Your Retirement Corpus by Age: Pre-Tax vs. Post-Tax

Fidelity’s widely cited retirement savings benchmark says to have 1x your salary saved by 30, 3x by 40, 6x by 50, 8x by 60, and 10x by 67 — a target built on saving 15% of income (including employer match) starting at age 25 and retiring at 67. That’s a useful compass, but it doesn’t answer the question that matters more for this audience specifically: pre-tax or Roth, and does the answer change if you’re not sure you’ll still be a U.S. resident when you actually retire?

The benchmark, and where it comes from

Fidelity’s savings factors assume a saver starts contributing 15% of income (employer match included) at age 25, invests more than half their portfolio in stocks on average over their career, retires at 67, and wants to maintain their pre-retirement lifestyle using savings plus Social Security. Under those assumptions, the age-based milestones are:

Age	Target (multiple of current salary)
30	1x
40	3x
50	6x
60	8x
67	10x

These are aspirational goalposts, not a formula you can derive your own number from — Fidelity is explicit that individual circumstances (retirement age, desired lifestyle, other income sources, whether you started saving later than 25) shift the right target considerably. What the table is useful for is a gut check: if you’re 40 and nowhere near 3x your salary saved, that’s a signal to increase your savings rate or push out your retirement timeline, not a verdict.

What 15% actually builds — a worked example

Starting to save early matters more than almost any other lever in this calculation, because most of the eventual balance comes from investment growth compounding on itself, not from the contributions themselves. Take a $90,000 starting salary at age 25, a 15% savings rate, and a 7% average annual nominal return — a commonly used long-run assumption for a diversified stock-heavy portfolio:

Age	Contributions to date	Balance
30	$67,500 (5 years)	~$82,000
40	$180,000 (15 years, salary growing)	~$405,000
50	$315,000 (25 years, salary growing)	~$1,125,000

By age 40, contributions account for less than half the balance — investment growth has already overtaken new money as the bigger driver. That gap only widens from there, which is also why the Fidelity benchmarks jump by such large multiples in the second half of a career (6x at 50 to 10x at 67): each additional year of growth is compounding on a much larger base than it was a decade earlier. (These figures use nominal — not inflation-adjusted — dollars and a fixed 7% return for simplicity; actual returns vary year to year, and Fidelity’s own benchmark table uses a more conservative blended assumption that accounts for that variance, which is part of why a simple compounding model like this one will drift from their published multiples at older ages even when it lines up closely in the first 10-15 years.)

Run your own numbers

Pre-tax vs. Roth: the split that’s easy to get wrong

The standard framing — pre-tax now if you expect a lower tax bracket in retirement, Roth now if you expect a higher one — assumes you’ll be a U.S. tax resident when you withdraw. For a lot of H-1B and green card-track holders, that assumption isn’t safe. Visa timelines, family circumstances, and the possibility of returning to India before or at retirement age are real enough that the standard advice deserves a second look.

The difference matters because the two account types are treated very differently for a nonresident alien. Distributions from a traditional 401(k) or IRA paid to someone who is a nonresident alien for U.S. tax purposes are subject to a default 30% U.S. withholding rate under IRC Section 1441 — reduced only if a tax treaty specifically applies and the right paperwork (Form W-8BEN, sometimes Form 8833) is filed with the plan administrator, and even then a full refund of over-withheld amounts usually still requires filing a nonresident U.S. tax return. Roth accounts are funded with money that’s already been taxed, so a nonresident alien withdrawing their own Roth contributions generally doesn’t face that same 30% withholding on the contribution portion, though qualified-distribution rules for the earnings portion still apply. For a deeper look at exactly what changes if you leave the U.S. permanently, see the companion article on 401(k)/IRA treatment after moving back to India — this section is about how that possibility should factor into the pre-tax/Roth split you choose today, not the mechanics of a distribution you might take decades from now.

None of this means Roth is automatically the right call — if your marginal tax rate today is high (many mid-career tech salaries land in the 22-24% federal bracket or higher before state tax), the immediate deduction from a traditional contribution is worth real money now, and a partial-return scenario doesn’t erase that trade-off. It means the decision has an extra variable most retirement content doesn’t mention: genuine uncertainty about where you’ll be a tax resident when you eventually withdraw is itself a reason to split contributions across both account types rather than committing entirely to one, so you have flexibility either way the future plays out.

2026 contribution limits — and a new rule that affects higher earners

For 2026, the employee 401(k) deferral limit is $24,500, the combined employee-plus-employer limit is $72,000, and the IRA contribution limit is $7,500. The standard catch-up contribution for those 50 and older is $8,000 (a $11,250 “super catch-up” applies specifically to ages 60-63).

New for 2026, and directly relevant to higher earners in this audience: if your FICA (Social Security) wages exceeded $150,000 in 2025, any catch-up contributions you make in 2026 must go into a Roth account — pre-tax catch-up contributions are no longer an option once you cross that threshold. It’s a mandatory rule, not a choice, and it only affects the catch-up portion (the amount above the standard $24,500 limit), not your regular contributions.

If your specific plan is to leave the U.S. before or at retirement, read the companion article on what happens to your 401(k) and IRA if you move back to India before deciding how to split future contributions — the pre-tax/Roth choice above and the withdrawal mechanics there are two halves of the same decision.