How do people allocate money for retirement while in their analyst years on Wall Street?
Do people typically save a lot on a monthly basis, or do people pull most of it out during bonus season out of whatever their bonus is?
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Spend the base, bank the bonus.
With new bases you could easily save some money month to month, but rent/life in NYC is so expensive that the majority of savings comes from bonus
At the old analyst bases, I saved about 50% of take home pay (including 401k contributions) and then 100% of bonus. For bonus, I like to top off various accounts (IRA, emergency fund, etc) and then dollar cost over the next ~6 months. I still follow roughly this same pattern despite a higher salary. I think I may actually be below 50% post-tax savings now due to lifestyle creep
I’m assuming these percentages are after tax? How were you able to do this and balance lifestyle expenses?
Yes, those are post-tax %. One caveat I should’ve mentioned is I had no student loans (well like $10k). My first rent in NY was $1550 in a shit hole. Next was $1700. Now I pay $2500 in a different city. My corresponding salary was $85k, $125k, and $140k at those different rent levels. I was never a big spender and didn’t go out a ton. Additionally, my savings are about $410k all mutual funds and ETFs
In a LCOL and save about 60% of my base (includes 401k in that number) and all bonus. Planning to semi-retire by age 26 or so if markets stay good with TQQQ. Have fun in NYC guys.
semiretired at 26 wtf ahahaha
lol you may laugh but it's surprisingly possible so far lol
Sure, if the market just repeats its best year ever and we continously print 1/3 of all dollars in circulation every year, our portfolios will all look great… I’m also up massively, but this is like peak “graduated into a bull market”
Not how it works. Times have changed. Too much cash on the sidelines ready to buy dips. HFTs and huge number of retail traders now. FED also won't let the ship sink they can't have boomers out of their retrement.
Sounds like you think I’m predicting a crash, which I am definitely not, just advising that this was literally the best year on record for the market, driven heavily by multiple expansion, and future returns may be more subdued, even if positive… but thanks for the advice on “how it works”
They say the same thing every year...you will learn screenshot this and come back.
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