This is a response to the "featured" responder - in case you didn't know, median income is not a constant $45K - the dollar is not the same dollar as it was 45 years ago (inflation, hello?), companies come and go in the the NY Stock exchange or whatever index you use (which means that you have to pay to buy/sell stocks (this cuts away from your total), and the SS rate back then was 3% (plus match), not 6.2% (plus match).

For example, the mean income for families in 1962 , from the table below is:

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For an income of $45K, that 21 year old would have to earn the 2006 adjusted wage of 38/6.6 * 45 = $250K. (Of course, there's an upper limit of income that the person would have to pay SS upon.) And then it's all downhill from there. Pretty discouraging, to start out so strong, then become an ordinary schmuck.

You can look up the SS match throughout the years by going to the SS site.

The list of bad assumptions goes on and on... It would also be useful to learn some Excel and plug in real information accumulated over time, not data from one year.