If you are over 50, how much do you have saved for retirement? anonymous of course

[dish rag]

New Jersey resident on campus. Today $27,680 per year.

1983 Rutgers grad. I think my entire 4 years there cost about $16 to $17K and included not only the tuition, fees, and room & board quoted above but also books, supplies, and optional fees like a parking pass.

In 1983 you had a car at college?! Only the rich and spoiled had a car at college at that time

 

[tex1989]

Fall of 1977 I entered the University of Houston as a Freshman. Total cost for 15 semester credit hours, a yearbook, a parking pass (yeah I had a car) and a ticketbook to all home football games and my drive out price was.....


$235.00

Till I graduated the highest semester cost I ever paid was $275. Had a $5,000 scholarship that paid $625 cash every fall and spring. Not only did I have a car but by the time I graduated (working the whole time I was in school) I had a fishing boat and $5,000 cash in savings.

 

[Anchored]

I'm only 36 but by the time I retire at 65 I plan to have over $500,000 in my 401k (based on the job and match I have now, but life happens) I only started working full time again 3 years ago though after staying home for 7 years with my kids.
About $1,000/month from my ex-husband's military retirement (I get about 25% per our divorce decree) and hopefully Social Security or something like it (I have been paying in to it, after all) The SSA estimator based on my salary etc and adjusted for inflation is over $3,000/month
I plan to have my home and vehicles paid off. No major debt

That is just me, but I hope to be married or still with my long term partner who will also hopefully be contributing to the household so we should be fine. Hopefully.

 

[tex1989]

Seems like a lot more are matching, and matching slightly more. My employer went from 3% to 4%.
Very simple reason why. IRS has cracked down on executive compensation, tying it to what the workers get. If the big bosses want better retirement compensation ,they have to sweeten the pot for the working class.
And vesting requirements have started to go a way because corporations are being heavily penalized if they don't let you take all the money in your 401k.

Actually I encounterd a limit situation once in my career. I changed jobs and went to a new trading company that paid well, I got a really good bonus that year and that was paid in the same year as opposed to waiting till January of the following year. So a lot of pay in the same year. Since the trading company had been purchased by a utility company the year before the pay level put me in the 'highly compensated" group. In about May of the year I got a e-mail that informed me that I had reached my maximum 401 contribution for the year. I was putting 10% in and thought it was a mistake. When I checked I found out that the rule at the time (not sure if it still in place) was that if you were in the high compensation group then you were limited on the percentage you could put in and the limit was based on the average rate across all company employees. So that was like 4,2% and come May I was done.

 

[tvguy]

Actually I encounterd a limit situation once in my career. I changed jobs and went to a new trading company that paid well, I got a really good bonus that year and that was paid in the same year as opposed to waiting till January of the following year. So a lot of pay in the same year. Since the trading company had been purchased by a utility company the year before the pay level put me in the 'highly compensated" group. In about May of the year I got a e-mail that informed me that I had reached my maximum 401 contribution for the year. I was putting 10% in and thought it was a mistake. When I checked I found out that the rule at the time (not sure if it still in place) was that if you were in the high compensation group then you were limited on the percentage you could put in and the limit was based on the average rate across all company employees. So that was like 4,2% and come May I was done.

Yup. That is what the IRS is monitoring, making sure the average wage earners get some of that money too.

 

[Pea-n-Me]

In 1983 you had a car at college?! Only the rich and spoiled had a car at college at that time

Fall of 1977 I entered the University of Houston as a Freshman. Total cost for 15 semester credit hours, a yearbook, a parking pass (yeah I had a car) and a ticketbook to all home football games and my drive out price was.....


$235.00

Till I graduated the highest semester cost I ever paid was $275. Had a $5,000 scholarship that paid $625 cash every fall and spring. Not only did I have a car but by the time I graduated (working the whole time I was in school) I had a fishing boat and $5,000 cash in savings.

I was in college around then, and had to have a car as a commuter! From school I went right to work - one job during the week, and a second job on weekends. Lived on my own and paid my own rent and tuition. Maybe it's because I live in MA (high COL and tuition), or because I added a second major late in the game, but I still managed to graduate with appx $9000 in debt, so costs everywhere weren't that cheap back then!

