How much should I have saved by my age?

The general rule is you should have saved roughly 1x your annual salary by 30, 3x by 40, and 10x by 65, though honestly it varies a lot depending on your income, cost of living, and when you started saving. Most people are behind on these benchmarks anyway, so don't stress too much if you're not hitting them exactly. What matters more is that you're actually putting money away consistently and have some kind of plan, even if it's not perfect.

The math people throw around (1x salary by 30, etc.) is more of a starting point than actual guidance, and it honestly breaks down pretty fast once you factor in real life. What matters way more is figuring out what you actually *need* to retire on, then working backwards from there. If you're making 50k a year but living on 30k, you don't need 10x your salary saved - you might only need 5-6x depending on how long you're planning to live and what your returns look like. Someone making 150k but spending 140k of it is in a completely different boat even though their salary is higher.

The better approach is to think about your annual expenses and aim for maybe 25x that number by retirement (the 4% rule crowd swears by this). So if you need 40k a year to live on, you're shooting for around a million bucks. Work backwards from there based on your age and how much time you have to save. A 25-year-old and a 45-year-old with the same target number need totally different strategies. Also consider that pensions, social security, or passive income might shrink how much you actually need to have sitting in accounts.

The frustrating truth is there's no one magic number that works for everyone. I see folks in wildly different situations - some people are super anxious about hitting benchmarks they read online, when their actual situation is way better than they think. Others haven't looked at their spending in years and have no clue what they're actually aiming for. Take 20 minutes, write down what you actually spend per month, multiply by 12, then think about what that number needs to be in retirement. That's the real starting point, not whatever age-based rule is floating around.