How Much Should You Save for Retirement at 30?

The Short Answer: Save 15% of Your Salary

A common retirement target is 15% of your salary, including your employer's match. If your employer matches 4% of your pay, you contribute 11% and the match brings the total to 15%. If there is no match, the full 15% comes from you. The 15% figure is a rule of thumb, not a law — it assumes you start in your 20s or early 30s, retire in your mid-60s, and want to replace most of your working income in retirement. Start later, and the number rises; start at 30, and 15% is a strong target to aim for.

If 15% feels out of reach right now, start with what you can manage and build up. At minimum, contribute enough to get your employer's full match — a match is an immediate 100% return on the matched dollars, and leaving it unclaimed is leaving salary on the table. Then raise your contribution by 1% a year, or every time you get a raise. You will barely notice the smaller take-home pay, but the effect on the final balance is large: in the worked example below, a single extra percentage point of salary ($700 a year on a $70,000 salary) is worth $105,061.51 at retirement.

Three Ways to Find Your Number

The 15% rule tells you how much to save each year. Two other rules of thumb answer the bigger question — how much you need in total — and a set of age benchmarks tells you whether you are on track.

The 25x rule. Take the annual income you want in retirement and multiply it by 25. If you want $40,000 a year from your savings, your target is $1,000,000. The rule is the mirror image of the 4% rule: withdrawing 4% of a balance each year, adjusted for inflation, is a commonly used guideline for making savings last about 30 years, and 4% of $1,000,000 is exactly $40,000. Both are rules of thumb, not guarantees — they assume a balanced portfolio and a 30-year retirement — but they turn a vague goal into a concrete number.

Benchmarks by age. Fidelity's retirement savings guidelines suggest having about 1x your annual salary saved by 30, 3x by 40, 6x by 50, 8x by 60 and 10x by 67. For someone earning $70,000, that means roughly $70,000 saved by 30, $210,000 by 40, $420,000 by 50, $560,000 by 60 and $700,000 by 67. These are guidelines, not requirements — income, expenses, debt and goals all shift the right number — but they are a useful way to check whether you are roughly on track or falling behind.

Worked Example: A 30-Year-Old Saving 14%

Take a 30-year-old earning $70,000 a year, with $10,000 already saved, contributing 10% of salary ($7,000 a year) with a 4% employer match ($2,800 a year), retiring at 65 with a 7% average annual return. Run those numbers through the 401(k) Calculator and the projection is striking:

Over 35 years, the total money going in is $353,000 — $245,000 from the employee, $98,000 from the employer, plus the $10,000 starting balance. The projected balance at 65 is $1,585,922.78. The difference, $1,232,922.78, is investment growth — more than three times the total contributions. Using the 4% rule, that balance could support about $5,286.41 a month of retirement income (balance × 4% ÷ 12), or roughly $63,437 a year before tax.

Notice two things. First, the shape of the growth: after 10 years the balance is only $161,449.21, but more than half of the final balance arrives in the last decade, because compounding accelerates as the balance grows. Second, this saver starts behind the benchmarks — $10,000 at 30 against a 1x target of $70,000, and still behind at 40 — yet catches up by 50 and finishes at more than twice the 10x benchmark. Starting behind at 30 is not a verdict; a steady 14% saving rate closes the gap. The calculator's assumptions are a steady 7% average return, unchanged salary and contribution rate, monthly contributions, and no loans, withdrawals or fees — a planning simplification, not a forecast.

What 15% Looks Like at Your Salary

The 15% target is a percentage, so the monthly amount scales with pay. Here is what 15% of salary means each month at four income levels, including the employer match:

For the $70,000 earner in the worked example, moving from 14% to the full 15% — contributing 11% instead of 10%, with the same 4% match — raises the projected balance at 65 from $1,585,922.78 to $1,690,984.29, and the estimated monthly income from $5,286.41 to $5,636.61. Total contributions rise to $377,500, and investment growth to $1,313,484.29. That single percentage point of salary — $700 a year, or about $58 a month — is worth $105,061.51 at retirement. Small increases, made early, are the cheapest retirement money there is.

The Cost of Waiting Ten Years

The most expensive retirement decision is not picking the wrong fund — it is starting late. Take the same saver from the worked example, with the same $10,000 starting balance, the same $70,000 salary, the same 10% contribution and 4% match, the same 7% return — but starting at 40 instead of 30:

Waiting ten years means contributing $98,000 less — but ending up with $867,110.05 less at retirement, and $2,890.37 a month less income. The missing decade is not just ten years of contributions; it is the ten years when the earliest money would have had the longest to compound. The first dollars you save are the most powerful, because they have the most time to grow. The best time to start was ten years ago, and the second-best time is this month.

Stay Inside the 2026 Limits

For 2026, the IRS employee elective-deferral limit for 401(k) plans is $24,500 for everyone under 50. Workers aged 50 or older can add an $8,000 catch-up, taking their limit to $32,500 — except workers aged 60 to 63, who get a higher SECURE 2.0 super catch-up of $11,250 instead, for a total of $35,750. The super catch-up replaces the standard $8,000; it does not stack on top of it. The combined employee-plus-employer limit for 2026 is $72,000. The 401(k) Calculator checks your contributions against these limits and flags any excess.

At most salaries, the 15% target sits comfortably inside the limit: 15% of $100,000 is $15,000 a year, well under $24,500. Higher earners should watch the ceiling — 15% of a $200,000 salary is $30,000, which exceeds the $24,500 employee limit, so the remainder needs another home, such as an IRA or a taxable account. And from 2026, if your prior-year FICA wages from the employer sponsoring the plan exceeded $150,000, catch-up contributions must be Roth (after-tax). If you are saving outside a workplace plan, the Roth IRA Calculator can project that account too.

Starting Late? It Is Not Too Late

If you are 40, 45 or 50 and reading this with little saved, the cost-of-waiting table above is sobering — but it is not the end of the story. The 40-year-old starter still reaches $718,812.73 by 65, supporting about $2,396.04 a month. That is real money, built from $255,000 of contributions. Late starters have tools early starters do not: the $8,000 catch-up at 50+ (or $11,250 at 60–63) lets you save more each year, and peak earning years usually mean a higher salary to save from. Raise your rate above 15% if you can, keep the match, and let the Compound Interest Calculator show what a few extra years of growth can do.

Sources: 2026 limits from IRS Notice 2025-67 and news release IR-2025-111 ($24,500 elective deferral; $8,000 catch-up at 50+; $11,250 super catch-up at ages 60–63; $72,000 total additions; Roth catch-up required above $150,000 prior-year FICA wages under SECURE 2.0 §603). Age benchmarks are Fidelity's retirement savings guidelines (1x salary by 30, 3x by 40, 6x by 50, 8x by 60, 10x by 67). All projections were produced by running the 401(k) Calculator (monthly compounding at the stated return; 4% rule for monthly income). Last reviewed: 13 November 2026.

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