Savings Milestone Calculator
Age, salary, and the retirement balance
Your result will appear here
Fill in the fields on the left and this updates as you type.
Know what this estimate is based on
- Jurisdiction
- General mathematical model
- Scope and limitations
- Planning estimate only. Enter complete, current figures and keep an appropriate buffer for irregular or unexpected expenses.
- Source links checked
- Jul 30, 2026
Built and regression-tested by Smart Tools Lab. It has not been individually reviewed by a licensed financial, tax, or legal professional.
How to use
- 01
Enter your age and your annual salary before tax. The guideline is expressed as a multiple of salary, so both are needed before anything can be computed.
- 02
Enter the retirement balance — 401(k), IRA, 403(b), TSP added together. This is one account type, not a whole balance sheet: leave the house, the brokerage account and the cash out of it.
- 03
Enter what you contribute each year and what your employer adds. The employer's money counts toward the multiple exactly as yours does.
- 04
Set the expected return, and in the advanced panel the rate your salary rises at — the target moves with your pay, so salary growth changes the answer.
- 05
Read the multiple you actually carry against the guideline for your age, then the table: every anchor age from here to 67, the target at your salary then, and where your current pace projects you to be.
Formula
The guideline multiple is straight-lined between the published anchors — 1× at 30, 3× at 40, 6× at 50, 8× at 60, 10× at 67 — so at any age in between it is interpolated between the two nearest. Target = that multiple × salary. The multiple you actually carry = balance ÷ salary. The projection then runs year by year to 67: salary rises at the growth rate, the contribution rises with it at the same percentage of pay, and the balance is compounded at the return and tested each year against a rung that is itself rising with the salary. The age you clear the guideline is the first year the balance beats that moving rung.
Example
A 38-year-old on $78,000 with $142,000 saved, contributing $9,400 a year with a $3,100 employer match, at a 6.5% return and 3% salary growth. The guideline at 38 is 2.6× salary — $202,800 — and the balance is 1.8× salary, so it is $60,800 behind. The $12,500 going in is 16.0% of pay, above the ladder's own 15% assumption, and it shows: the balance first clears the moving guideline at age 56, and by 67 it reaches $2,299,676 against a 10× rung of $1,838,121. The table shows the whole path — at 40 the target is $248,251 against a projected $188,033, still behind by $60,218; by 60 the projection is $1,332,846 against a $1,195,649 rung, ahead by $137,197.
Definitions
- Salary multiple
- A retirement balance expressed as a number of times current pay. The unit the guideline is written in, and the reason a raise moves the target.
- Provider guideline
- A published rule of thumb from a financial firm, built on stated assumptions rather than measured from households. It has no data year and no survey behind it.
- Anchor age
- One of the five ages the guideline actually publishes a multiple for — 30, 40, 50, 60 and 67. Everything in between is a straight line drawn by this page.
- Employer match
- Money your employer adds to the plan. It counts toward the multiple exactly as your own contribution does, which is why capturing all of it comes before saving harder.
Good to know
A guideline is not a statistic, and the difference is the whole point
The salary-multiple ladder — roughly 1× by 30, 3× by 40, 6× by 50, 8× by 60, 10× by 67 — is one of the most repeated numbers in American personal finance, and it is worth being clear about what it is. It is a rule of thumb published by a retirement provider, built backwards from a set of stated assumptions: that saving starts in your twenties, runs at around 15% of pay including the employer's share, sits mostly in equities, continues uninterrupted, and is topped up by Social Security at the end. Nobody surveyed households and found that they hold these amounts; the multiples were derived, not measured. That has two consequences that pull in opposite directions. It cannot go stale — there is no data year and no next release to wait for, unlike a survey figure. And it is not evidence of anything: if any one of those assumptions does not describe you, particularly the retirement age or the presence of a pension, the ladder you are being graded against is the wrong one. All five multiples are editable on this page precisely so that a household planning to stop at 62, or one with a defined-benefit pension behind it, can grade itself against a ladder that fits.
The treadmill built into a salary multiple
Expressing a savings target as a multiple of current pay does something clever and something perverse at the same time. The clever part is that it self-adjusts: a target expressed in dollars becomes meaningless as incomes rise over a career, where a multiple stays meaningful because the thing being retired from is a standard of living that tracks pay. The perverse part is that a raise moves the bar. A household whose salary goes from $78,000 to $93,600 and which saves none of the increase has gone backwards on this measure while being unambiguously better off, and someone reading their multiple alone would conclude they had lost ground. This is a genuine limitation of the yardstick rather than a fact about the household, and it has a practical consequence worth internalising: a contribution set as a fixed dollar amount falls behind the ladder every year, while one set as a fixed percentage of pay keeps up with it automatically. That is the single strongest argument for the percentage-of-salary contribution election every plan offers and most people never revisit after they enrol.
