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How much to save, when you can retire, Social Security, and drawing down.
Retiring isn't about hitting a birthday — it's about your savings, spending, and guaranteed income lining up so a sustainable withdrawal rate covers your life. Here's the math that actually answers the question.
A 401(k) is an employer-sponsored account that lets you save for retirement straight from your paycheck, often with free matching money — here's exactly how contributions, matches, vesting, and taxes work.
The core trade-off is simple — pay tax now with a Roth, or pay tax later with a traditional account — but income limits, required withdrawals, and your future tax bracket all shape which one fits better.
Widely cited benchmarks suggest saving roughly 1x your salary by 30, 3x by 40, 6x by 50, and 10x by 67 — but the number that actually matters most is your savings rate, not a single checkpoint.
There's no single magic number, but a few well-tested rules of thumb — the 25x rule, the 4% rule, and the replacement-rate method — get most people surprisingly close to a real target.