Personal Finance

My spouse and I make $300,000 a year but lack a firm retirement income target — how should we plan?

Aaron Webber

Published: January 15, 2025 9:30 am

Do you really need a firm retirement plan? How detailed does your retirement plan actually need to be? Do you still need a plan even if you plan on working during your retirement? These are some of the more interesting questions that online financial ‘experts’ and retirement guides don’t ask. Thankfully, some people have the answers.

One self-employed individual was looking for answers to these questions and took their concerns to the people in the r/fatFIRE community on Reddit — a group of people obsessed with financial independence and retiring early with “a fat stash” of money. Please keep in mind, of course, that their advice is their opinion, and is going to be hyper-focused on making money and not much else. You should always speak to an expert before making any retirement decisions.

The Question

The author of the post says that he and his wife are in their late 20s and make around $300k per year. They don’t have any significant debt and have a large amount of savings (“a few hundred k”) in stocks and cash. However, they don’t have a target for retirement savings or for income since they want to keep working as long as they enjoy it and anticipate working through retirement.

They were wondering if anyone in the community had looked into self-employment retirement plans or solo 401(k) accounts. They admit they haven’t done much research on the topic themselves, but wanted to see if they were realistic options for someone in their situation.

The Community Response

Members of the community were quick to point out that in order to qualify for a solo or self-employed 401(k) plan you have to fit a certain number of requirements, the most important of which is actually being self-employed. In the details listed by the author, they would not qualify as being self-employed, and therefore could not get a solo 401(k) account.

However, since they are in their late 20s with significantly more assets and money than most other people, they will probably end up being just fine, even without a retirement plan. If they begin contributing to a retirement account through their employer, or on their own, there should be no problems saving up enough to retire comfortably.

The most important advice given in the thread was that the author should talk with a CPA if they have questions like this and are beginning to plan their lives around a financial future that isn’t possible. You should do the same if you have begun to look into retirement accounts but don’t quite understand what you are doing.

Of course, many people are slowly coming to the realization that they will not be able to retire, and will have to work through their twilight years. The fact that this couple is choosing to do so willingly is nice since they will have some company of people who weren’t as lucky.