<prompt> Human: Been watching this subreddit for awhile, finally decided to register and ask for guidance. Im 41, and hoping I can somehow make a good life for myself after decades of bad decisions. Here is a little background, when in my 20s I spent most of my time going out and having fun. Wasnt career focused, spent my time at manual labor positions, not saving, and didnt think about retirement. Got married too young, had a son, and divorced. Continued to be immature and party until my early 30s. Credit score - 574. Decided I should grow up and be a man and focus on being a father. I started to take night classes for the IT field. Worked some entry level IT jobs to get experience and work my way up. Still, no retirement or savings and not making much of a wage.Fast forward to today, Im 41. Credit score hovering around the high 690s - low 700s. Have been in the IT field for 7 years now. I make a good salary for my area, 70,000. I do pay child support, but thatll be done in 4 years. I finally started a 401k, have been bumping up my contribution, and it is now at 10. Still, I only have about 15,000 in it. I dont have any other retirement accounts, I know next to nothing about that stuff. I just blindly throw money at it, but cant help but feel I am so far behind in the game of life, like, whats the point at this age.Recently, I took a part-time job, just to pay off credit card debt. I dont have much, under 5 grand. Just want to be debt free, maybe put extra in retirement, or savings... I dont know.Anyone have any advise, is it possible for someone like me, who has been a fuck up for a majority of my life, to possibly rebound and enjoy a retirement? I feel like all I do right now is bust my ass every single day to be the best I can be, but it is too late. Feel like Ill be 70 and still be working multiple jobs dreaming of retirement. Thanks in advance for any guidance I can get. Assistant: Better late than never. If you take control of your situation and plan for it, you can easily lean retire and live off social security whatever you end up saving. Or even a partial retirement where you trade your full time job for a part time job to get more work life balance. Sure, maybe you wont have a giant yacht off the coast of sunny Florida, but you can certainly retire someday if you focus on a goal.To retire on a salary of 70k in todays dollars remember, money will have less purchasing power due to inflation youll need retirement savings of about 1.75 million. Very very easy to do with the power of compounding interest if you increase you savings rate. So, heres the game plan.- Pay off credit card debt, very aggressively. Any profit you make on the stock market will be undercut by the credit card interest. If you absolutely have to, scale back 401k contributions to max out the matching percentage and throw the extra money straight at debt. - Increase 401k contributions to 15. This is basically the minimum level at which you can guarantee, with some degree of certainty, that you can retire someday. Once you feel comfortable with this level, increase savings rate to 20, and beyond, until you hit 26 savings rate maximum 401k contributions are 18.5k a year. Open up an IRA too if thats something that interests you. Debate Roth versus traditional tax advantages.- Inside your 401k andor IRA, Invest in a Target Date fund tagged with the year you might like to retire. The later the year, the more aggressive and risky the fund will be remember, more risk higher gain potential. Human: Excellent information, thank you! I am not looking at a yacht, or to travel the world. If I can golf whenever I want with a cocktail or two, Id be happy. About your bullet points, should I lower my 401k contributions, and put that money into my CC debt? Once that is done, push my 401k contributions to 15-20. Go as high as I can until 18,500 a year. I dont know about IRAs, is that something I should do along side of a 401k? If so, what do I contribute to that?Assistant: IRAs are great for another tax advantaged retirement investment place. 5500 a year limit with both Roth post-tax contributions, but growth and withdrawals are tax free and Traditional contributions reduce taxable income options. Pick one of the three low cost brokerages, Fidelity, Vanguard, or Schwab. In order of priority list we usually say:- Max out 401k matching percentage for free money- Credit card or other high interest debt, pay it down aggressively- Max IRA at 5500- Max 401k at 18.5kIn that order. Human: Thanks for all the input everyone. I see the sidebar now, just been so stressed lately so I posed without glancing over. My mistake. Ive just lowered my 401k contributions, and will look at the interest rate of the CC cards I have open to determine which to tackle first. Ill also look at IRAs. Thank you so much. Feel like I can get some momentum going now.  <response>: Just remember - it is a long, slow steady process. So, you it may be disheartening because you cant check you balance every day and see it going up, up, up. x200B;But, if you can contribute and invest 20k a year for the next 25 years, you can have over 1.2 million dollars.x200B;As you are making sacrifices, remember you arent doing it for today or tomorrow. You are doing it to have over a million dollars at retirement. 