How Much Should You Have Saved by 30, 40, 50?
The Standard Benchmarks
The most cited set comes from Fidelity: 1x your income by 30, 3x by 40, 6x by 50, 8x by 60, and 10x by 67 (Fidelity, retirement guidelines).
On a EUR 45,000 income:
| Age | Multiple | Target |
|---|---|---|
| 30 | 1x | EUR 45,000 |
| 40 | 3x | EUR 135,000 |
| 50 | 6x | EUR 270,000 |
| 60 | 8x | EUR 360,000 |
| 67 | 10x | EUR 450,000 |
The Assumptions Inside Them
Fidelity states them, and they matter more than the multiples do. The benchmarks assume you save 15% of income annually including any employer match, that you retire at 67, and that you want roughly 80% of your pre-retirement income in retirement. They count retirement accounts but exclude home equity and taxable savings.
Three of those travel badly to a European reader:
- The employer match is a US retirement feature. Most European readers have nothing equivalent, so hitting 15% means saving 15% yourself.
- Retiring at 67 is an assumption, not a fact about you, and anyone aiming earlier needs a completely different trajectory.
- 80% of pre-retirement income is a proxy for spending. It is a reasonable one on average and a poor one for anyone whose spending is not proportional to their income, which is most people who save a lot.
Why Spending Is the Better Yardstick
Here is the failure case, and it is common.
Two people earn EUR 45,000. One spends EUR 40,000 a year, the other spends EUR 27,000. The income benchmark gives them the identical target: EUR 45,000 by 30, EUR 450,000 by 67.
But what each of them needs is set by what they spend. Using the 25x rule that comes out of the 4% rule:
Spends 40,000 a year: 40,000 x 25 = EUR 1,000,000
Spends 27,000 a year: 27,000 x 25 = EUR 675,000A gap of EUR 325,000 between two people the income benchmark treats as identical. The second person is not behind, they are running a shorter race, and the benchmark cannot see it.
What the Trajectory Actually Looks Like
If you want a target by age that reflects your own situation, the honest version is not a table. It is: what does your savings rate do to the timeline?
Starting from zero, targeting 25 times your annual spending, with a 5% real return:
| Savings rate | Years to the target |
|---|---|
| 10% | About 51 |
| 20% | About 37 |
| 30% | About 28 |
| 50% | About 17 |
| 70% | About 9 |
Those figures assume a constant rate and a constant real return, which nobody has. They are useful for the shape rather than the precision: the relationship is not linear. Doubling your savings rate from 10% to 20% removes about 14 years. Doubling again from 20% to 40% removes far more.
The reason is that a higher savings rate does two things at once, which is the same point as above in a different form.
Using the Benchmarks Anyway
None of this makes the multiples useless. They are a fast sanity check and they are far better than no reference point. A reasonable way to hold them:
Use the multiple as a floor, not a target. Being under it at 40 is worth investigating. Being over it is not permission to stop thinking.
Convert to spending once you know your spending. Multiply annual spending by 25 for the 4% assumption. That number is yours; the salary multiple is an average of strangers.
Count everything. The benchmarks exclude home equity and taxable savings by design. Your actual position includes them, so do not compare a partial figure against a partial benchmark by accident.
Re-check yearly, and after anything that changes your spending rather than anything that changes the market.
How Turbobulls Helps You Track It
The number these benchmarks are really asking about is your net worth, and Turbobulls builds it from your actual transactions: investments across brokers and currencies, cash accounts, custom assets such as property, and debt through loan and mortgage account types, so what you owe counts against you.
Your savings rate is computed from tracked income and expenses, which is the input the whole trajectory table above depends on and the one most people are guessing at.
FI progress, which measures where you are against financial independence, sits on the paid plan.
Know the Two Numbers That Matter
The Full Picture: Read These Next
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: I am behind the benchmark. How bad is it?
Less bad than it feels, and the benchmark may not be measuring you. It assumes a 15% savings rate including an employer match that most European readers do not have, and a retirement at 67. Work out your own target from your spending before deciding you are behind an average built on assumptions that are not yours.Q: Does my home count?
Not in the Fidelity benchmarks, which exclude home equity deliberately. In your own net worth it certainly counts. The trap is comparing a total that includes your home against a benchmark that does not, which flatters the comparison substantially.Q: What if my income changes a lot?
Then income multiples are a poor fit, because the target moves whenever you get a raise. Spending multiples are more stable for anyone with variable or rising income, and they measure the thing that actually determines when you can stop.Q: Is 25x the right multiple?
It comes from assuming a 4% withdrawal rate, and that rate is contested. Its own author has revised it upward, which lowers the multiple. Treat 25x as a planning starting point and see the 4% rule guide for how sensitive the target is to that assumption.Turbobulls is a tracking and analytics tool, not an investment adviser. Nothing here is investment, tax, or legal advice. Investing involves risk, including loss of principal. Do your own research or consult a licensed professional.
Measure Against Your Own Number
Turbobulls builds your net worth and savings rate from real transactions, so you can compare against a target that reflects your spending rather than an average.
- Net worth across investments, cash, custom assets and debt
- Savings rate computed from tracked income and expenses
- Loan and mortgage account types, so debt counts against you
- Custom assets for property and other unlisted holdings
- FI progress projection on the paid plan
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