Net Worth Targets By Age, Income, And Work Experience For Financial Freedom Seekers

Everybody should have a net worth target to shoot for by age, work experience, and income. Net worth targets will help you stick to your financial plan and motivate you to do more. With net worth targets, you will likely build way more wealth than if you had zero net worth targets.

Too many people wake up 10 years later and wonder where all their money went. If only they could have a net worth guide. They could print it out and stick on their refrigerator to keep them on track. Lucky for you, you’ve found one.

Below is my net worth targets guide to shoot for. The net worth targets are based on a multiple of gross income, regardless of your savings rate.

Using a multiple of gross income helps keep you disciplined as your income grows. A multiple of gross income also helps keep you honest on your path to financial freedom. You can’t just slash costs to achieve financial independence.

If you start subsisting on ramen noodles and water, your financial independence number is probably not real. If you don’t do anything to change a suboptimal situation, like quit your job or leave a bad marriage, your financial independence is likely not real either.

My goal is for you to have a target net worth to shoot for by age or years worked so you will eventually achieve financial independence. Once you achieve financial independence, you will gain the ultimate courage to live your ideal life.

Net Worth Targets By Age, Years Worked, Income

Below is my net worth targets by age, years worked, and income. The key net worth target to shoot for is 20X your average gross income. Once you’ve achieved 20X your average gross income, I consider you to be financially free.

Once your net worth is equal to 20X or more your gross income, you are free to keep working, retire, or downshift to a different career that pays less money. You can use your highest annual gross income as a multiple or average your last three years of gross income.

Amassing a net worth equal to 20X your average annual gross income will be hard. But good news! Once you have a minimum portfolio balance of $300,000 you will start feeling free. And once your net worth reaches 10X your average annual gross income, that’s when financial independence really starts kicking in.

Using a multiple of income is better than using a multiple of expenses for your net worth target so you can stay more disciplined. As your income grows, your net worth target will also grow. Meanwhile, you can’t “cheat” your way to financial independence by slashing expenses.

If you have a $200,000 income, you have a top 10% income. A top 1% income is over $500,000 today.

These net worth target figures are for those who:

• Take action rather than complain about an unfair system
• Max out their 401k and IRA every year
• Save an additional 20% or more after taxes and 401k/IRA contribution
• Take calculated risks through investments in various asset classes
• Build multiple streams of active and passive income
• Work on a side hustle before or after their day job
• Focus on the big picture and don’t nitpick with minutiae
• Want to achieve financial freedom sooner with their one and only life

In the beginning, it’s difficult to get started due to growing student loan debt, wage stagnation, and increased competition for good paying jobs due to globalization.

Despite expectations of a large generational wealth transfer, inheritances usually won’t happen until much later in life. But after about 10 years in the workforce, you will start to build momentum. Achieving the net worth targets based on higher multiples will get easier.

If you so happened to have delayed entering the work force because you decided to go to graduate school or go travel the world like a lot of wealthier college graduates do nowadays, no problem!

Simply follow the “Years Worked” column to find your appropriate multiple. For example, if you’re 30 years old with no work experience because you spent your 20s getting a PhD, your target net worth multiple is 0.

Big Inheritance To Boost Net Worth

On the flip side, partly because of such large inheritance expectations, I expect Millennials and Gen Xers to see significant injections to their net worths after the age of 45. Another reason the target multiples of gross income after are higher as we age is because all of us become much more savvy with our money.

When we’re older, no longer can we cry ignorance for not knowing how to properly asset allocate our investments. With the proper asset allocation, you’ll be able to better weather any storms.

Further, we become more knowledgeable about long-term investment trends. One such trend is real estate crowdfunding, where one can finally invest in real estate across the country 100% passively. I’ve personally invested $810,000 in private real estate funds to take advantage of heartland real estate.

By our 40s, we’ve already gone through 20 years of money making wins and losses. Surely, by now we should all understand our monthly budgets, net worth compositions, spending tendencies, risk tolerance, and the importance of diligently tracking our money.

I get much more pushback on my net worth targets from folks in their 20s and 30s than folks in their 40s and beyond. The reason is because when we are young, we think we know what we don’t know. We are more arrogant, more stubborn, and less experienced.

As we age, we see the positive effects of compounding that really starts to snowball with a larger financial nut. Accumulating the second million is much easier than the first.

Easier To Live On Less When Older

Being able to comfortably live on less is one of the biggest reasons why it’s easier to hit higher net worth target multiples as you age. The older you get, the desires of your youth slowly fade away because you’ve been there, done that.

For example, when I was in my 20s, all I wanted to do was drive different types of luxury cars. After going through more than 10 different cars after college, all I want is one understated car that is reliable and safe.

Let’s say you have a $2 million net worth and make $200,000 a year at age 50. Your net worth multiple is 10X, while I suggest it should be closer to 15X. If you can find a way to live comfortably off only $150,000 a year, or 25% less, then you’re spot on target at 15X.

If you can live off $100,000, then you can retire immediately due to a 20X multiple. In other words, the more money you make and the more money you accumulate, the easier it is to adjust your spending downward.

