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The best when you die having $0 to your name. But since you couldn't care less about debts when you are dead, -$1,000,000 is cool too, if you can get that.
That is middle of the road for being near central park. It is one expensive area but highly desireable. It never took longer then a few weeks to sell an apartment.
Even in the middle of the downturn it was not a problem getting a buyer.
Age 30 is tricky since some of society's highest earners will just be graduating with considerable debt (some doctors come to mind). That said, I had about $250k when I hit age 30 in total, with about $100k of that liquid. I had no debt of any kind (not even a mortgage--I still rented an apartment).
Right now, today, I think $1M is plenty for someone at age 65 to retire off of. Social security isn't dead yet either, so that'd provide even more cushion for such a person. No, you're not going to retire in luxury in your penthouse in San Francisco or Manhattan on $1M, but you could easily move out to cheaper suburb of a cheaper city and get by fine. You could extract $30k/year and be good for over 30 years assuming absolutely zero growth of the retirement accounts. $30k net expenditure per year is easy to live off of when you don't have to save any of it, you have no rent or mortgage to pay, and you have no kids to support anymore. Anybody who can't figure out a way to live comfortably in those conditions is clearly feeling way too entitled about the sort of lifestyle they deserved. If you need to have a housecleaner and eat a five course meal every week from a top restaurant, yes, you're going to need more--but you shouldn't complain, because you're the only one who set your standards so astronomically high for what constitutes a decent retirement.
That said, for when *I* hit age 65, I'd want to have closer to $3M, simply due to inflation. My current savings rate will let me hit $1.7M by that time, assuming absolutely zero growth of any investment and retirement accounts. If the markets perform decently, that'll easily cover the gap up to the $3M mark. If the markets perform better than decently, I'll retire at age 55.
Perhaps it was a tacit assumption of the OP that the discussion is predicated on not having a pension from a secure source. Because for people who do have one the entire picture changes and much less "net worth" is required. Unless, of course, there is a formula for including pensions in net worth, although I don't see how such a formula would work because the "value" of the pension depends on how long one lives for a single person with no dependents. Even with a spouse who will continue to draw upon the death of the pensioner (even if at a lower rate), the value would then depend on how long the spouse lives.
It could even be argued that a net worth of zero is fine if the pension amount covers the desired life style with some cushion above that. Personally I would not be comfortable in such a situation - too much of "all the eggs in one basket", not matter how secure one considers the basket to be. I wonder how many Enron employees felt their retirement was secure? I wonder how many who had invested with Bernie Madoff felt their investments were secure? Obviously a state pension from one of the states which is on solid ground is better than Enron. On the other hand, how about those folks who have a Detroit city pension? They must be nervous as hell right now as the bankruptcy case winds its way through court.
I agree that a lot of different roads lead to the same place.
Personally, up until about age 30, my net worth was negative. I had debt and little to no savings of any kind. But at age 35, my net worth is currently around $125k, and at age 40, I expect my net worth to be easily over $250, possibly over $300k if the markets do reasonably well. So at age 30 I was horribly behind the curve based on numbers posted here, but by age 40, I'll be doing pretty good. My house will be paid off a couple years after that, so my numbers will climb even faster without that expense. No pension, but I still expect to retire in my late 50s, given that our annual expenses are only about $22k in today's money, with the mortgage.
Back to the OP, I think that to have a 0 net worth at 30 IS at or above the 70%th percentile. Most people don't start to seriously save until after age 30.
I think those numbers are great compared to the rest of the population! An AP article came out a few months ago that made its rounds on all the major news outlets showing that half of Americans don't even have emergency savings to cover 3 months of expenses. 28% of Americans have no emergency savings - Jun. 25, 2012
The 70th percentile is around $60-65k. Me and a lot of my friends are there and we're in our mid 20s to early 30s and none of us have what's in the OP's net worth calculation. We all have debt. Most of us are spending hundreds of dollars a month servicing our student loan debt. And the few friends I have who don't have student loan debt bought condos so anything liquid, outside of their emergency fund, went to a down payment.
This is not a discussion of what people do have, it's about what they should aim to have.
Perhaps it was a tacit assumption of the OP that the discussion is predicated on not having a pension from a secure source. Because for people who do have one the entire picture changes and much less "net worth" is required. Unless, of course, there is a formula for including pensions in net worth, although I don't see how such a formula would work because the "value" of the pension depends on how long one lives for a single person with no dependents. Even with a spouse who will continue to draw upon the death of the pensioner (even if at a lower rate), the value would then depend on how long the spouse lives.
It could even be argued that a net worth of zero is fine if the pension amount covers the desired life style with some cushion above that. Personally I would not be comfortable in such a situation - too much of "all the eggs in one basket", not matter how secure one considers the basket to be. I wonder how many Enron employees felt their retirement was secure? I wonder how many who had invested with Bernie Madoff felt their investments were secure? Obviously a state pension from one of the states which is on solid ground is better than Enron. On the other hand, how about those folks who have a Detroit city pension? They must be nervous as hell right now as the bankruptcy case winds its way through court.
The value of a pension is equal to the fair-market price of an annuity with the same payout, survivor benefit, and death benefit (if there is one)
The value of a pension is equal to the fair-market price of an annuity with the same payout, survivor benefit, and death benefit (if there is one)
I don't know if it's allowed to post a link like this but if you check Immediate Annuities - Income Annuity Quote Calculator - ImmediateAnnuities.com you can put in the appropriate info regarding your age and amount to invest, and it provides you with the annuity payout, so you can iteratively put in the appropriate info until you get the same payout as a pension, and that will be the value of an annuity that is equivalent to a pension that provides the same payout.
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Seriously, that is some pricey apartment!
