Financials

Bogle Blog: Saving the First $500k is the hardest

Comment on assumptions (Response)

The salary of, for instance, a newly minted engineer should allow this savings rate. But I agree 12K is a substantial chunk of change for most 23 yo's, many of which are still trying to find a career or have substantial debt.

My personal reflection on poor assumptions in argument:

Initial savings and interest are optimistic
To think of both income and savings as steady over a lifetime isn't fair. It probably normalizes across a lifetime, but would be interesting to see a similar model for a more modest amount of savings early on, a few drastic increases (raises, job shifts), and other major life changes (graduate school, marriage/kids).

This issues miss the real point of the article which is that starting to save early will have huge payoffs later on in life.