How much should you have saved by 27-29? Trying to gauge whether I’ve saved too much or too little, comparatively speaking.

tl,dr: Expecting to save about 100k by 27, 1M by 32/33, and then 'retiring' actively.

I am an immigrant and I finished university an undegraduate degree in electrical engineering in India at 22. Got a job writing middleware for apps on an embedded OS out of college, but did not find if fulfilling and quit after 6 months. At this point I had INR 300k saved (about 5k CAD). I joined a research lab and was living paycheck-to-paycheck for a year and a half, and in this time also ended up spending most of my savings on graduate school applications. I moved to Canada in 2019 to join a master's program with funding, and had probably about CAD 1.5k left in my account by then. During my master's mostly lived paycheck to paycheck since international tuition is quite high, and even after scholarships and teaching salary I didn't have a lot left. Earlier this year I got a lucrative consulting opportunity in the summer and was able to save about CAD 15-20k. Used this to max out my TFSA's contribution room ($18k for three years as a Canadian resident).

I officially joined the workforce this year at 26. I make about 200K CAD working in artifical intelligence research in Big Tech. Don't realy have any expenses other than rent since I don't own a vehicle and eat at my company. Have been able to save another 23K since joining in September and will probably be able to save 100k by next year when I reach 27. If I stay in this line of work, I can see myself being able to save 1M in another 4-5 years as I don't really have any purchases in mind that would affect my savings rate.

My biggest expenses in the last three years (ourside of tuition/rent/graduate applications) have been about $1k each which I gave to my friend when his dad died, and to another friend's parents when he committed suicide ($1K is singificant amount of money in India). I don't really spend money on the finer things in life, and my hobbies are pretty inexpensive (running, biking, learning and teaching computer science and maths). I do like travelling and being a researcher I am able to travel using student funding or company funding to various places to present my research. I think once I have 1M in personal savings I will quit Big Tech and pursue a PhD or start my own company. Unlike this sub, I am okay with not owning a car or a home, maybe its a cultural thing. But my girlfirend would like to have a house some day so we might buy something in rural Ontario that has a small farm as she works with animals. That's the end of my humblebrag.

/r/PersonalFinanceCanada Thread