Wallet Therapy: So How Much Do I Actually Need to Retire?

For The Hayters: The Stories We Survive · Jun 18, 2026 · 28m

Retirement is one of those topics everyone throws numbers at you about. You need a million dollars. You should have six times your salary saved by 50. You should be maxing everything out. And honestly? It makes me want to close Instagram and pretend retirement doesn't exist.

But here's what Alex helped me understand this week: avoiding it doesn't make the problem smaller. It just makes it harder to fix later. So we're actually digging in.

The Solution:

Start now, not "when you make more." A $500/month contribution at 8% gets you $1.75M if you start at 25, but only $745K if you wait until 35…