🇺🇸 United States·Savings checkup by age·Fed SCF 2022 + Fidelity guideline
Are you saving enough for your age?
Two honest answers: where you actually stand among households your age, and where the guideline trajectory says you'd be.
I'm years old with $ to my name, earning $ a year (optional).
Try:
Where you stand · vs. households aged 35–44
1.1×
the median net worth for your age group
Ages 35–44: median $135,600 · mean $549,600
Against all US households (all ages): roughly top 55% — the only percentile the Fed publishes.
The Fed publishes each age bracket's median and mean, but not percentiles within a bracket — so this shows your ratio to the published median, never an invented within-age percentile.
What this means
You're ahead of most households your age.
More than half of US households aged 35–44 report less net worth than you. You haven't caught the mean ($549,600) — it's dragged up by the wealthiest — but the middle of your generation is behind you.
You're $14,400 above your age group's median, and compounding does more of the work each year you stay invested.
Two rulers, one you
The data curve and the guideline trajectory, side by side.
The solid line is what US households actually report: the published median net worth of each age bracket, plotted at the bracket's midpoint. The dashed line is Fidelity's guideline trajectory for your income — it only appears once you've entered one, because it's a target, not a measurement. Your dot sits at your age and savings.
Median household (SCF data) You
Solid: published SCF 2022 medians per age bracket (survey data). Dashed: Fidelity salary-multiple checkpoints × your income (guideline). The two lines are different kinds of numbers and are never combined.
Where guidelines say you'd be · a published rule of thumb — not survey data
The guideline trajectory: salary multiples by age.
Fidelity's widely cited rule of thumb: retirement savings of 1× your salary by 30, 3× by 40, 6× by 50, 8× by 60, and 10× by 67. It assumes saving around 15% of income from your mid-20s and retiring at 67 — and it counts retirement savings, not home equity. T. Rowe Price publishes gentler ranges for the same question, so even the guidelines disagree. Both appear here as their own layer and are never mixed into the comparison above.
Add your income to place yourself on the trajectory
The guideline is expressed in salary multiples, so it needs your income. Type a yearly income into the sentence above and this section fills in your personal targets.
By 30
1× salary
By 35
2× salary
By 40you
3× salary
By 45
4× salary
By 50
6× salary
By 55
7× salary
By 60
8× salary
By 67
10× salary
Fidelity's milestones: total retirement savings as a multiple of salary, assuming retirement at 67 and a sustained ~15% savings rate. A planning guideline — not a measurement of what households actually hold. T. Rowe Price publishes its own benchmarks at 35, 50, and 60 — as ranges, and gentler at younger ages (1–1.5× at 35 vs Fidelity's 2×). The guidelines themselves disagree; treat any single checkpoint as one publisher's opinion, not a law.
Three numbers worth the asterisk
Read both layers honestly.
The skew
The mean for your age group is 4.1× its median.
For ages 35–44, the mean is $549,600 against a median of $135,600. A small number of very wealthy households drags the mean up — which is why "above the median" and "below the mean" can both be true of you at once.
Two different rulers
The two layers measure different things — on purpose.
"Where you stand" compares your SCF-style net worth (home equity included) with what households actually report. The guideline layer is Fidelity's target for retirement savings only. Being ahead on one and behind on the other is common, not a contradiction.
Guidelines are ambitious
The median household sits below the guideline in every bracket.
Fidelity's milestones assume ~15% saving from the mid-20s. Actual medians sit below the corresponding checkpoints across age groups — if you're behind the guideline, you're travelling with the majority. It's a trajectory to aim at, not a pass/fail grade.
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Two honest reference points: the median US household headed by someone aged 35–44 had a net worth of $135,600 in the Fed's 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances, and Fidelity's guideline says you'd aim for about 3× your salary in retirement savings by 40. The first tells you where the middle actually is; the second is a planning target — most households sit below it.
Because the Federal Reserve publishes the median and mean net worth for each age bracket, but not the percentile thresholds within a bracket. We only show math the source supports: your ratio to your age group's median and mean, plus your percentile against all US households (which the SCF does publish). Anything more precise would be invented.
For the "where you stand" comparison, yes — SCF net worth counts all assets (home equity, retirement accounts, investments, cash) minus all debts. Fidelity's guideline is narrower: it counts retirement savings only (401(k), IRA and similar), not home equity. That's one reason the two layers can disagree.
It's deliberately ambitious: it assumes you save around 15% of income from your mid-20s and retire at 67 on your pre-retirement lifestyle. The median household in every age bracket sits below the corresponding milestone. Being behind the guideline puts you with the majority; it's a target trajectory, not a report card.
Below-median means more than half of households your age currently report more net worth than you — nothing more. Net worth at younger ages is dominated by housing, student debt and time in the workforce. The gap to the median is a concrete number you can plan against, and consistent saving moves you through the distribution faster than most people expect.
