<prompt> Human: I finally woke the hell up to life when I recently turned 30 and now Im seriously regretting all of my poor planing for retirement. I have 9 years in the military without a cent invested into a Tsp account, I definitely plan on doing 20 years and retiring pending nothing pops up in the next 11 years that will get me booted. I have no credit card debt and no car payments, I have 140,000 left on my mortgage which is the only debt I have. Ive putting my emergency funds into a savings account, I currently have 28k saved into that account. I really want to make sure me and my wife are taken care of when I retire. she currently doesnt work to stay home with the kids. She plans on working once the kids go to school. Since I screwed around with TSP for 9 years Id really like to catch up to what I should have in that account right now if I was contributing in the past. How can I get this done?I was thinking about setting up a Roth Tsp going into one of the life cycle accounts, and then contribute 100 of my base pay to that account. Ill transfer money from my savings account to my checking each paycheck equal to what my normal paycheck would be as if I was only contributing 10 to tsp. I figured if I continue to do this until my savings account gets to about 10k, then do the same each time I get my tax return roughly 7-8k, I dont claim dependents I should be caught up fairly quickly in the next couple of years. Ive been reading that I should have roughly 30-40k in my TSP account by the time I reach 30 years old, is this fairly accurate? Any advice would be completely appreciated, just please remember your talking to someone who just yesterday started reading up on retirement, so if you could keep it to a ELI5 level thatd be awesome.  <response>: Make an ACS appointment with a financial counselor. The military pays people to walk you through the basics, which is where you are. You can definitely max your TSP this year, and make a plan for a steady contribution next year. Emergency funds are always necessary, but with the excellent health insurance and fairly solid employment future you have in the military, Id break the six months of expenses rule and have about three months of spending saved away. Consider transferring a month of GI Bill benefits each to your wife and kids, as this will help with planning for college costs. Do not waste the momentum here! Consult some experts, make a plan, execute the plan, and be glad you started planning at 30 and not 40. 