How many years did it take for your 401k to hit 1 million ?

[calmloki]

401k? never had one. did reach a million though.

 

[MarieIG]

Hmm, started working late (so much less time to compound); my first two employers did not have 401(k)s, NEVER had a match, my employers who did have 401(k)s had high administration fees and lousy funds, my last employer did not have a 401(k) when I started, and I lost a year here and there due to switching jobs waiting to become eligible. I am approximating that I had about 20 years total (including this one). I did max out every year that I was eligible.

 

[ponyboy]

Is it even possible to hit over 1 million without 25+ years of maxing? I dont know what it used to be...but recently it was $17,000, then $17,500...now its $18,000 I believe.

Its a lot of money per year...but not that much in terms of reaching 1,000,000. Even when the markets are insanely bullish...it takes a long time to get there.

 

[MRG]

Twenty years. I thank Megacorp, for years they contributed to a fund and subsidized the fee. That was rolled into everything we had. They saved when I was too poor and ignorant.

 

[Independent]

My 401k never hit $1 million. It maxed out just below $500k.

 

[RobLJ]

Yes; see above.

Is it even possible to hit over 1 million without 25+ years of maxing? I dont know what it used to be...but recently it was $17,000, then $17,500...now its $18,000 I believe.

Its a lot of money per year...but not that much in terms of reaching 1,000,000. Even when the markets are insanely bullish...it takes a long time to get there.

 

[dtbach]

Let's see. I started an IRA around 1985 and contributed the max until I was not allowed anymore in 2016. Got a job in 1989 which had a 401K and contributed as much as I could in that. But I'm not really sure when I hit a million. i would guess around 2006 so that would be 21 years + or 1 2 years.

 

[FlaGator]

30 years if I include IRA rollovers from prior employers for late DW and me.

 

[targatom2019]

Is it even possible to hit over 1 million without 25+ years of maxing? I dont know what it used to be...but recently it was $17,000, then $17,500...now its $18,000 I believe.

Its a lot of money per year...but not that much in terms of reaching 1,000,000. Even when the markets are insanely bullish...it takes a long time to get there.

you will hit 1m faster if it's 18k per year. I started in 1996 and the max was little below 10K.

 

[RobLJ]

Yea; I looked and in 1990 (my first year), my contribution (plus the employer match) was 4100. Max would have been sweet.

you will hit 1m faster if it's 18k per year. I started in 1996 and the max was little below 10K.

 

[Dash man]

I never did while working. I only had 16 years at a company with a 401k, and when I left in 2013 it was around $550k. It’s about to hit a million if the market goes up a little bit more. DW hit a million about the time I retired and rolled over her lump sum pension into her 401k when she retired. Fortunately, we have a healthy brokerage account and several properties that are paid off.

 

[audreyh1]

My 401K never got that high.

I was limited in how much I could contribute anyway.

 

[Navigator]

It took me 19 years, but That includes a 10% employer match.

 

[Dawg52]

Didn't come close. Most of my money is outside 401k and IRA's.

 

[bada bing]

I'm guessing that most of the affirmative posters don't know what the acronym
QDRO stands for.
Speaking from experience, you don't want to either.

My 401K probably won't ever hit $1m. I only have 2 years more (including 2019)
that I plan on being able to contribute to a 401K. I have been making
mega backdoor maxed contributions for the last five years though, so I can console
myself knowing that I would have made the million$ club if I worked to ~65.

 

[Clone]

Play with some spreadsheets... if you're in a the middle or upper ranges of a wide tax bracket, do you really think you'll be in a lower tax bracket when you pull from the 401k? (rhetorical question)

So, being that it is a rhetorical question- you must have expected that somebody would try to answer that!

I did some digging one time to look at what the incremental tax rate was for the different years, and was surprised at how big some of those numbers were. I was wondering if it was a 'mistake' to squirrel away that tax-deferred money, because I will probably be locked into a 22% to 24% rate with RMDs + SS + pension + DW's SS + locked in contract rental income.

We are doing ROTH conversions now to make sure we use all of the lower brackets, and then some. We will not get all of the money out of the 401k and IRAs, but we will take a run at it. I look at the tax burden with a couple of different views:

Early on, it was very appealing to decrease the taxable income. It was an easy way to justify putting the money into a retirement account. It felt good on the tax form. That feeling was enough incentive to get the ball rolling, and max out the contributions when the career hit those peak earning years. I don't think that I would have had the discipline to save that amount of money in a taxable account. Once the account began to build, you could see the results and it reinforced that saving money was a good thing. Given that I now have a reasonable sum of pre-tax savings, I am OK with paying the taxes to get it into an after-tax form.

