I’m impressed you could save that much and still make under the Roth income limit.
Announcing my retirement
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It's easier for you, kiddos. Let's say you are 28 now and making a starting salary of 65k as an assistant. Assume your employer contributes 5% and matches another 3% of income you contribute. 18k from you plus 5k Roth plus 5k employer part= 28k/year. Toss in a small bit of spousal savings from his/her job (say 5k/year in a Roth), go get yourself 8 to 10% average returns like I did and 2% raises most years and you'll be where I am now.
Okay, so you started teaching in 2005-07. The 2006 equivalent of 65k was $50,247.
So let's put all of your assumptions into excel, i.e. 9% returns (despite the fact that your investing period included the worst financial crisis since the depression), maxing your 401k and roth each year (even though that would eat up 40 percent of your gross income), 5k/year in a spouse's Roth from their contributions, and an 8% match.
To help you out, I also assumed that you got a 9% return on all invested funds the year they were invested. That still only gets you to 800k or so. Based on the assumptions you've given up it would take 20 years. That's a pretty miserable 20 years as well.
If you make 65000, that's like 49000 after tax. If you're also contributing $24000 (I'm excluding the match and the spousal contributions here), then you have to live on $25,000/year. Rent alone would eat that up in a lot of parts of the country.