A new crop of millionaires

By Dian Vujovich

My rule of thumb regarding how much money someone would need if he or she wanted to retire at 65 and live comfortably for the next 30 years was simple: Figure out how much money you need to live on today and multiply it by 30. For the average working person, most often the figure calculated came out to $1 million or more dollars. That’s a number that can seem daunting and unattainable to some, and chicken feed to others. For the worker-bee with a 401 k, however, it seems millionaires are springing up by the thousands.

Research from Fidelity Investments shows that the number of investors with $1,000,000 in their 401(k) accounts has doubled since 2012: It now stands at 70,000. Apparently Baby Boomers have begun kicking more money into their accounts over the past couple of years.A move that has clearly paid off.

That’s really good news especially since in only 5 years, by 2020, 20 percent of the population will be aged 65 or older and half of them won’t have enough money to retire on. Social Security, a program never designed to be a retirement plan, will, for many, be their only source of income. This, according to MyBudget360.com.

Knowing that millionaires are being produced at a pretty rapid clip is exciting. Even so, that news ought to come with a caveat: Past performance is no guarantee of future performance.

While we’ve all heard and read that line for years, it’s easy to forget particularly when the size of one’s investment account has ballooned to figures never really imaginable.

So, fingers crossed that the sums in these accounts aren’t just paper profits and that the market’s wily ways don’t wind up subtracting instead of adding money to their bottom lines by the time these 401(k)s need to be tapped.

After all, mama and papa, Aunt Tillie, cousin Gregg or your best friend might need some financial support as they age and hopefully you’ll be able to help and provide it.