Of course, $9K is a drop in the bucket in comparison to the amount of debt some are graduating with today! I did manage to get it paid off fairly quickly (within a few years) once I started working, but the real estate market took off around here during those years and the delay in buying a home cost us quite a bit in the long run, as home values had doubled and interest rates were > 10%!

I think it is still possible to keep costs fairly low today, even where I live. Perhaps at a cost. (Working, commuting, saving, cutting back on other things, brown bagging it, etc.) But it's still nothing like the old days where tuitions were reasonable. It's kind of maddening to think how high some of these tuitions have risen, actually. It's very much affecting many in the younger generations.

 

[tex1989]

Yup. That is what the IRS is monitoring, making sure the average wage earners get some of that money too.

But that was not the situation. For most workers the limits are based on percentages not absolute dollars. So the sadder part of this was that the company I worked for at the time gave matching up to 6%. This meant that if the average put into 401(k)'s for the whole company was 4.2% it meant that a ton of the employee's were leaving money on the table by not contributing to a level that would get them a free 6% each and every year. The fact that the average 4.2% meant that people were not contributing to their 401's. They were not giving the "extra" money to executives, the lower paid jobs were just not taking the free money the company was offering. What they gave executives had nothing at all to do with everyone else. They made the choice to not contribute the full 6% and therefore not receive the matching 6%.

To clarify when I say lower paid jobs I am not talking minimum wage, I am talking people who earned as much as $200,000 a year. To be 'highly compensated" and limited on 401 contributions you had to make over $250k a year.

 

[RedAngie]

DH is also a Rutgers graduate. The state cut so much funding to NJ colleges. Dd18 got scholarships from several OOS colleges bringing the costs below Rutgers for her.

Rutgers was always relatively pricey for a state university. I also applied to Glassboro State College (now Rowan University) and Trenton State College (now The College of New Jersey) and those were about half the price of Rutgers. Neighboring states U of Delaware and Penn State were about 2/3 the cost of Rutgers for residents of those states.

In 1983 you had a car at college?! Only the rich and spoiled had a car at college at that time

Only my last two years. Freshmen couldn't keep a car on campus. I could but didn't sophomore year. I brought my car partway thru junior year, but was restricted to parking in the lot near the football stadium about a 10 minute drive from the main campus. The school provided "free" shuttle buses between the various satellite campuses. (Included in the mandatory fees whether you used them or not.) I got lucky and was able to secure a spot fairly close to my dorm senior year.

The rich and spoiled kids had Daddy pay for their parking at a lot or garage in town, a five minute walk away.

 

[lifesavacation]

Seems like a lot more are matching, and matching slightly more. My employer went from 3% to 4%.
Very simple reason why. IRS has cracked down on executive compensation, tying it to what the workers get. If the big bosses want better retirement compensation ,they have to sweeten the pot for the working class.
And vesting requirements have started to go a way because corporations are being heavily penalized if they don't let you take all the money in your 401k.

Exactly. I started a 401k for my small business and had to go with a safe harbor design to adhere to the IRS non-discrimination rules. You can't have a 401K in place that favors highly compensated employees over others.

 

[tvguy]

But that was not the situation. For most workers the limits are based on percentages not absolute dollars. So the sadder part of this was that the company I worked for at the time gave matching up to 6%. This meant that if the average put into 401(k)'s for the whole company was 4.2% it meant that a ton of the employee's were leaving money on the table by not contributing to a level that would get them a free 6% each and every year. The fact that the average 4.2% meant that people were not contributing to their 401's. They were not giving the "extra" money to executives, the lower paid jobs were just not taking the free money the company was offering. What they gave executives had nothing at all to do with everyone else. They made the choice to not contribute the full 6% and therefore not receive the matching 6%.

To clarify when I say lower paid jobs I am not talking minimum wage, I am talking people who earned as much as $200,000 a year. To be 'highly compensated" and limited on 401 contributions you had to make over $250k a year.

I haven't checked our plan recently, but at one point there were limits on those earning more than $100,000 a year, so never impacted me.

