Not that its my business, but if you can say, how much did he retire with?
I have been planning for this my whole life, with some expensive bumps along the way (nasty divorce). I kept my nose to the grind the whole time, saving and investing consistently at least 15% of my income. I never really knew how much I’d ultimately need since I never count on SS being there when I start to draw, probably about 4 years from now at 67. I will have a small military pension that just covers my mortgage, and I will have a similar size pension from my civilian job. But the majority of my retirement will be from my own 401k investing.
I recently asked a co-worker what was sufficient to retire and he said the magic number is generally about $3M in a 401K assuming no other income sources. That should easily cover current standard of living and get one through market dips.
Thats just an arbitrary bench mark. My 401K is not there (yet) but with the pensions and the fact that most of my 401K is now in Roth, I should do just fine. The tax benefits of being in Roth vs a taxable income source is more than you would think over a 30 year retirement, like in 7 digits. But to make it worth the conversions to Roth from non-Roth, you want to start before you actually retire.