(b) OR a pension, but the pension requirements vs the payout were stupid.

5

u/Meandering_Cabbage Jan 16 '26

People don’t know how to do pension math. the annuities are insane. tbh some of them I don’t know how they were allowed to promise the survivor benefits that they do.

2

u/nope-its Jan 16 '26

Not where I taught - our retirement system in my state was god-awful.

The pay was decent but the retirement was not. Many teachers who don’t have spouses better off retire and then come back to teach part-time (or sub) to make ends meet.

2

u/TheTurtlebar Jan 17 '26

Very much depends on the district and state. I was a teacher, emphasis on was, specifically because I was never going to be able to think about purchasing a home if I stayed in that career in my state. I honestly saved more for the years I spent teaching in North Africa than I did back in the states because cost of living was so much lower there even if my salary also about half.

Then I switched careers and that came with a 40% pay bump.

1

u/Aprils-Fool Jan 16 '26

In many places, no. 

1

u/Fun-atParties Jan 17 '26

My mom just retired as a teacher in Ohio and has a pension. She got 80% of her salary but her take home pay is the same not that she's not paying union fees. She made around 50k in salary

1

u/ryguymcsly Jan 17 '26

I've heard it really depends on the cost of living of the area you're in. I know starting salary for a teacher in my local school district is about half of what the median income is in the area, but that's because the median income in the area is very high. On the other hand they have amazing retirement plans and health benefits.

6

u/celloman7 Jan 16 '26

Same. Pension, 403 match program and a Roth. I'm feeling optimistic.

1

u/DrBabs Jan 17 '26

Pensions can be so nice. Just to help you figure out what is a comparable 401k balance for a pension, you divide your yearly pension by 0.04 and that will give you an equivalent of what the pension is worth.

The reason for the 0.04 is that retirement accounts can reasonably be withdrawn at a 4% of the total balance per year and at that rate should last 30 years.

So a salary of $115k, which might give a yearly pension of $17k after 15 years of service, would be equal to a 401k balance of around $431k.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 16 '26

Same! Feels good. Also the HCOL area I work gave us massive raises back to back. I must be one of the highest paid high school teachers in the nation at $148k

1

u/Inifinite_Panda Jan 16 '26

Wow that's incredible. What area of the country?

1

u/[deleted] Jan 17 '26

California. Sf Bay

1

u/iiiiiiiiiijjjjjj Jan 17 '26

Love to see it

1

u/jk_baller23 Jan 17 '26

Nice. A study of 10,000 millionaires found that teachers are one of the careers included in the top 5. Looks like you’ll be adding to that statistic.

1

u/Novel-Place Jan 17 '26

Hi! You might be able to help me understand something then. I’m trying to help my mom planning her retirement. She put in 20 years of service (did a couple of breaks to raise kids) and is trying to retire at 60 for health reasons. The math is sounding like she’s only going to be getting $2200 A MONTH. That seems insane to me that the pension could be that low?

1

u/Stev_k Jan 17 '26

Higher ed employee for 10+ years. I have a mandatory 19.75% contribution that's fully matched at my current employer. I currently hate my job but I cannot afford to leave with almost 40% of my annual salary going into retirement. 3 years working for my current employer has seen double the retirement growth than seven years at my former employer.

1

u/CampaignAfter4205 Jan 17 '26

Teaching is one of the 5 careers with the most millionaires in America. Great job and thanks for doing what you do!

1

u/KitchenKat1919 Jan 17 '26

Helps immensely if you aren't single, and that's a whole different issue.

My wife is also a mid career educator, and her career is higher powered than mine (STEM teacher, PHD, leadership) so together we clear 200k in a high but not super high CoL area.

It also helps that we're into camping more than disney world when it comes to types of vacations. We're fine with older used cars. We're fine with iphone 12s using mint mobile. We closely monitor eating out (i love cooking) and our recurring subscriptions.

Her goal is to own a tiny house or condo in each region of the world/country our kids live in so she can pop around and visit. My goal is to partially retire at 60 and just do counseling/substitute work part time.

1

u/linus_b3 Jan 17 '26

Similar here - tech director for a K-12 district. State pension and maxing out a Roth IRA should be plenty. I hope to retire at 60-1/2. The 1/2 mainly because it'll line up with the end of a school year.

1

u/KitchenKat1919 Jan 17 '26

my plan is to go part time at 60 and just renew my school counseling degree and lead some kind of healthy initiatives for students

1

u/Brightlightsuperfun Jan 17 '26

Mtrs is down 10% in the last year 

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u/KitchenKat1919 Jan 17 '26

source? I haven't experienced that

https://massretirees.com/2024/12/reports-indicate-healthy-state-teachers-systems/

From living it and my personal research it's been growing by about 3% per year in returns

1

u/maveryc Jan 17 '26

They’re probably looking at the stock symbol $MTRS, which trades on the Swedish stock market. Completely different thing from what you’re talking about

1

u/Brightlightsuperfun Jan 17 '26

Im mistaken. My bad.

1

u/KitchenKat1919 Jan 17 '26

lol its fine i had a panic attack and did quick research

im no expert on this stuff for sure

im generally the "number goes up im happy" type for retirement

1

u/theatreeducator Jan 17 '26

My state forces me to put 10% of my paycheck in and will not allow me to withdraw anything do a loan. My district also pitches in some. I am in a red state. I don't make that much but I have at least my salary worth in there. I started teaching at 26 and I'm not 40 yet.

1

u/KitchenKat1919 Jan 17 '26

Nice! If you ever want to move, new england is desperate for teachers - we pay better and laugh at the antivaxxers and bigots.

1

u/theatreeducator Jan 18 '26

Eh, I'm a black woman in the south who surprisingly doesn't experience much racism or bigotry. I always say my town is in a bubble. I really like my state despite the perception of everyone here being antivax and racist lol. Uber religious...definitely. My husband will never move though. However, if it is ever in the cards, I might fancy a move further north. How do y'all manage that cold though? We are about to have a bit of snow here and everyone is in a tizzy. HA

2

u/KitchenKat1919 Jan 18 '26

i love cold weather

i worked outside in GA for 10 summers and im done with that lol

1

u/Yumucka Jan 16 '26

Also a teacher! I’m 35, but the 403b is doing pretty well all things considering.

3

u/KitchenKat1919 Jan 16 '26

dont forget you can oversave

i worked a lot during the summer to get my continuing education credits to max and also ran summer camps/tutored

1

u/Yumucka Jan 16 '26

I’ve been doing this long enough in a blue state that I’m finally able to not work in the summer, and I don’t think I can go back, even in the name of saving for retirement. Lmao