If you’re searching for guidance on how much you should have saved, chances are you’re trying to confirm some suspicions: either that you’re nailing things or you’re … not.
Research about retirement savings tells us that for most people, the latter is much more likely. So if you're wondering if you've saved enough by age 30 — or hoping to have a target in mind as you approach that age — here are some answers.
How much money should I have saved by 30?
You’ll find that one retirement-savings benchmark gets the most airtime: It comes from Fidelity Investments and says you should have an amount equal to your annual salary saved by age 30.
Fidelity’s advice is countered by lesser-known but slightly more approachable guidance from T. Rowe Price, another broker known for its retirement products. It suggests having half your annual salary saved at age 30, shifting more responsibility to your later years.
Both benchmarks feel big and intimidating if you haven’t met them. In an ideal world, we’d all start saving for retirement right out of college — but student loan debt alone proves the world is not ideal. So let’s focus on catching up.
Understand how these benchmarks work
Fidelity, T. Rowe Price and every other publisher of retirement benchmarks have good intentions: They’re trying to take big numbers and break them down into smaller, incremental goals.
The problem is that for many people, even those smaller goals seem unattainable. When looking at retirement savings advice, it’s important to remember that recommendations on the internet are just recommendations. They aren't personalized to you.
Benchmarks are a good, quick way to check your progress, but they incorporate general assumptions about life expectancy, retirement age and retirement spending that may or may not apply to you. In no way are they hard rules.
Set your own goal, then make a plan for reaching it
Outside of working with a financial advisor, the best way to find out how much you should have invested is not by following a benchmark, but by using a retirement calculator, which will take your information and return much more personalized guidance.
Don’t misunderstand: It might still feel like that guidance is laughing in your face. That’s when you employ strategies like the ones below to help you build some momentum.
Set monthly or weekly targets
The median annual wage for full-time workers ages 25 to 34 is about $60,000, according to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data from the second quarter of 2026. Someone who starts saving at 25 would have to invest about $860 per month to have $60,000 banked by 30, assuming a relatively conservative 6% average annual investment return. Under T. Rowe Price’s approach, that monthly investment drops to about $430.
That’s still no small amount of money. But looking at it weekly, it gets a little better: About $200 a week under Fidelity’s model; about $100 under T. Rowe Price. Break your goal down into small pieces like this, and you might find it’s something you can at least work your way up to.
Don’t forget to collect — and count — employer contributions
If you have a 401(k) at work and your employer matches your contributions, those dollars could bridge the gap between what you’re currently saving and what you should be saving. A common match is 50% of up to 6% of your salary.
Use automatic transfers to keep yourself honest
Money you contribute to a 401(k) comes right out of your paycheck, which blunts the temptation to spend it. But not everyone has a 401(k) or other employer plan.
If you don’t, you can ask your employer to send a portion of your paycheck directly to an individual retirement account — many payroll departments are happy to split your check a few ways.
Nerdy Perspective
I like to make investing as simple as I can for myself. So when I started investing in my IRA, my first order of business was automating the whole process.For me, it looked like this: I divided the yearly IRA maximum by 24, since I get paid twice per month, and I wanted to know what I should contribute each payday to max out my IRA by year-end. Then, I set up automatic investments through my investing app to buy a specific amount of a stock fund each payday. Now I know that I'm maxing out my IRA each year without having to lift a finger. So if you're a lazy investor like me and going through your payroll department even feels like too much work, this may be another route to look into.
Put your money toward the right things
Lots of 20- and 30-somethings feel pressure to knock out student loans or build a large emergency cushion. Those are noble goals, but they might not be the best places for your money right now.
If your student loan interest rate is lower than the return you can expect to earn by investing, you’re better off paying the loan off slowly and putting extra money into your retirement accounts.
Same goes for an emergency fund: Yes, it’s important. But not so important that you should put off saving for retirement altogether. First, aim to pull together an emergency cushion of $500 or $1,000 to start. Once you have that down, think about contributing enough to your 401(k) to get your employer match if they offer one. If that's not an option, you could contribute a set amount to an IRA each month.
Your next goal might be to increase the amount you contribute to retirement savings and your emergency fund simultaneously. Eventually, you might aim to have 10% to 15% of your salary going toward retirement savings and three to six months of expenses stored away in your emergency fund.
To expedite the process, consider building your emergency fund in a high-yield savings account. They'll pay you a decent interest rate — sometimes more than 4% — just for storing your money in the account. That’s many times higher than the national average savings rate.
These accounts also tend to do away with monthly maintenance fees and minimum deposit requirements, and they’re FDIC-insured. For some of the best options, check out NerdWallet's favorite high-yield online savings accounts.
Don’t just save — invest
Although you can’t control how the market performs, you can control the investments you choose. At 30, it's recommended that the majority of your retirement portfolio be invested in stock index funds.
Why? Because you have 30 or 40 years before you retire, and that time means near-term market fluctuations don’t matter to you. What does matter to you is long-term growth, and that’s what you get in the stock market.
If you’re not invested appropriately, you have to save much more to build the same size nest egg. For example, say there are two investors who are both 30. Investor No. 1 is invested in a conservative portfolio that is mostly made up of bond funds; Investor No. 2 is invested almost entirely in stock index funds.
Investor No. 1 earns an average of 4% annually; Investor No. 2 earns 10%, the historical annual average market return. They both invest $500 per month over the next 35 years. The first investor would end up with about $460,000 at the end. The second? About $1.9 million.
That’s not to say you’ll always earn 10% in the stock market, or that the majority of your portfolio should be invested in stocks your entire life. But it does illustrate the significance of choosing appropriate investments. When you’re young, you can take more risk, and that pays off long-term.
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- 1.Fidelity. How much do I need to retire? . Accessed Sep 28, 2026.
- 2.T. Rowe Price. You’re age 35, 50, or 60: How much should you have saved for retirement by now?. Accessed Sep 28, 2026.
