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Will you have a pension? Will you have inheritance? Will your home be paid off? Will you rent? Where in the world will you live? Will you live alone or with others who either depend on you or have money of their own? Will you be subsidizing adult children or elderly parents? Will you work part-time? Will you travel? What will you want to be doing to pass your time now that you don't work all day?
It's impossible to say what anyone will need without knowing how you intend to live. It is possible to live on virtually any amount of money or no money at all, you just probably wouldn't intentionally want to live that way.
I see this question often and it is ridiculous to ask. There are many retirement calculators out there that will tell you, if you input expenses, lifestyle, net worth etc. No one can tell you, you have to do the work yourself.
Do this work and you have the answer, simple. Do you have to have a million dollars? Maybe. 2 million? maybe.
I pretty much do, but that still means I need to itemize out what I spent that $100 on at Target. Was it the shampoo I went into the store for, or the scarf I didn't really need? It would take discipline, but I like the idea of living like I AM retired for a year, and see how much we really needed. You have the extra bonus of throwing any excess into the retirement fund.
Don't make this the 800lb gorilla in the living room! Start with one month. The debit card is a great high tech solution. The low tech solution is to get a small notebook and a pencil. And you aren't allowed to spend if you don't write it down first!
It doesn't really matter how much you need. The reality is, at some point you will retire. You may choose to do so, or your health or boss may decide that for you. Prepare as much as you can between now and then. So, you won't have a million? Oh well. Something is better than nothing; just do what you can.
My parents retired with little savings but my Dad worked until he was 70 to increase his social security and to have enough years with the state to get a small pension - currently $1K a month. They paid off their home, a house worth only about $120K in a small town, and had about $50K in CDs. It was a low budget retirement but suited them as their main pleasures were spending time with family, reading, camping, and hunting (Dad).
We have neighbors whose pensions bring in $800/month, and they do okay. Plus if you need to, there are government programs that might help.
I bring in around $1500/month, my employer still provides medical coverage for us. So certainly do not need any other programs.
We have friends who have not retired yet, but they are very worried as they project to have around $4500/month, and they do not think they can survive on it.
it all depends where and what they want their retirement to be. heck for all the things i would love to do in life and sample no amount would be large enough.the more i had the more i would live our dreams and wants..
this is the last down and there are no do overs so i always wanted the biggest retirement budget i could manage to raise and that was a life long goal for me.. there were times i had 3 different jobs going between my day job , my drumming career on weekends and an hvac service company i started for doing side work at night.
sure
as i said many times, i grew up in a nyc housing project at not much above the poverty level and i made sure never going back was ever going to be an option no matter what ..
my to do list in life was a mile long and although i can't afford it all i hope to at least do the priority things on it. so for us, how much doi we need for retiremernt? as much as we can get.
Last edited by mathjak107; 10-08-2014 at 05:07 PM..
it all depends where and what they want their retirement to be. heck for all the things i would love to do in life and sample no amount would be large enough.the more i had the more i would live our dreams and wants..
this is the last down and there are no do overs so i always wanted the biggest retirement budget i could manage to raise and that was a life long goal for me.. there were times i had 3 different jobs going between my day job , my drumming career on weekends and an hvac service company i started for doing side work at night.
sure
as i said many times, i grew up in a nyc housing project at not much above the poverty level and i made sure never going back was ever going to be an option no matter what ..
my to do list in life was a mile long and although i can't afford it all i hope to at least do the priority things on it. so for us, how much doi we need for retiremernt? as much as we can get.
Wish you all the best and im very pleased to hear everyones opinion.
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