How much should you save for retirement?

Get your retirement savings rate.

Answer these three questions to estimate what percentage of your income to consider aiming to save each year for retirement.

How much should you save for retirement?

Get your retirement savings rate

Consider aiming to save this percentage every year for retirement. The good news: Any contributions your employer makes to your workplace savings account, like a 401(k) or 403(b), also count toward your savings goal.

18%

What is your age?

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Enter an age between 21 and 55.

What is your current annual income?

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Enter an amount between $50,000 and $300,000.

How much have you saved so far for retirement?

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Include money in 401(k) plans, 403(b) plans, 457 plans, any type of IRA balances, and any other savings.

Get results

Next steps

Visit our Planning & Guidance Center to help you create a retirement plan or investment strategy and to monitor your progress.

Important additional information

This information is intended to be educational and is not tailored to the investment needs of any specific investor.

Fidelity's suggested total pretax savings rate targets include any annual retirement savings, including employer contributions. For the provided current age, current retirement savings, and current annual income, the savings rate targets are calculated for an assumed retirement age of 67 and a 1.5% constant real wage growth to potentially support a replacement annual income rate equal to 45% of preretirement annual income (assuming no pension income) through age 93.

For the base case of a 25-year-old with no accumulated savings, the savings rate target is 15% of annual income in pretax terms. The income replacement target is based on the Consumer Expenditure Survey (BLS), Statistics of Income Tax Stat, IRS tax brackets, and Social Security Benefit Calculators. The 45% income replacement target (excluding Social Security and assuming no pension income) from retirement savings was found to be fairly consistent across a salary range of $50,000 to $300,000. The target may have limited applicability if your income is outside that range. The analysis assumes that all savings are from pretax contributions; after-tax contributions are not considered in the analysis and would significantly affect the results.

Fidelity developed the savings rate targets through multiple market simulations based on historical market data. These simulations take into account the volatility that a variety of asset allocations might experience under different market conditions. Given the above assumptions for retirement age, planning age, wage growth, and income replacement targets, the results were successful in 9 out of 10 hypothetical market conditions where the average equity allocation over the investment horizon was more than 50% for the hypothetical portfolio. Remember that past performance is no guarantee of future results. Performance returns for actual investments will generally be reduced by fees or expenses not reflected in these hypothetical calculations. Returns also will generally be reduced by taxes.

We encourage you to build a retirement plan based on your personal time horizon, risk tolerance, retirement goals, and financial situation.

Savings rate targets are hypothetical illustrations, do not reflect actual investment results or actual lifetime income, and are not guarantees of future results. Targets do not take into consideration the specific situation of any particular user, the composition of any particular account, or any particular investment or investment strategy. Individual users may need to save more or less than the savings target displayed depending on their retirement age, life expectancy, market conditions, desired retirement lifestyle, and other factors.