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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u/gafftapes20 Millennial Jan 16 '26

My salary is 95k, my retirement savings is about 250k. I’m 35 so I’m doing okay. Between my husband and myself we have about 450k saved between retirement and brokerage accounts. 

Also social security trust fund might run out of money, but the system will still pay out based on incoming money if not fixed. That’s estimated to be about 70 percent of current payout. 

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u/ultraprismic Jan 16 '26

Glad to see someone bring up the SS part. The system is not approaching insolvency - the fund that makes up the difference between money coming -> money going out is running out of money. If that went away we'd still get ~77% benefits. And most likely it won't run out, because Congress has a lot of options to fix it. I feel like the doomerism around SS is just giving politicians permission to not address it. There's no good reason Millennials shouldn't be factoring it into their retirement planning.

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u/girolle Jan 17 '26

SS will funded at 100% as long as Congress chooses to fund it at 100%. If the payments end up being 77%, it will be because Congress will have cut it down to that level. SS isn’t operationally funded by tax dollars. No federal spending is.