How much money/assests should a married 35 year old with two children have saved in various holdings?

Question

I am teacher who currently makes $42,000 per year.

Answer 1

That depends.
How old are your children?
Do you want to pay for their college?
At what age do you want to retire?

Assuming you want to pay for their college and they are around 5 years old and they are going to attend an ivory league college (they are really smart of course!) which will cost around $100K a year or $800k for both of them.
Then you should be saving around $2K a month for college plus again assuming they are around 5 years old then you should have around $120K in savings now to send both of them to college.

If you want to retire by the time you are 65 you should probably have around $200K in retirement savings.

Answer 2

What is your salary?

At least 3 months salary for emergency savings in a savings account. Try ING Direct.

In your retirement savings you should by now have about 1 year's salary saved. So if you make $50k a year you should have $50k in a 401k or IRA. You should be putting 10-12% of your salary away including company match.

Also, you should have life insurance. If only you work in the family, you should have 8-10 times your salary in insurance. If both you and your spouce works then perhaps 6-8 times.

You should also start saving for your kids college. This should be any extra money after you have the above 3 squared away. This is actually your lowest priority because your kids can get loans, scholarships, get a job, etc.

Answer 3

My Dad always said 1/3 cash, 1/3 stocks, 1/3 real estate. I am 35 and getting there. He is quite successful so I have to say he is living proof that might be a good formula.

Answer 4

It all depends on how much money they make. If you're barely scraping by, then you might not have the opportunity to save very much. I think at 35, you should have at least a year's worth of salary saved, probably more.