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It depends on if you have pensions, when you plan to take SS. Do you have other income. What your expenses are. What your quality of life expectations are.
A general rule though is you need 25x your expenses less pension income saved. So if you want to spend $50,000 a year and your SS covers $30,000, you’ll need $500,000 in savings.
I don't see that quality of life is very tightly coupled with cash flow once you're well above poverty level. Driving a full size European luxury sedan doesn't double my quality of life over driving a stripped Hyundai Accent. Owning a 3,000 square foot house doesn't double my quality of live over owning a 1,000 square foot house. A Europe trip flying first class & staying in luxury hotels doesn't double my quality of life over flying on a discount carrier & doing AirBnB. I get the same pleasure sailing a 50 year old day sailer as a 50 foot yacht with 20x the ownership costs. Once you're at that level well above poverty level, you can control your expenses and maintain a similar lifestyle.
When I did all this math a decade ago at age 50, I looked at what my Social Security income would be, what my portfolio projected to be, and slashed costs then to make the math work. The house shrank to 992 square feet. The boat shrank to 22 feet. I'll eventually shrink the skiing thing I do to control that expense and free up the capital. I can maintain the same lifestyle I've had my whole adult life on less than half the cash flow I've always had. If I run out of money, I'm career high income so my defer-to-age-70 Social Security check will fund a slightly dialed back version of my lifestyle.
I think that's what most people do. At some point, you are forced to do a "you are here" with your personal finances and adjust your life for that cash flow.
some choices that money buys may be irrelevant such as an expensive European car vs a a toyota . but other comparisons can be far more important .
my parents wished they had the money to not have had to relocate to florida so they could have been part of our lives and the lives of their grand children on a daily basis .
my kids barely knew who their grand parents were other than an occasional vacation stopover. so depending what you are comparing to , cash flow vs lifestyle choices can be very important. more money buys more choices .
Good way to miss the larger point and distract the conversation. Again.
But on YOUR point? Nope... that was speculation. LINK
In this instance a successful one.
gold can fall under 3 categories .
it can be part of a long term portfolio strategy in which case it can be an investment . it can be a hedge if used that way and it can be traded alone as a speculation .
did you know if you bought gold at the peak back in the 1980's when it hit 850.00 and on the same day put equal dollars in to the s&p index and just rebalanced that portfolio yearly , after 30 years the gold actually beat out the s&p 500 by a fraction of a percent .
so gold in a portfolio strategy that gets rebalanced can be an investment . gold can also be a speculation , as well as gold can be held all alone as a hedge . so it is more dependent on the way it is used .
when used as a long term investment the thing about gold is it has had a positive real return in 98% of the market downturns to date .
that makes the job of bouncing back far easier for a portfolio . studies show that portfolio's with the optimum gold position and bonds tend to produce higher returns with less volatility than just stocks and bonds . the optimum gold position varies by allocation to stocks and bonds .
so take your pick , gold can actually perform all 3 functions depending if it stands alone or is part of a portfolio strategy .
depending on events and the dollar what gold does as an investment can vary decade to decade and what you use as a starting point . Had you invested in 1980, following the huge run up in gold in the 1970s, you would have lost money to inflation over the ensuing 35 years. however since 2000, gold has actually performed on par with a balanced fund .
so it all depends on what you use as a bench mark . if we use the price we saw after gold came off the gold standard you really are pricing it on a price that was a pricing error and it should never have hit , like nasdaq at 5000 was back in the 2,000's .. if you go decade to decade , when it was time for gold's day in the sun because of a weak dollar it did very well .
people end up doing the best they can .setting your sights on a number likely won't matter . i know i just went about life balancing out the here and now with the future and did the best i could.whatever the number was when i got to retirement it was . i would just back in to a lifestyle that fit the number . i just hoped it let us stay in ny
people end up doing the best they can .setting your sights on a number likely won't matter . i know i just went about life balancing out the here and now with the future and did the best i could.whatever the number was when i got to retirement it was . i would just back in to a lifestyle that fit the number . i just hoped it let us stay in ny
True.
But you couldn’t stay in NYC with just a million....I believe you have several million.
I hate to say but a million is nothing and in the future will be even less.
Living these days ....things are expensive, if you have less than a million
retirement is doable but you have to dial down your lifestyle and possibly move sonewhere cheaper.
Remember back in the 50s ...even the 60s ....having one million you were king,
today not so much. Ten million is the new one million.
No problem for today’s movie stars, TV stars, sports stars, ....
google their net worth’s and you’ll quickly see 50 million as the starting point,
with many in the 100 million and above club.
But you couldn’t stay in NYC with just a million....I believe you have several million.
I hate to say but a million is nothing and in the future will be even less.
Living these days ....things are expensive, if you have less than a million
retirement is doable but you have to dial down your lifestyle and possibly move sonewhere cheaper.
Remember back in the 50s ...even the 60s ....having one million you were king,
today not so much. Ten million is the new one million.
No problem for today’s movie stars, TV stars, sports stars, ....
google their net worth’s and you’ll quickly see 50 million as the starting point,
with many in the 100 million and above club.
yes , you would be correct , we would not have stayed in nyc despite the fact we really wanted to be near the kids . it would have meant living in an area in nyc we didn't want to be in as well as a pretty stressful life sweating every unexpected expense.
but i think i would say regardless of what the number was we ended up at there never was a number in our heads except to invest and strive to do our best .
The bigger mistake being made here is calling CD's or Tbills (or Gold ftm) an investment.
They aren't. At best they're a hedge but mostly they're just a safe harbor.
The lesser mistake is confusing the degree of safe that's an appropriate goal
for those at one age/situation in life with those at some other. All are NOT equal.
Actually, I would say the first point is the lesser mistake. It's a semantics game. The second point has more importance for people's actual lives. Most people with $1M in investible assets shouldn't be 100% in CDs at any age.
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