Second- I think that most of it will come out at a lower tax rate. It may not be a big difference, but I don't think it will be at a higher rate. Even if it is slightly higher, the fact that I was able to save the money makes it OK.

Third- if the market continues to be strong, we will leave some of it to the kids as an inherited IRA. They can use some of the proceeds to pay the taxes that some of the entitled folks believe my generation has screwed them with! So I may be passing the political bills to my kids, but I will leave them some cash to help out with those bills. And if the market is truly strong, there will be some endowed scholarships to help out future students at my alma mater. Because those kids will be paying for all of the sins of the next couple generations that follow ours. Ultimately, all of the poop flows downhill, and all of us poop!

 

[knucklehead 61]

mine crossed the 7 figure mark after 10-12 years. it dropped a few hundred thousand around 2000 & again in 2008, but recovered solidly.

 

[statsman]

Individually, we never did. With the high housing costs in our area of CA (mortgage, property taxes), we usually put the minimum needed into our 401(k) plans in order to receive the maximum match from our respective companies. It wasn't until our last few years working that we put the maximum amount into our 401(k) plans.

That said, we're sitting at $1.4M combined (retired the past year and a half). Not exactly sure when we hit the $1M mark combined.

 

[WhenIsItTime]

mine crossed the 7 figure mark after 10-12 years. it dropped a few hundred thousand around 2000 & again in 2008, but recovered solidly.

Wow! What was the employer contribution and how invested?

 

[jasg]

Fifteen years.

I didn't keep records for the first five years but I ended up with $60k in an IRA and started a new job. Ten years later I passed the $1M mark. The first six of those ten years were a with a very generous company that put aside 15% of my total compensation.

A very aggressive AA - nearly all stock. Lost huge amounts in 2000-02 and 2008-09 - when I retired.

 

[FI_by_2023]

For those with big 401ks (or tax deferred balances in general), be sure to at least look at your after tax savings. It makes a big difference if you can't reach the $ until 59.5
but your boss says you're out at 55. And then there is the tax torpedo issue.
Play with some spreadsheets... if you're in a the middle or upper ranges of a wide tax bracket, do you really think you'll be in a lower tax bracket when you pull from the 401k? (rhetorical question)

Great point. A couple of years ago I started putting a deferred tax liability on our personal financial statement to get all numbers, in particular investable assets, closer to a post tax basis as values between Roth, post tax and 401k are apples and oranges when adding together.

 

[racy]

31 Years. Could have been shorter but I made some mistakes: (1) allocation wasn't aggressive enough when first starting out, (2) didn't max out when young, and (3) took a loan out when young, too.

 

[arch57]

Tale of 2 workers...it also depended on your investment choices. I had a co-worker who was very risk averse and was in the same labor grade as I was so probably made similar pay. As we all edged into our mid-50's at the lunch table he mentioned his 401K elections were all the "safe" fixed income fund, which paid a steady 3-4% and he was even moving his company match stock into that after the holding period, which I think was 2 years.

Well at the time his value was about $550K while mine was nearly $900K mainly because I kept company stock (which had a great run while I was employed for 20+ years) and rest was in S&P500 index and other equity index funds. As I approached retirement in 2015 I moved about 60% into our fixed income fund which is paying a solid 3.75% today. (Note: that is not our total AA).

I never hit the $1M in that account as I wasn't able to "max out" until 15 years into the plan because of mortgage and college expenses during those years but we have over $2M today with wife's 401K and IRA's.

 

[jollystomper]

I took me 30 years (1984-2014).

1996 - 100K+
2009 - 500K+
2014 - 1M+

I did not max out my my contributions (and thus the company match) until the early 2000s, soon after Megacorp changed their retirement plan and I realized I could not count on my pension being near what they had said when I joined the company.

 

[TDub]

I never will. I have around 9 w*rking years left, only been maxing out for about 5 years, and no matching. Our NW will hit the 1MM mark but our TSPs never will.

We have a big mix of tax deferred, Roths, brokerage, cash, pensions.