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What???? You didn't hear the moaning and groaning when the cap was recently raised to $127,200 (2017)? Me neither. Wait until the first 2017 paycheck is issued. Then it will make the news.
Depending on where you live and your social class, no, it's not a bunch of hyperbole.
I mentioned in my house thread that I know lots of people in their 60s who are in bad health. By 70, many who were doing well at 60 are in bad shape, and those who were in bad shape around 60 are mostly dead. I know few vibrant 70 year olds.
Where I live now, the average male life expectancy is just 72 - most surrounding counties are a little worse, with plenty of counties in nearby eastern KY and southwest VA having male life expectancies well below 70.
I understand that my working class Appalachian background is not common on this board and that most of you live in much healthier and more affluent areas where many folks may still be vibrant well into their 70s, but that's certainly not the case everywhere or among the working class.
It's funny to me that the topic of the thread is qualifying/qualifying the question of if you need "millions" but has turned to the WORST possible extreme demographic irrelevance.
I live in FL and virtually everyone is from elsewhere.
Appalachia? No.
But your logic works both ways. Appalachia is certainly not a representative sample of the "average" person in their 60's.
OBVIOUSLY, people from Appalachia don't have the luxury of debating whether they need a MILLION or just Half a million....or whatever.
And do "working class" people debate this, either? Define working class. LOL the proletariat? TONS of blue collar workers don't have this age 60 poor health/death experience.
Even 1 million is going to be tough.
...
I didn't start my career until age 29, in 2012.
This is unfortunately the problem -- working and saving in your 20s is critical. I started my retirement savings at 23 years old, and I know people that were ahead of me in savings even then. That first retirement fund into which I saved maybe 10,000 over three years (way back when) was eventually rolled into a Roth and now is worth 100,000.
If you save and invest consistently from age 20 until age 65, one million is not hard to achieve. If you miss those first ten years, it is much harder.
People always tell me (here at least) that you shouldn't count on your inheritance because health expenses may take it all. I think the average American something like 200k - 300k saved for retirement. My parents have multiple millions, and I am told that all of this can go towards healthcare. How does the average American afford to retire if multiple millions could potentially be needed for retirement?
My grandparents past away and never needed that much to retire. House fully paid off and get a decent pension and SS. They live a modest living without going to cruises often or spent extravagantly. The other key is they don't take medication and still lived out to their 80s-90s. Relatively healthy, could've lived longer had they spotted their underlying illness sooner and prevented.
What???? You didn't hear the moaning and groaning when the cap was recently raised to $127,200 (2017)? Me neither. Wait until the first 2017 paycheck is issued. Then it will make the news.
Not really my friend. No one will notice anything different in their check until the point in the year when their income exceeds the threshold. Only difference will be their net stays at the same level and doesn't get increased . I have always said raising the cap is relatively painless. The increase net when it came was nice but I wasn't counting down the days. It may make the news more but not sure the reaction
I think retirement can be much easier if you get creative with it. If you just count on the balance of your 401k and social security it'll likely be very difficult to comfortably retire.
My plan involves my wife's state pension that should give us about 60% of her last paycheck plus health coverage for the 2 of us for life. We'll hopefully have social security, 401k, roth IRA, I'd like to have 4-5 rental properties hopefully paid off, and we'll sell our large home for say $500,000 and downsize to a condo or something for half that.
So a little from pension, a little from 401k, a little from roth, a little from rentals, and a little from downsizing. This should be enough for us to have about $7,000+ coming in each month and wont require millions, plus all of our debts will be paid and outgoing expenses should be minimal.
If you have to eat the goose with the golden eggs you eat very well and then it is gone.
I have come across this... a couple with a 100k pension saying they are just getting by while calling someone with Social Security and a million in the Certificates of Deposits is rich...
The folks with the 100k pension may have started experiencing the consequences of a lack of liquidity. It does happen and can close doors your income might have opened
The bigger question is how can you possibly retire and not have million? I mean if you never saved a penny in your life and just did the 401K every year from 21-65 you would have millions.
people survive on very little ss too , but as you saw above , many times public assistance makes it work , not their own frugality most of the time. most of the things we pay on our own are either given or subsidized to make it work .
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