In my case 25x was conservative. It was enough to cover me to the age of 100 or older. I was using the 4% rule to get the 25x number, and I was a little worried that inflation would chew me up But that wasn't the case, at least according to normal assumptions.
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Schwab has a podcast, which is usually 1. profoundly boring and 2. not particularly useful. But there is typically a tidbit in each one that I pick up so I listen if I'm not tired.

The tidbit I got from the last one (and I had to rewind it and make sure I caught it).

The maximum YTD drawdown for the NASDAQ was 7%
The Average Drawdown from a NASDAQ member was 40%

Woah. WOAH.

Reminder # 3 trilliion or so that diversification is important.
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Looking at UPS shares above 127 with stop loss 124.50.
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I need 8.7 million then :-) :-)
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And it's your income at retirement, which may be higher than now. But the earlier you save, the more power you get from exponential growth, so you can build up seemingly improbable amounts.

But again, 25x was giving me more income than I needed in my case, taking into account things like Social Security and tax savings. It's almost a ceiling, but it's a good goal
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That's a good problem to have!
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I've held on to some shares of UPS for 20 years. It's performed fine, but I really thought UPS was going to blow up with the increase in e-commerce over that time. I still hold on to it, but now just waiting for it to take a hit some day when Amazon decides to destroy FedEx and UPS and handle shipping for everything.
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Thankfully I learned from my dad completely fucking his retirement so I've been relatively responsible and have a pretty decent amount in my 401k. For those of you much smarter than I, am I on track to be in a decent place come retirement age if I just let it be in a passive fund or should I be more aggressive and invest myself?

32 years old.
Current balance in 401k bit over 100k.
Current contributions are roughly 9%, matched by employer, averages out to about 250 per week.
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Rainman isn't kidding about the variance in those calculators. One give me 600,000 and the other gave me 6,000,000 at 67. What the fuck :-)
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My only suggestion is to up your contribution % as much as possible. It may seem difficult, but find a way to do it. My approach was always anytime I got a merit increase or raise, I split that amount and bumped up the contribution. For me, that often meant for the annual 3% merit increase I would up the contribution 2% and then my take home $$ still increased 1% so it had no real negative impact on my budget. Over time, those little percentage increases add up.
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Yeah, it's kind of criminal. People shouldn't be allowed to put calculators up that are inaccurate. I've seen some that don't include Social Security and some that I don't think account for inflation and some that are apparently flat-out wrong on the math. I was seeing ranges like what you saw, which is why I built my own that I trust.
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Give me a bit and I can run some basic numbers.
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An awful lot depends on your funds in your 401K.

Get your statement and look up what their performance has been compared to the others OVER TIME. Most of them have a 5 and 10 year performance. Check that and the fees. Make sure you're not getting your ass beat on those.

This year I set up a qualified plan for my business despite the relatively few employees. In the process, I pushed out A LOT of numbers. Blah blah blah, long story short, when I backtested some of these funds they were SHIT compared to common index fund portfolios (Mine is 37.5 VOO 37.5 VUG 25% SCHD - You'd do better historically leaving out SCHD - but I wanted exposure to those stocks I wasn't getting in the other 2).

Prudence dictates that you pay attention to the assets you're putting 9% of gross in.

Gut feel is you're probably ahead of most guys your age. I'd up it as much as you can muster. Obviously you don't want to be cash poor because you can't get it back out but much like myselff77 said, if you up the percentage a little at a time, it doesn't hurt less.

One thing I've implemented that definitely helps is I have a fair wad of cash in an "emergency fund" role to go with my set asides for taxes, and mortgage and whatnot. Psychologically that has helped me be OK with taking more risk in the market. The other thing I've done is started a taxable brokerage account (schwab RobinHood whatever) and then if I have any extra cash ahead of payroll hitting, stick it in there. Just getting it the hell out of my checking account adds up a bit, rather than seeing it in there and subconsciously making different decisions that ultimately end up with it being blown on dumb shit. That gives me more savings in the market and if shit gets REALLY hairy I can liquidate it without the penalty of a 401K.
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I agree with Buehler's 1st, 3rd, and 6th posts. I disagree a little with his 5th and 2nd post, and I strongly disagree with his 4th post.
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As far as I know all fees for the 401k are paid by the company, unless I'm reading this wrong.
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