At the end of 2006, the Employee Benefit Research Institute and the Investment Company Institute analyzed 20 million accounts across 54,000 401(k)’s to get a nice clear picture of how people are saving, how much they’re saving, and give you a better idea of whether you’re on track (but remember you’re comparing against other people, not against necessarily what’s “best”). What’s nice is that it breaks it down by a lot of different factors in addition to age, such as tenure (how long you’ve been working), income range, and asset allocation. The only complaint I have is that I wish they did smaller age brackets, considering they did have 20 million records, because early 20s and late 20s are pretty different and a breakdown into 5 year increments would’ve been more valuable in my opinion.
The most interesting table was the 20’s, account balance and tenure chart because it’s something I think a lot of people in their 20’s can relate to (and because the numbers aren’t ridiculously large and seem within reach for someone in their 20’s):
0-2 years = $4,571
2-5 years = $10,414
5-10 years = $17,120
Compare that to someone in their 60s:
0-2 years = $20,076
2-5 years = $31,914
5-10 years = $51,268
10-20 years = $93,636
20-30 years = $157,069
More than 30 years = $190,593
Interesting huh?
Source: Yahoo Finance