Enough to Retire, but not old enough to touch it....

[RunningBum]

This certainly could be true for today's twenty-somethings, but it's not at all the case for someone like me who started contributing to my 401k in the early '90s. The max employee contribution when I first started was only $8,900/year. And, as I mentioned, I contributed the max almost every year, consistently, for nearly 25 years. I also got a pretty good employer match for a large chunk of those years, yet my current 401k / IRA balance isn't even half of your $1.5MM estimate.

Geez, I wasn't even close to that when I retired at 49. I probably only maxed out in the last 15 years, but I know it wouldn't have made much difference had I done it the whole time. I did the rough math but will spare the details, and I generally don't share numbers here anyway. I don't know what the max contribution was in 1984, but $8900 would've been over 1/3 of my salary. I just deferred enough for the company match. Even with another 7 years of letting it grow post-retirement, I'm still not at half of $1.5M.

 

[Lagniappe]

I am also amazed when I see so much in retirement accounts. After almost 30 years of contributions and generous employee matches over the years, I have barely cracked seven figures. Partly due to the maximums being not that large over the years, and partly due to following the conventional advice to hold the bond portion of my allocation in retirement accounts. Bonds have had relatively lower returns, so this is the slowest growing part of my portfolio.