How Much Super Should I Have at My Age?
It is one of the most common questions people have about their super, and also one of the hardest to answer with a single number, since it depends heavily on your income, when you started working, and your own goals. Here is a practical way to think about it.
Why Generic Benchmarks Only Go So Far
You may come across tables online suggesting a target balance for each age bracket, often based on average earnings. These can be a useful rough guide, but they assume a fairly standard, uninterrupted career, which does not reflect everyone’s situation. Time out of the workforce, career changes, part time work, and starting your career later or earlier can all shift these numbers significantly, without it meaning anything is wrong.
A More Useful Way to Think About It
Rather than comparing yourself to a generic average, it is generally more useful to ask two questions. First, is your super growing in line with your own contributions and reasonable investment returns, or is something like high fees or a long employment gap quietly eating into it. Second, based on your current trajectory, are you on track for the kind of retirement lifestyle you actually want.
Our Balance Projection Calculator is built for exactly this. Enter your age, salary, and current balance, and see a real projection based on your own numbers, compared against modest and comfortable retirement benchmarks, rather than a generic age based table.
What Actually Moves the Needle
- Fees, even a difference of less than 1%, compound significantly over decades. See it yourself with our Fees Impact Calculator
- Extra contributions, even small and irregular ones, add up meaningfully over a long timeframe
- Starting early matters more than almost anything else, since compounding has more time to work
What to Do With This Information
If your projection looks short of where you would like to be, the most direct levers are increasing contributions, checking whether you are paying more in fees than necessary, and making sure you are not accidentally paying for multiple accounts. None of these require a dramatic life change, and even small adjustments made early can meaningfully change your outcome.
See your own projected balance and how it compares to retirement benchmarks.
Try the Balance Projection Calculator โThis information is general in nature and not financial advice. See our full Disclaimer for details.