Growing Your Net Worth As A Retiree

For the first two years after leaving Corporate America, I was making around 70% less than I did while working. Funny enough, my after-tax savings rate still was around 50%. I just became super frugal by cutting out all extraneous expenses. I found joy in the things I already had.

Saving money is also easier when you don’t work because there are lots of free activities and discounts during working hours such as free museum week days, early bird dinner specials, the ability to enjoy free parks, libraries, hikes, etc. Your commuting costs go down and you no longer have to shop for work related clothes.

As a retiree, the biggest X factor are medical expenses and long term care costs. We currently pay $2,300 a month for a platinum health insurance plan for a family of three. Not cheap by any means, but affordable after a couple decades of aggressive saving.

I’m really what I consider a fake retiree. The reason why is because I operate this website that generates online income. It takes work writing and updating this articles since I started Financial Samurai in 2009.

Further, I spent two years during the pandemic writing my Wall Street Journal bestseller, Buy This, Not That: How To Spend Your Way To Wealth And Freedom. I received a book advance and will receive royalties.

Hence, even in retirement, I continuously am building my family’s net worth. Having a net worth target to shoot for keeps me focused.

Easy Net Worth Target Multiples To Remember

The major age milestones everybody thinks about are 25, 30, 40, 50, and 60. As a result, I’ve made it easy for everybody to remember what multiple of their average gross income for the past three years to shoot for.

• Age 30: 2X your average gross income

• Age 40: 10X your average gross income

• Age 45: 15X your average gross income

• Age 60 or whenever you want to leave your job: 20X your average gross income

When I left work in 2012 at the age of 34, my net worth equaled roughly 15X my average income over the last three years. In other words, I fell short of my 20X income target. However, thanks to a severance package that equaled roughly six years of living expenses, I was more confident to leave.

Since 2012, I have grown my net worth by building an online business. I’ve also watched my investments grow with this bull market. Meanwhile, I’ve lowered the amount of income I need to be happy.

One of the most pleasant surprises about early retirement is needing roughly 30% less that I thought was necessary. So many people forget that once they retire, they no longer need to save for retirement.

I’ve been well over the 20X income multiple for the past several years. No longer do I fear running out of money or being forced to live a lower standard of living.

Multiple income buffers such as passive income, online income, and the occassional consulting income ensure financial security.

Remember 20X Gross Income

If there’s one figure to remember from this post, it’s the 20X gross income multiple. At 20X, even if your net worth provided zero returns, it would still take 20 years to exhaust your wealth while maintaining your same standard of living.

You could of course invest your wealth in a risk free asset like Treasury bonds to extend the life of your principal. Or you could take slightly more risk and try and earn a higher return to increase your odds of your nest egg never running out.

Just know that once you’ve achieved a net worth of 20X your gross income, your goal is to never lose money again. This is the first rule of financial independence! Once you’ve got enough money to live the way you want, there’s no need to take excess risk.

The beauty about a 20X multiple is that you don’t have to wait until you’re over 60 to permanently leave work behind. If you can figure out a way to achieve 20X earlier, all the better!

There are too many middle-aged folks who wake up one day and wonder where all their money went because they didn’t stay on top of their money. When all they want to do is take it easy, they’re faced with the harsh reality that decades more work is their only option.

If you ever achieve a net worth equal to 20X your average annual gross income, you might want to accumulate more. Hedonic adaptation gets the best of us. Further, you might want to create multi-generational wealth. If so, you can check out my extreme net worth targets to shoot for!

Achieve Your Net Worth Targets With Real Estate

To help you achieve your net worth targets, I highly suggest investing in real estate. Real estate is my favorite way to achieving financial freedom. It is a tangible asset that is less volatile, provides utility, and generates income.

Roughly 40% of my net worth is in real estate compared to 30% in stocks. My real estate holdings also generate roughly $150,000 a year in passive income.

Given interest rates have come way down, the value of rental income has gone way up. The reason why is because it now takes a lot more capital to generate the same amount of risk-adjusted income.  

Take a look at my two favorite real estate crowdfunding platforms. Both are free to sign up and explore.

Fundrise: A way for accredited and non-accredited investors to diversify into real estate through private eFunds. Fundrise has been around since 2012 and has consistently generated steady returns, no matter what the stock market is doing.

CrowdStreet: A way for accredited investors to invest in individual real estate opportunities mostly in 18-hour cities. 18-hour cities are secondary cities with lower valuations and higher rental yields. Growth is potentially higher too due to job growth and demographic trends.

I’ve personally invested $810,000 in real estate crowdfunding across 18 projects. My goal is to take advantage of lower valuations in the heartland of America. This is in addition to my three San Francisco rental properties.

Manage Your Money In One Place

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After you link all your accounts, use their Retirement Planning calculator. It pulls your real data to give you as pure an estimation of your financial future as possible.

I’ve been using Personal Capital since 2012. As a result, I have seen my net worth skyrocket during this time thanks to better money management.

Net Worth Targets By Age, Income, Or Work Experience is a Financial Samurai original post. Going 60,000+ others and sign up for my free weekly newsletter. I’ve been helping people achieve financial independence since 2009.