A widely used benchmark is 10 times your pre-retirement salary saved by age 67. That target, popularized by Fidelity, assumes you start saving in your mid-20s, keep at least 15% of your income going toward retirement each year, and invest a meaningful portion in stocks. It’s a useful starting point, but the actual number you need depends on your income level, your expected Social Security benefits, and how much you plan to spend in retirement.
Age-by-Age Savings Milestones
The 10x target works backward from retirement age into a set of checkpoints along the way. Fidelity’s widely cited guideline breaks it down like this:
- Age 30: 1x your annual salary
- Age 40: 3x your annual salary
- Age 50: 6x your annual salary
- Age 60: 8x your annual salary
- Age 67: 10x your annual salary
These milestones use your current salary at each age, not a fixed number. If you earn $60,000 at 30, you’d want $60,000 saved. If you earn $90,000 at 40, the target becomes $270,000. The jumps between milestones look steep, but investment growth does a lot of the heavy lifting once you have a meaningful balance. Going from 3x at 40 to 6x at 50 is partly your ongoing contributions and partly a decade of compounding returns.
If you’re behind at any checkpoint, don’t treat it as a pass/fail grade. These milestones exist to flag whether your savings rate needs adjusting. Someone who’s at 2x their salary at 40 instead of 3x can close the gap by bumping their contribution rate up a few percentage points over the next several years.
Why 10x Works as a Starting Point
The 10x figure is built around a common retirement planning assumption: you’ll need roughly 70% to 85% of your pre-retirement income each year to maintain your lifestyle. Research reviewed by the Social Security Administration consistently finds that middle-income households need between 65% and 75% of their working income in retirement, while financial planners often suggest the broader 70% to 85% range to provide a cushion.
At 10x your salary, a withdrawal rate near 4% of your portfolio gives you about 40% of your pre-retirement income from savings alone. Social Security fills in much of the rest. For a middle earner, Social Security replaces roughly 40% of final earnings. Add those two income streams together and you’re in the 70% to 80% range, which lines up with what most retirees need.
The math shifts significantly depending on your income. Social Security replaces about 80% of earnings for lower-income workers, so someone earning $35,000 may need far less than 10x in personal savings. For higher earners making $150,000 or more, Social Security might replace only 25% of income, meaning you’d need well above 10x to close the gap.
How Income Level Changes the Target
The salary multiple you actually need is inseparable from Social Security’s role in your retirement income. The benefit formula is progressive, meaning it replaces a larger share of income for lower earners and a smaller share for higher earners. That creates very different savings targets across income levels.
If you’re a higher earner, 10x may not be enough. Someone earning $200,000 who wants to replace 75% of their income ($150,000 per year) might receive only $40,000 to $50,000 from Social Security. That leaves $100,000 or more that needs to come from savings, pointing to a target closer to 12x or 13x salary. On the other hand, someone earning $45,000 whose Social Security benefit covers a large share of their needs might be comfortable with 6x or 7x.
Lower-income households face their own challenge. While Social Security replaces a larger percentage of their earnings, they tend to spend a higher share of income on necessities like housing, food, transportation, and medical care. That means they have less room to cut spending in retirement, and their replacement rate may need to be 90% or higher to avoid a real drop in living standards.
The Withdrawal Rate Connection
Salary multiples and withdrawal rates are two sides of the same coin. The 10x guideline implicitly assumes you’ll withdraw about 4% of your portfolio in the first year of retirement, then adjust upward for inflation each year after that. Morningstar’s 2025 retirement income research pegs the safe starting withdrawal rate at 3.9% for retirees who want a 90% chance of their money lasting 30 years.
Here’s what that looks like in practice. If you retire with $800,000 and withdraw 3.9% in your first year, that’s $31,200 in annual income from your portfolio. If that same person earned $80,000 before retiring (making their savings exactly 10x), the $31,200 plus Social Security gets them comfortably into the 70% to 80% replacement range.
If you’re willing to be flexible with spending, adjusting down in bad market years and up in good ones, research suggests you could start as high as 6%. That flexibility could mean you need a lower savings multiple to generate the same income, though it also means accepting less predictable cash flow year to year.
Factors That Push the Number Higher or Lower
The 10x guideline assumes a retirement around age 67 and a roughly 30-year retirement horizon. Several personal factors can move your target in either direction.
Retiring early raises the number substantially. If you retire at 60 instead of 67, your savings need to last seven extra years and you’ll likely delay Social Security or receive reduced benefits. A target of 12x to 14x becomes more realistic for early retirees.
A pension or other guaranteed income lowers the number. If you have a pension that covers $20,000 per year, that’s $20,000 less your portfolio needs to generate, which could reduce your target by 2x to 3x your salary.
Health care costs tend to push the number up. Before Medicare eligibility at 65, you’ll pay for your own coverage. Even after 65, Medicare doesn’t cover everything, and out-of-pocket costs for premiums, copays, and services not covered can add up to several thousand dollars per year.
Housing can work in your favor. If you plan to enter retirement with your mortgage fully paid off, your monthly expenses drop significantly, and a lower multiple may be sufficient. If you’re still carrying a mortgage or renting in a high-cost area, plan on needing more.
Your spending plans matter more than any formula. A retiree who wants to travel extensively and maintain an active social life will burn through savings faster than someone who lives modestly. If your expected retirement spending is well below 70% of your current income, you may be fine with 8x. If it’s closer to 90%, you’re looking at 12x or more.
How to Use These Numbers
Start with the 10x guideline as a baseline, then adjust based on your actual situation. Check where you stand against the age-based milestones. If you’re behind, the most effective lever you have is your savings rate. Increasing your retirement contributions by even 1% to 2% of your salary each year can make a meaningful difference over a decade or two of compounding.
If you’re within a few years of retirement, the salary multiple becomes less useful than a direct calculation. Add up your expected annual expenses, subtract your expected Social Security benefit and any pension income, and multiply the gap by 25 (which corresponds roughly to a 4% withdrawal rate). That gives you a dollar target for your portfolio that’s more precise than any rule of thumb.
For someone in their 30s or 40s with decades of saving ahead, the milestones serve their purpose well: they’re a quick sanity check that tells you whether you’re roughly on track or need to make changes now while time is still on your side.