 

[Pea-n-Me]

Rutgers was always relatively pricey for a state university. I also applied to Glassboro State College (now Rowan University) and Trenton State College (now The College of New Jersey) and those were about half the price of Rutgers. Neighboring states U of Delaware and Penn State were about 2/3 the cost of Rutgers for residents of those states.

It is like that in MA, too, with UMass costing about 2/3 more than the rest of the state universities.

 

[lifesavacation]

Actually I encounterd a limit situation once in my career. I changed jobs and went to a new trading company that paid well, I got a really good bonus that year and that was paid in the same year as opposed to waiting till January of the following year. So a lot of pay in the same year. Since the trading company had been purchased by a utility company the year before the pay level put me in the 'highly compensated" group. In about May of the year I got a e-mail that informed me that I had reached my maximum 401 contribution for the year. I was putting 10% in and thought it was a mistake. When I checked I found out that the rule at the time (not sure if it still in place) was that if you were in the high compensation group then you were limited on the percentage you could put in and the limit was based on the average rate across all company employees. So that was like 4,2% and come May I was done.

It's really too bad that your company would limit your elective deferrals, but it's all part of trying to meet the IRS rules for 401Ks. You can't have a top heavy plan so companies have to work within a formula to make sure it passes the IRS non-discrim testing. There are types of 401K plans that work around this, like a safe harbor plan.

 

[mjkacmom]

Rutgers was always relatively pricey for a state university. I also applied to Glassboro State College (now Rowan University) and Trenton State College (now The College of New Jersey) and those were about half the price of Rutgers. Neighboring states U of Delaware and Penn State were about 2/3 the cost of Rutgers for residents of those states.



Only my last two years. Freshmen couldn't keep a car on campus. I could but didn't sophomore year. I brought my car partway thru junior year, but was restricted to parking in the lot near the football stadium about a 10 minute drive from the main campus. The school provided "free" shuttle buses between the various satellite campuses. (Included in the mandatory fees whether you used them or not.) I got lucky and was able to secure a spot fairly close to my dorm senior year.

The rich and spoiled kids had Daddy pay for their parking at a lot or garage in town, a five minute walk away.

TCNJ is now $15,500 in state, ds20 attends, I believe Rowan is just under $10,000.

 

[Pea-n-Me]

TCNJ is now $15,500 in state, ds20 attends, I believe Rowan is just under $10,000.

Hey, let's look at everyone's!

- Average college tuition in each state 2017-18 and one year percentage rise:

http://www.collegecalc.org/colleges/

- 2018-19 Tuition and Fees at Public Four-Year Institutions by State and Five-Year Percentage Change in In-State Tuition and Fees

https://trends.collegeboard.org/col...r-institutions-state-and-five-year-percentage

 

[Libbysmom2000]

I’m under 40 and wouldn’t feel set with just 500k.

I agree, that isn't a lot if you live in many areas of the country.

 

[Dan Murphy]

not sure if it still in place)

It is

There are types of 401K plans that work around this, like a safe harbor plan.

This is correct



.
(not to be taken as financial advice)

 

[Gumbo4x4]

Dh's is 7%.

I used to get 6.33% at one place. 4% now and I know a lot of people getting 2.5-3%. 7% is a nice number

 

[Gumbo4x4]

I agree, that isn't a lot if you live in many areas of the country.

Of course this is also why a lot of people choose to retire to lower COL areas than where they worked.

 

[dish rag]

Rutgers was always relatively pricey for a state university. I also applied to Glassboro State College (now Rowan University) and Trenton State College (now The College of New Jersey) and those were about half the price of Rutgers. Neighboring states U of Delaware and Penn State were about 2/3 the cost of Rutgers for residents of those states.



Only my last two years. Freshmen couldn't keep a car on campus. I could but didn't sophomore year. I brought my car partway thru junior year, but was restricted to parking in the lot near the football stadium about a 10 minute drive from the main campus. The school provided "free" shuttle buses between the various satellite campuses. (Included in the mandatory fees whether you used them or not.) I got lucky and was able to secure a spot fairly close to my dorm senior year.

The rich and spoiled kids had Daddy pay for their parking at a lot or garage in town, a five minute walk away.

No shame in being spoiled, Angie. My own daughter is. But she’s now her husbands problem. I think he’s up for the task.