End of the year letter from employer savings plan

[maizefolk]

The folks managing our tax deferred accounts send out a letter at the end of the year to each employing projecting how much we're on track to save. I'm guessing the goal here is to scare people into upping their savings rate? If so, they officially have no more hold over me!



Now I don't plan to stick around until full retirement age, I certainly don't need 80% of my salary in retirement, and compared to most mustachian savings achievements the ones that triggered this letter are pretty small potatoes. Still, it was a cheerful enough moment I'm even prepared to forgive their not-to-scale bar graph: from the left hand side to 100% marker is 35 squares, so 80%-100% should be 7 squares (35*0.2) but is instead 16 squares. Are 0-80% compressed? Does the graph actually only show 56%-100% (in which case they're predicting social security would be a terrifyingly large percentage of my total income in retirement)? Who knows. I'm almost curious to call the number and find out what additional steps they have in mind for "don't stop there."

Anyone else getting cheerful end of year news from their company retirement plans?

[StockBeard]

Congrats :)
Does that letter imply that you already have 25 times your yearly income saved, or that if you keep saving this way, you'll reach the 100% goal by age 65?

[Jack]

I'm disappointed that it stops at "100+" I want to see a graph that looks like this:


0....10....20....30....40...50....60....70....80....90....100.............................................................You

[robartsd]

I'm betting that they're projecting to standard retirement age based on current valuation and contribution rate combined with projected salary increases and investment earnings.

[tarheeldan]

Congrats!

My 401k company also projects through to retirement age. You can adjust that age, but it resets to 67 everytime you log out. So it always shows this LOL:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/18i84ys5otg8qxd/jhancock_funny.png?dl=0

[maizefolk]

Congrats :)
Does that letter imply that you already have 25 times your yearly income saved, or that if you keep saving this way, you'll reach the 100% goal by age 65?

Unfortunately it's the only latter. I'm on course to some amount >100% of my salary in income if I keep working until full retirement age and keep maxing out my contributions the whole time. Already having a full 25x in tax deferred accounts would be pretty sweet though.

Congrats!

My 401k company also projects through to retirement age. You can adjust that age, but it resets to 67 everytime you log out. So it always shows this LOL:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/18i84ys5otg8qxd/jhancock_funny.png?dl=0

Hahahahaha! Okay, I am officially humbled, but that's seriously awesome tarheeldan, good for you!

[TrMama]

Not from our retirement plan, but from the city where our rental property is located. Sales have gone up so much in the last year, that they're sending out letters to all the owners to warn them of the upcoming giant increase in property taxes. Since we plan to sell in the next year, we don't give a crap about the increase in property tax. We're just thrilled the value has gone up so much.

I plugged the numbers into cFIREsim this morning. <happy dance>

[Paul der Krake]

Congrats!

My 401k company also projects through to retirement age. You can adjust that age, but it resets to 67 everytime you log out. So it always shows this LOL:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/18i84ys5otg8qxd/jhancock_funny.png?dl=0

Bwahahaha. You win the thread.
On the other other hand I feel for you, John Hancock is terrible.

[tarheeldan]

They are so terrible! Haha.

And I'm not doing that great, the calculation is based on all my FIRE savings, not just the 18k/yr in 401k so I'm sure you're kicking as much and probably more ass than me, maizeman :-) It's just a 60% s.r. for 36 years is a powerful thing!

[Paul der Krake]

Fidelity has me down for  $10,739/mo of projected "required" income in retirement?!

This represents an estimate, based on your current compensation and estimated lifestyle or either your estimated or budgeted retirement expenses, of the amount of money we think you (or you and your partner if you're planning with one) will need each month in retirement.

I don't know where they are basing this from considering my net monthly paycheck is under $1700 these days...

[tarheeldan]

Hahaha, which of the 3 (3!!) estimation methods did they use to come up with that! They might just as well have said "Based on what we think a big scary number is, so you contribute more and we make more money"

[wileyish]

But tarheeldan, "Have you considered increasing your Goal?" Goal, with a capital "G!" You better consider it. The robosite says so.

[robartsd]

I'd like to see them project age where someone could retire at 100% if the projection comes to >100% at standard retirement age. Another option would be to graph retirement age on one axis and projected precentage of final salary on the other.