Being behind at 38 says less than the projection does
The number most people take away from a page like this is the gap, and it is usually the least informative figure on it. At this page's defaults, a 38-year-old on $78,000 with $142,000 saved carries 1.8× salary against a 2.6× guideline — $60,800 behind, which reads as bad news. Then look at what the same contribution rate does. Putting in $12,500 a year, which is 16.0% of pay including the employer's $3,100, the balance first clears the moving guideline at age 56 and finishes at 67 with $2,299,676 against a rung of $1,838,121. Nothing changed except time and the return on a balance that already exists. This is the general shape of the thing: because the ladder rises with salary while the balance rises with contributions AND returns, a household saving at the assumed rate catches up mechanically somewhere in its fifties even after a slow start. The corollary matters too. A household that is ahead at 38 on a low contribution rate is often behind at 55, because the base it started with stops being the dominant term. The rate is the diagnosis; the balance is only the symptom.
What ten times salary is really buying
It helps to know what the finish line is calibrated to, because 10× salary sounds either enormous or inadequate depending on what you assume it has to do. Ten times a $78,000 salary is $780,000. At a 4% withdrawal rate that is about $31,200 a year of portfolio income, which is roughly 40% of the pre-retirement salary — the ladder is designed on the assumption that Social Security supplies a substantial further slice and that the combination lands somewhere near the pre-retirement standard of living. Two households can therefore hit exactly 10× and face completely different retirements. One whose spending has always run well below its salary is comfortable, because the multiple over-provides for someone who was already saving a lot. One whose spending consumed the whole salary and whose Social Security is reduced by early claiming or an incomplete earnings record is not. This is why the guideline is a checkpoint rather than an answer, and why the honest next step after clearing it is a projection built on your own spending, your own retirement age and your own benefit estimate.
Frequently asked questions
Where do these multiples come from?
A retirement provider, not a survey. The 1× at 30, 3× at 40, 6× at 50, 8× at 60 and 10× at 67 ladder is a published rule of thumb built on assumptions — that saving starts in your twenties, runs at around 15% of pay including the employer's share, sits mostly in stocks, and is topped up by Social Security. Nobody measured households and found they hold these amounts. That means it has no data year and cannot go stale, and it also means it is not evidence of anything. All five multiples are editable fields, so a different retirement age or a pension can be modelled by moving them.
Why did my target go up when I got a raise?
Because the target is a multiple of salary. Someone whose pay rises 20% and who saves none of the increase goes backwards on this measure while being better off in every other way. That is a real limitation of the yardstick rather than a fact about your finances, and it is the main reason to read the projection column in the table rather than today's rung. It is also why a fixed percentage of pay keeps up with the ladder and a fixed dollar contribution does not.
Does the employer match count?
Yes — every dollar in the account counts toward the multiple regardless of who put it there. At the page's defaults, $3,100 of the $12,500 going in each year is the employer's, about a quarter of the annual total arriving free. That is why the first thing to check against any savings target is whether the full match is being captured, before any question of saving harder: an uncaptured match is the only place on a balance sheet where the return is instant and certain.
What if I am behind?
It is more common than the ladder implies, and time closes the gap as readily as money does. At the defaults, a 38-year-old carrying 1.8× salary against a 2.6× guideline is $60,800 behind, and yet the same contribution rate clears the moving guideline by age 56 and finishes at $2,299,676 against a $1,838,121 rung. The projection column matters more than today's shortfall, because returns on the balance you already have do a large part of the work.
What balance should I enter?
Retirement accounts only: 401(k), 403(b), 457(b), TSP, traditional and Roth IRAs, and an HSA if you genuinely earmark it for retirement. Not the house, not the emergency fund, not a taxable brokerage account you intend to spend before 67. The guideline was built as a retirement-savings benchmark, so mixing other assets in makes the comparison meaningless in the flattering direction.
How is this different from the net worth by age page?
Completely. This grades one account against a provider's salary multiple. That page grades a whole balance sheet — house, cash, debts and all — against Federal Reserve population medians for households your age. One is a rule of thumb somebody drew; the other is a measured statistic. A household can clear one and miss the other, and neither result contradicts the other.
Is 10× salary enough to retire on?
It is a checkpoint, not an answer. Ten times a $78,000 salary is $780,000, which at a 4% withdrawal rate produces about $31,200 a year before Social Security — comfortable for a household whose spending is well below its salary and thin for one whose spending is not. The ladder is calibrated to a typical earner replacing a typical share of income. Whether your own number works for your own spending is the retirement planner's question, not this page's.