Am I totally screwed as for retirement?
I’m 37 and got a late start on investing. I thought i wanted to buy a house, but things changed and prices kept climbing.
So I ended up saving up too much cash. Finally about 3 years ago, I opened a Roth IRA and have maxed it each year. Last year, I got the chance to open a 401K and I’m trying to max that out each year as well. I don’t know that I’ll always be able to max both. I now have about $58k between the two, not great, but way better than I was a year ago.
I‘m starting to invest the $280k that I was just blindly saving for a house in my HYSA. I finally opened a brokerage, and invested some in VOO. I hope to keep doing this, but it’s hard mentally to invest that money that’s been sitting safely (but also losing money to inflation.) So I’m trying to just do it slowly.
If I keep my current strategy, will I likely be okay in retirement, even though I got a very late start? I wish I’d started investing in my 20s, but what's done is done. What concerns me is I feel I really have to max both accounts for 30 years to have any hope to retire, and I don’t know I’ll be able to do that.
The housing situation stinks but I’m not looking to buy right now and may never buy. I just don’t see the point when I’d have to tie up a lot of my savings in the down payment to afford the PITI. And I wouldn’t be able to invest much in retirement after buying a home and having a mortgage and maintenance, so I don’t know that’s worth it now that I can’t really find anything under $250k.
I only make about $70k per year.