[quote name='2DMention']Up until I was around 32-33, everybody thought I was in my early 20s. My friend's brother made a comment tonight that I "looked older." I took it as a compliment. [/quote]
Yeah, I still look younger than my age, so most people are suprised to hear I'm 32. Most assume I'm in my mid to later 20's. Not a bad thing at all though!
I think I was around 30 when I started contributing to a 401k. My friend just started contributing this year. It doesn't really matter anyway, because our generation will probably work well into our 70s.
29 for me. My last year of grad school I worked as a faculty research assistant and that had a retirement plan--and I went with the higher education version of a 401K (for get what the name of it is--but pretty much the same thing).
And of course I have a good retirment plan now that I'm a prof. I have to contribute 5% of my paycheck to it (can't go up or down) and the employer contribution is currently 9.42% of my paycheck--so it's a damn nice plan with the near 200% "match."
[quote name='mtxbass1']70? No thanks. I plan on being done by 60, if not even sooner. I'm tired of working already as is.[/QUOTE]
I'd love to, but having gone the Ph D to academia route and having not started working full time until age 30 and graduating with $54K in student loan debt, it will be hard to retire earlier than probably 65 or so.
Of course, the job isn't that hard and by the time I'm a 60 year old full prof I could just be cruzing and teaching classes I've taught a gazillion times by that point and not doing much research and thus not logging all that many hours relative to now anyway.
That said, I don't want any kids as I've noted. So that cuts out a ton of expenses and will make it easy to retire early. Hopefully I can have the student loan debt gone in 10 years or less. I pay extra on it and will pay a lot more on it once I get my damn car paid off--focusing on that first as the interest rate is twice as high. Still owe around $8K on that. Going to pay an extra grand on it this month when I get a $6K consulting pay check, and probably another extra grand when I get my tax refund.
[quote name='javeryh']I'f you've got a plan I'd love to hear it. I've been contributing 15% to my 401k since the day I got out of college and if you do the math it means I'll never be able to retire.[/QUOTE]
Are your numbers based on retiring and staying in the NYC area? That's a tough thing to do with a couple of kids to pay for between now and then as well.
The math may look better if you calculate it with the goal of retiring and moving somewhere cheapear--and thus add the money you could expect to get from selling your house in 30 years or whatever added into your retirement pot.