The mainstream yardstick is Fidelity’s: save a multiple of your salary by each age — 1× by 30, 3× by 40, 6× by 50, 8× by 60, 10× by 67. Read the fine print and the ladder has a shape: it assumes saving 15% of income a year, employer match included, starting at 25, and retiring at 67. It’s a reasonable map — for a reasonable retirement. Mine isn’t the one on the map.
At 44 I hold about $800,000 in the TSP — roughly ten times my $78,728 base salary. On Fidelity’s ladder, 10× is the finish line, the milestone for 67. I’m standing on it at 44, with two differences that explain the whole gap: my savings rate is 31% of pay, not 15% — more than double the ladder’s assumption — and my retirement age is 57, not 67. A higher rate buys the milestones early; an earlier exit is what the milestones were for.
The multiples move because compounding does the heavy lifting late and contributions do it early. Fidelity’s own research puts the typical 401(k) millionaire at about 59 years old, with some 25 years of saving behind them — time in the account is the real milestone underneath all the others. For scale: the median family aged 55–64 holds $239,000 (Federal Reserve, Survey of Consumer Finances, 2025). The ladder isn’t a judgment; it’s a clock. Whatever your age, the next multiple is the target, and the rate is how you move the hands.
Nobody starts at 31%. I started at 5.44% in 2008, took the full match first, and gave the TSP one point out of every pay increase of at least 2% until the rate reached the IRS limit. The method is 401(k) Investing on One Ordinary Paycheck; the doubling math behind the milestones is The Rule of 72. The ladder says where you should be. The rate decides whether you get there.