Mel Abraham#1 Best Selling Author, Money Mentor

How to Tell If You're On Track

16 Oct 2026 · 1 min

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In this brief monologue, Mel Abraham explains how to gauge whether one's retirement savings are on track by referencing Fidelity's retirement guideline benchmarks. He outlines the recommended multiples of a person's salary that should be saved at various ages: 1× by age 30, 3× by age 40, 4× by age 45, 6× by age 50, and 10× by age 67. Abraham highlights that these benchmarks increase non‑linearly (1, 3, 6, 10), indicating an accelerating savings curve rather than a straight line. He uses this to reassure viewers that being behind the target in one's 40s is not a failure, as the acceleration phase is expected to begin around that age, meaning there is still ample opportunity to catch up.

Chapters

So how do you tell if you're on track apart from, are you kidding yourself? And I think Fidelity has some benchmarks that are a decent gut check. Their retirement guidelines kind of say this: you want to have in investable assets 1 times your salary saved by age 30, 3 times by age 40, 4 times by age 45, 6 times by age 50, and 10 times by age 67. And Notice something here? 1, 3, 6, 10. Those jumps aren't even. They accelerate. Even the official guideposts assume that there's a, a curve, not a straight line, which means that if you're in your 40s and not where you kind of thought you would be, you're not out of the game. You're standing right where the acceleration is supposed to start.