Am I behind compared to everyone else my age?

Almost everybody who asks this means it in the context of their peers. That's the part I'd push on, because peers are the wrong yardstick here.

Most of America is massively behind if we're talking about retirement planning. So if you land in the middle of that group, you've learned that you're typical. You haven't learned whether your own plan works.

The analogy I keep using

I hate to use this one as an American, because I'm kind of overweight myself. But most of America is very overweight. So if I ask "am I overweight," who exactly am I comparing myself to?

If it's the room, I might come out fine and still not be anywhere near where I should be. The room isn't a standard. It's just the room.

The comparison that actually works

What you individually want your life to look like, and what that life costs.

Someone who wants to stop at 60 and travel hard for a decade needs a very different number than someone who plans to keep working in some form because the work is a good part of their life. The same balance can be badly behind for the first person and comfortably ahead for the second.

Once you've said out loud what you're aiming at, "behind" stops being a mood and turns into arithmetic. What does that life cost each year? What income shows up without you doing anything? What has to come from savings, for how many years, and which tax buckets is it sitting in?

The honest ending

I don't know whether you're behind. Nobody does without doing some analysis, and that includes me on a first phone call.

Age-based benchmarks are a rough sanity check and better than nothing. They're also blunt enough to hand false comfort to one household and unnecessary panic to the one next door.

The longer version of this, including what somebody would have to see before answering you, is here: Am I behind? Behind on what, and compared to whom?