A “dream” retirement will look different for everyone — some aspire to jet set around the world, while others would be happy settling down in a small town to live out their golden years. But as different as retirement goals may be from person to person, there are some rules of thumb that ring true for anyone looking to retire comfortably. Yet, many Americans seem to be abandoning expert guidelines when planning for their own retirement.

                By                    Gabrielle Olya

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How Much To Save for Retirement

The majority of Americans (38%) believe that you need to save $500,000 or less to retire — but experts say this is not enough in most cases.

“To be able to retire on $500,000 with a living wage of $50,000 per year, you would be drawing down at 10%, which is a fair amount higher than the expected return on capital in public markets,” said Ben Waterman, co-founder and COO at Strabo, a global portfolio tracker. “Accounting for down years and projecting conservatively, one could assume a 5% safe withdrawal rate, given that the stock market has returned on average a few percentage points higher than this. You’d therefore need exactly double $500,000, or $1 million, to be able to safely draw down at 5% and live comfortably with some leeway.”

The survey also found that most Americans who have reached retirement age are far short of this goal — among those ages 65 and older, just 13% have $750,000 or more saved for retirement. The majority (31%) have $10,000 or less saved for retirement.

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What Age To Start Saving for Retirement

Experts recommend starting to save for retirement as early as possible to make the most of compounding interest.

“If you start at 20, you’ll need to put away less than $300 per month on average to get to $1 million by 65, assuming a 7% annual return,” Waterman said. “The key is little and often from an early age.”

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How Much To Rely On Social Security

The survey found that most Americans plan to use Social Security to fund all (20%) or more than half (31%) of their retirement. Yet, in reality, experts say this likely won’t be possible.

“Historically, Social Security was not meant to be the only source of retirement income,” said Wade Pfau, co-director of the American College Center for Retirement Income. “It is meant to replace about 40% of the average indexed lifetime earnings of someone who worked and earned an average wage over their lifetime.”

There are also likely to be changes to the program in the coming decades, which could affect younger Americans by the time they retire.

“The start dates could get pushed back, more of your income could get taxed along the way, more of your benefits could be taxed in retirement and there may be more means testing,” said Jeff Rosengarten, CFP, principal at Homrich Berg. “If [you] are 25-plus years off from receiving benefits, I would plan as if you won’t receive much, if anything, to be safe.”

How Much of Your Income You Should Be Putting Toward Retirement Savings

As a rule of thumb, experts recommend putting between 12% to 15% of your income toward retirement, yet only 11% of Americans are making contributions in this range.

However, Matt Fleming, a wealth advisor executive at Vanguard, notes that there is some wiggle room with this rule.

“Within the team I work on here, we don’t use a percent of salary,” he said. “We would approach it more [based on] what lifestyle you want in retirement, and then back into what that means as far as saving toward that and investing toward that.”