By Age 35 is a Twitter snowclone where users mock a Fidelity Investments benchmark that said workers should have twice their salary saved by their mid-thirties.

Where did By Age 35 come from?

It came from a MarketWatch article tweeted on May 12, 2018, which users roasted starting around May 14, 2018.

What does By Age 35 mean?

The phrase sets up financial-advice cadence and then punches down with something tiny or absurd the poster actually owns or feels.

How do you use By Age 35?

Start a tweet with "By age 35, you should have..." and finish with a joke item, a feeling, or a song lyric, as @dylmdav did with Talking Heads.

Is By Age 35 still popular?

It is treated as a classic 2018 Twitter format and resurfaced that November as By Age 30 after CNBC covered Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's savings.

By Age 35

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Published October 22, 2026

By Age 35 is a Twitter snowclone that erupted in May 2018 after MarketWatch tweeted financial advice saying workers should have twice their salary saved by their mid-thirties. Users mocked the benchmark with absurd lists of what they had actually accomplished, and the format resurfaced that November as By Age 30 following a CNBC story about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's savings.

snowclone memes economic anxiety memes finance memes self deprecating memes twitter memes

Overview

By Age 35 works as a snowclone where the opening phrase sets up a sober financial-planning tone, and the punchline swaps in something humble, absurd, or bleakly honest about what the poster actually has at that age1. Early jokes played off literal possessions, like @meakoopa claiming two moths were the only things in his pocket, while others pivoted into surreal territory or song lyrics2.

The tone sits somewhere between gallows humor about student debt and wages and goofy non-sequiturs3. A typical post treats the Fidelity benchmark as a cosmic joke, then answers with something a person could plausibly list: a half-eaten snack, a feeling, or a line borrowed from Talking Heads or Fleetwood Mac4. Variants circled back later as By Age 30, keeping the same formula but shifting the number5.

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Origin & Background

Platform

MarketWatch article / Twitter (viral spread)

Date

2018

On January 5, 2018, MarketWatch published "Money Milestones: This is how your finances should look in your 30s," summarizing Fidelity Investments guidance that a worker should have one year of salary saved by 30 and two years by 351. The article itself acknowledged mortgage costs and student debt made the target tough, but the figure drew little attention at the time4.

The tweet that sparked the backlash went out from MarketWatch's account on May 12, 2018, and users started circulating it around May 144. Mockery began the same week, with jokes about having no savings at all, before the phrasing hardened into the "By age 35..." template two days later3.

How It Spread

Coverage by Huffington Post and News.com.au on May 15 and 16, 2018, pulled the roast outside Twitter and helped the format reach readers who had not seen the original MarketWatch tweet2 6. Twitter Moments bundled the funniest replies into a single feed, which fed more users into the joke pool4.

The snowclone phase hit a few days later, when posts like @chrisopotamia's and @LoriG's cleared tens of thousands of retweets each4. The Daily Dot documented the shift from direct mockery to the templated format, noting absurdist entries from @JuliusGoat and a Talking Heads riff from @dylmdav3.

In November 2018, CNBC reported that Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez had under $7,000 in savings, with a financial advisor again citing age-based benchmarks5. That coverage revived the format as By Age 30, with @katebrauning and @rchlltrmn posting new variants on November 22, 2018, and @therealjessnoe quoting Fleetwood Mac's "Landslide"4.

Timeline

2018-01-05

MarketWatch publishes the "Money Milestones" article citing Fidelity's savings benchmarks for ages 30 and 35.

2018-05-12

MarketWatch's Twitter account posts the article, drawing users' attention five months after publication.

2018-05-14

Twitter users begin mocking the savings target, with @meakoopa's "two moths" joke spreading widely.

2018-05-15

Huffington Post publishes a roundup of the Twitter roast.

2018-05-16

The "By age 35..." snowclone template takes hold, with viral posts from @chrisopotamia and @LoriG.

2018-11-16

CNBC reports on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's finances, citing age-30 savings advice.

2018-11-22

The format resurfaces as By Age 30, with viral posts by @katebrauning and @rchlltrmn.

How to Use This Meme

Posters typically open with "By age 35, you should have..." and finish with something either comically small (two moths, three unread emails) or lyrically grand, like a quoted song verse. The common convention is to mirror the serious cadence of financial advice before undercutting it with a specific, personal detail.