How One Man Saved $1 Million in 5 Years

How One Man Saved $1 Million in 5 Years

Cameron Huddleston    Life and Money Columnist

Save $1 million with these tips.

If you’re graduating from college this spring, saving for retirement probably isn’t high on your list of priorities. In fact, GOBankingRates found that saving for retirement isn’t a priority for a large number of Americans. It certainly wasn’t at the top of Grant Sabatier’s to-do list when he graduated from the University of Chicago in 2007.

As a philosophy major entering the job market on the brink of the Great Recession, Sabatier was lucky to find work at a call center for an analytics company. The pay was pretty good, too: $42,000 a year. It was certainly enough to cover living expenses and leave him with some cash to stash in a retirement account. But Sabatier didn’t save a dime.

“I spent it all,” he said. “I had an opportunity to save when I was 22, but I didn’t. I tried to live the life.”

But he got a wake-up call two years later. After bouncing from job to job, Sabatier found himself living at home with his parents with just $2.26 in his bank account. He decided to make saving a priority.

Five years later, Sabatier had $1 million in the bank. Today, at age 32, he has about $1.35 million.

Have a Plan

Whether you want to retire early or retire with riches, you need to have a plan in place. You can’t just set aside an arbitrary amount in a retirement account each month and hope it works out.

When he was 24 and living at home, Sabatier decided he wanted to reach financial independence by age 30 — a tall order for someone with just a couple bucks in the bank. To figure out how much he would need to save, he used a retirement calculator.

Sabatier estimated his annual expenses would be $50,000 and found he would need to save 25 times that sum — $1.25 million — in order to live off the interest in retirement. He then calculated that he would need to save $50 a day and earn 5 percent annually to have $1.25 million in 30 years.

However, Sabatier didn’t want to wait that long; he wanted to save the amount he needed in just five years.

“When you get clear on your numbers, what it costs to have the lifestyle you want, you really are in control,” he said.

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