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In your opinion how much of monthly income would be sufficient for a married couple to afford a comfortable and secure retirement?
It is not an opinion for us. We are retired. But I voted anyway.
Our home is not paid for. We could pay it off if needed.
We do not pay Medicare Part B, Tricare handles that.
We do a lot together, we do not go to the movies, we have never been on a cruise, we have been to Vegas (NV), but we really don't gamble. We are both drawing a retirement, we saved and invested for 20+ years. We use to travel a lot, most of it business related. I feel like we don't fit your mold.
... If you are younger, want to see Brazil, Italy, Greece, Paris.... then of course you will need more money but you get close to 70 and you don't see a lot of people traveling that age. Not because we can't it's just I don't want to.
As a feature of my career, we owned a home in Scotland a few years, and we lived in Italy a few years. My Dw loves driving in Paris for some odd reason, Cairo not so much.
We loved Ireland, Scotland, Austria and Greece.
I do not anticipate any further travel overseas.
My employer provider Healthcare package still covers us. Our annual fees are low, our co-pays are low.
The median income for a household in the county was $32,616 which, if you hail from east or west coast, most likely challenges your imagination but cost of living is very inexpensive.
An annual household income of $32,616 is only $2,717/month which I wouldn't want to live on but I've studied a lot and we should be able to live very comfortably, comfortably indeed, on $4,000.
I was born and raised in the bay area between Menlo Park and Santa Clara and with a large portion of the family in the area, I am a fifth generation Californian and I am well aware of the cost of trying to retire in that area. Which is one of the reasons I left and never went back.
For our area $3,801 to $4,300 should provide a comfortable retirement because our cost of living is so low. $3,801 in Palo Alto would leave one stealing cat food from the neighbors cat bowl.
You also have to account for the incomes in those rural areas. Where I'm from in TN, median HHI is about $30k in the city, about $22k in the county. The cost of living is low, but $22k no matter where you are is POOR. Sure, a net of $3k-$4k is probably peanuts in Palo Alto, but will probably put you in the top 20% in Podunk TN.
I know how much it would cost us to live in the style to which we are accustomed. I see what we spend each month. I am sure we could cut back a bit when we retire.
In our area 40K per year would be OK. 4K per month would be comfortable, unless you think two trips to Europe and a cruise per year is part of being "comfortable".
Before I got my first professional job out of college my wife and I worked in a bookstore and both made about $2500 between us a month before taxes and we were perfectly comfortable in Richmond VA. Of course if you have children the figure you need is much higher.
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