Look around your office. Do you see anyone over 40? No? Are you saving enough to retire at 40? Then what do you think is going to happen?

EDIT: I will point out that this comment has fluctuated quite a bit between +2 and -2. So, clearly some very different experiences, which is good to hear. Perhaps not as dire as it looks.

Further, the "look around your office" result varies wildly from office to office. Looking around your average SV startup will skew to gullible, er, I mean risk-tolerant mid-20s engineers. My office is more than half composed of experienced engineers in their mid 30s and up who know their market rate.

http://www.computerworld.com/article/2512708/it-industry/rec...

Perhaps if you move, you'll find a more respectful and receptive environment for those who are seasoned.

Yes. A couple people on my team now, most of management (including our immediate supervisor, who just recently moved up from being a normal team member), whoever's in the cubes I saw those black "40" balloons on, the people who first built some of the corporate systems (well, the ones who haven't retired yet), etc.

Tech is a growing field. How big was it in 1995, compared to today? That's a decent approximation of what ratio of over 40 / under 40 you'd expect, assuming career changes aren't common enough to mess up the numbers too badly.

But, this is a large enterprise software company on the East Coast.

I don't see many people under 40 in my office.

Of course, even though my job is tech, the industry isn't (and it's even farther from being a silicon valley startup.)

  Look around your office. Do you see anyone over 40?

Look at the "careers" or "about us" pages for the tech company of your choice -- look for the group pictures of smiling faces. How many people do you see over age 40?

It cracks me up when such companies boast about how "diverse" they are, then show a group photo that is 70+% male. 80%+ white and asian, and 90% below age 40.

30 year treasuries are currently yielding 3%. You could get 4% in a less tax favored safe investment. Inflation is between 1 and 2%.

Let's see what that does for that cash saved in your 20s. Suppose you earn a quarter as much in your 20s as in your 40s (most have a higher salary growth ratio than that). Then figure on 20 years of 4% growth, or 2.5% after inflation. 2.5% compounded for 20 years is 64%. So your savings in your 20s ultimately add only 2/5 as much as your savings in your 40s. It's not nothing, but it's hardly the essential key to retirement to start early. You'll be fine starting at 40.

And 10% is nowhere near enough. That's essentially hoping that Paul Ryan doesn't get to undercut Social Security because that's what you're going to be living on. You need to save about 30% of pre-tax pay and invest carefully from age 21. Or 35% if you start soon after age 35. That's to retire in your early sixties. You also have to pay taxes, so figure on 40% or so of your paycheck for take home pay.

Do you know anyone doing that? We're going to have a crisis on our hands, I predict.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/01/02/business/20110...

Hope has nothing to do with it, 10 or 15 years before you plan to retire you start liquidating equities and going into bonds and treasuries. If the market is at a low point you hold off on equities until the market rises again.

For more: https://pressroom.vanguard.com/nonindexed/2013.10.23_A_more_...

That the market will rise again has held in the past in the U.S., so it's not so unreasonable to suspect it will in the future.

Note: This math assumes you're going to earn ~5% in the invested savings each year (after inflation), and that you can withdraw 4% of your invested sum each year in retirement.

And given this 2.5% figure, how can you suddenly withdraw MORE money than 4%? If you can't earn 4% reliably, withdrawing over 4% puts you at risk of running out of money unless you know at what age you will die (unlikely).

The end of exponential population growth as the Earth has already filled beyond its carrying capacity predictably eliminates all sources of growth except productivity growth. Previous generations could depend on a population and resource extraction growth boost of 2-5% per year, but that will pull back to negative drag as population of first world peoples shrinks and affordable oil production drags. That 7% growth is now equivalent to 2% in the conditions today's people will retire into.

I'm just eyeballing this, but after adjusting for inflation neither recent stock nor bond yields look out of the ordinary, historically speaking.

There are always reasons to expect growth to go down, and other reasons to expect it to go up. It isn't clear to me why cherrypicking solely from the former group is supposed to be convincing.

Retirement and all is great, but living for another day trump it. This is the life of most of people my age.