It’s really hard to talk about money face to face. Different people are in different situations and it makes it awkward. For the sake of public accountability and just to share what I’m doing, I’ve decided to share my personal savings plan.

Calling it “retirement savings” doesn’t work for me. “Retirement” sounds like something that’s going to happen to someone else, not to me. This is what I call my “long term savings plan.” Renaming it in this way makes me feel like it’s me who is going to get to spend this money!!

At the moment I have around $100,000 invested. The two scenarios below involve me saving $200 per week or $300 a week for 20 years, which will put me at almost 54. Now, saving $300 a week consistently is not something I expect is going to be easy. To achieve this I’m going to need to put every bit of spare money into investments as soon as I get it, but as you can see, I think it will be worth it.

I’ve used a medium rate of return of around 6%, something that should be achievable after taxes and fees.

Here’s what my account should like like after the full 20 years. Clicking on the images will expand them.

This is the much less impressive projection of what it should look like after the first 10 years. As you can see, it really is time and consistent investing that does the magic with compounding returns.