I read it again. Do you believe you must have at least a million bucks to retire comfortably?

Yes, minimum, preferably several million. Never gonna happen for me, but, if you want to reasonably live well on 40–50k a year, take inflation into account, and all manner of other expenses and…. you might live to be 100+...well, that’s a lot of greenbacks over a potential 30+ years of retirement possibility.

I have been told that ,yes, don’t know how many people actually reach that goal.

@Coloma what if you stay home , don’t do trips , rarely eat out and have no debt. Then do you need that much?

I would feel very uncomfortable retiring with just $1 million cash and own our house. You have to factor in the uncertainty of the future and inflation rates. If we ever have hyperinflation that $1 million could be reduced to the equivalent of pennies very quickly.

I don’t know about you but I would prefer not to live in a High-rise apartment building and be totally dependent on the government for everything. So I’ll just keep working until I Accumulate least $5 million in cash before I retire.

If you don’t wAnt to spend down your principal. It also depends on long long you plan to live.

@Aster Even then, I think with the cost of everything, right now, you would need a minimum of about 30k a year to squeek by, if you have no house payments/rent payments, just the cost of groceries, utilities, vehicle maintenance, gas, clothing, holidays, ( kept to a minimum ) pet care, food, vet bills, property taxes etc.
A $2,500 a month budget goes fast.

How about gold? Uncirculated coins will be worth something in ten years? I’m not counting what he has separately. That becomes quite confusing.

^^^ Sure, the more assets the better. Gold, jewelery, gems, art, vintage cars, other big ticket collectors items.

…and real estate.

I think it depends on how you live your life. I’ve never carried debt on ANYTHING (2 houses, a commercial rental building & cars) more than 5 years, so I can get by on very little. I have a dumb phone with no texting, no cable TV and I refuse to buy a car with any subscription services. I’ve lived below my means my entire life.

Face it, if you consistently live above your means, $1,000,000 isn’t going to help you much.

Depends on what kind of lifestyle you want. If you plan to live as well or better than before you retired, obviously you’ll need all the savings and post-retirement income you can muster. But If you can be satisfied to live frugally and have decent medical insurance, plus you have some savings tucked away for unforeseen expenses like home repairs or, god forbid, a catastrophic injury or illness, I don’t think you need anything close to a million bucks.

I’ve chosen the latter route and things are going fine so far.

I’m 27, and this thread is terrifying.

I want $3million so I can live off the interest. I don’t see me reaching the $3million though. A lot of people think in terms of having enough money to retire on, meaning havinng enough to spend. Wealthy retirement planning usually involves enough money so the dividends and interest are enough. Add in social security payments, a pension (if there is one) and 401k money.

A calculation to remember is money doubles in 15 years at 5% compunding interest. So if you have $1million at age 50, you can most likely have $2million by 65 with doing very prudent, not very risky investing. Money gets money. Or, if you save $100k by age 50, you can see it easily double to $200k without saving another penny. The point is the more you save the more you can have.

I think $1million is a good solid number if the other money you will have like social security covers all your basic expenses. Less than $1million is not terrible though. All sorts of shit happens in life, and the best laid plans get fucked up. Again, if your basic expenses are covered, savings is a bonus. Most people in retirement have no mortgage, spend less on gas, less on clothing, a lot of expenses go down. Medical can go up depending on what your insurance was like before retirement.

@JLeslie Yep, I’m living testament to the plan getting fucked up. It all started with the interest rates dropping back in 2008. The beginning of the end for me.

@Coloma Yeah, I always feel like the bottom can fall out on any of us. I’m fairly financially secure right now, but believe me I never feel like bad things can’t happen, I never feel I have it all figured out and I am immune. Life can change in a moment. I have seen people lose half their money in a couple days. I have seen illness cost people their entire savings. I have seen people have to spend thousands on lawyers for unexpected circumstances. I know more than one person who lost their spouse (God forbid) and without sufficient life insurance wound up in a financial situation they never expected. All sorts of things.

This is why people need to learn math.

Let’s say that you’re getting by on around $25,000 per year now in salary or wages. That’s a gross of 25 k, out of which you pay FICA and Medicare (and which won’t be taxed after retirement), plus commuting costs (ditto), and other day-to-day work-related expenses. So the feeling is that you could survive on ~80% of your current salary, because you’ll still need to pay income tax on earnings that you receive from “traditional” IRAs. If you have a Roth IRA that has untaxed earnings, then presumably you could survive on even somewhat less. (But let’s not get crazy here.)

So let’s assume that in present-day dollars you really could survive on ~$20,000 per year (again, given the assumption of a present-day gross salary of around $25 k).

If you can earn roughly $12,000 from Social Security, that means that you need some source of capital to generate around $8,000 in earnings each year – in present-day dollars. Assuming a “good” rate of return of around 5% per year, that means that you need to have about 20 x $8,000 saved up somewhere, which really means that you need to have around $1.6 million in capital saved up and invested to make that return, year after year for the rest of your life. The reason you need to have the capital generate that income is that you’ll live, on average, at least 20 years after retirement.

What that means is that even “low” inflation is going to make that $8,000 worth less and less each year in relative terms to today’s valuation. If you start eating into the principal right away, then your money simply will not last your lifetime. (Even the current example assumes that you will eat into your capital, but the longer you can delay that, the longer it will last you.)

If you plan to retire on more than $20 k per year, then you need to adjust your savings amount accordingly. Not many people are doing that, apparently.

You can feel free to avoid reality if you want to, but you can’t avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.

Great question
I would say 2 million in assets, or less if you have pensionable income.

@Seek_Kolinahr You are right to be terrified. I’m terrified, and I’m a doctor. If you want my sage advice, pay off all your consumer debt. Open a 529 plan for your son. Start an IRA. Put a clamp on any spending you don’t need. Stuff like that.