Amount Needed For Retirement (moving, husband, family, toys)
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You could do it in NYC on that $3,600/month if you owned your home. NYC residential property tax rates aren’t awful. The senior citizen abatement for below $50k income cuts that tax in half. Mathjack’s hypothetical million dollar small house in an ok Queens neighborhood would pay about $4k in property taxes at that income level. You certainly don’t need a car.
Yup. In fact I’m thinking of doing it. Trade in the Bay Area home for a co-op in Park Slope, get rid of the now unnecessary cars, and I can easily live on that - I would need less than I need now.
Bayside isn’t a dump. It’s cheaper because it’s transportation options, for NYC, suck. I know the area quite well. You need a car there, unlike most of NYC.
Last edited by VTsnowbird; 07-29-2019 at 06:54 AM..
Bayside isn’t a dump. It’s cheaper because it’s transportation options, for NYC, suck. I know the area quite well. You need a car there, unlike most of NYC.
that comment made earlier isn't even worthy of a reply or spending any more time on it .
Yup. In fact I’m thinking of doing it. Trade in the Bay Area home for a co-op in Park Slope, get rid of the now unnecessary cars, and I can easily live on that - I would need less than I need now.
Park Slope is not the hood.
park slope is a very nice area .. you are just across the river from manhattan so unless you travel around a lot a car is not needed . parking can be horrible there if you don't have a garage.
bayside has the LIRR and express buses to manhattan but the LIRR can run quite a bit monthly unlike a subway . you would need to take a bus in to flushing to catch the subway in . sometime that bus can take as long as the entire LIRR ride in to manhattan which runs 25 munutes or so
park slope is a very nice area .. you are just across the river from manhattan so unless you travel around a lot a car is not needed . parking can be horrible there if you don't have a garage.
bayside has the LIRR and express buses to manhattan but the LIRR can run quite a bit monthly unlike a subway . you would need to take a bus in to flushing to catch the subway in . sometime that bus can take as long as the entire LIRR ride in to manhattan which runs 25 munutes or so
Yes, I used to live in Park Slope. I kept a “beater” on the street for the 6 trips a year I made outside NYC. It’s a different lifestyle from Bayside. That’s the beauty of NYC imo. Lots of lifestyles available. And of course, at different price points, for a number of different reasons.
I personally think people kid themselves into thinking that they could live only on SS or with minimal savings, mostly because they have suddenly realized that they are almost there, almost at retirement that is. They are like horses with blinkers on. They like to Pooh Pooh those that say "$1m, $1.5m, $2m" and so on is needed for a decent retirement.
SS does not cut it anymore is you need to pay rent, pay a mortgage AND have a decent QOL in one's retirement years. Some are lucky enough to have a good pension to augment SS. So if one does not want to be working into one's 70's, it makes a lot of sense to start planning early.
Some of us have paid-off homes, so no rent or mortgage. That lowers the COL quite a bit.
To me, the ratio of income to disposable income, as a lot to do with QOL.
Some of us have paid-off homes, so no rent or mortgage. That lowers the COL quite a bit.
To me, the ratio of income to disposable income, as a lot to do with QOL.
Finally someone gets it .. I can’t emphasis that ratio enough
Just living below ones means does not provide for any exact amount of savings ...if you have 5 bucks left at the end of a month you are living below your means .
So I try and try to emphasis how important it is to have a healthy ratio because that means the left over can be saved or spent and how much is left over is very important yet it is rarely addressed .
Any tip you see says live below your means ,like that guides some one .....but once you are talking ratios between spending and saving you have an actionable plan with exact numbers.
What we need is less useless articles like how much do I need and more useful information about what constitutes a good ratio and how much should be left over from living below ones means to actually be healthy.
Fidelity has been publishing information on what is suggested ratios between discretionary, non discretionary spending vs saving
Last edited by mathjak107; 07-28-2019 at 01:16 PM..
So who says retirees have to stay in overpriced NY?
The question was "how much do you need to retire," NOT "how much do you need to retire if you want to stay in a city where a studio condo runs more than $600k"?
If I were living in NY, wanted to retire, and would have a retirement income of "only" $4000 a month, I would move to a cheaper location a couple of hours away. That's always an option, and they have some nice little places in Delaware for half the cost. You apparently wanted to stay in Queens, and so you wouldn't have been able to do it on that income.
I lived in NY and CT for many years and even after I moved to CA, still travelled regularly to NY & NJ for work - NYC is way more diverse than many people think, it is after all, a city of 8.4 Million and is over 460 sq miles across 5 counties/boroughs. Most think only of Manhattan when they think of NYC, Manhattan is a small part of NYC with about 20% of the total population. Manhattan is where an average studio is over $600K and a 1 BR over $1M. The rest of NYC has a wide range of prices and can be pretty affordable in most of the other boroughs. The average for NYC is much more budget friendly, with the average prices outside of Manhattan being close to 500K for an house. Retiring in NYC is much more affordable than many think.
I lived in NY and CT for many years and even after I moved to CA, still travelled regularly to NY & NJ for work - NYC is way more diverse than many people think, it is after all, a city of 8.4 Million and is over 460 sq miles across 5 counties/boroughs. Most think only of Manhattan when they think of NYC, Manhattan is a small part of NYC with about 20% of the total population. Manhattan is where an average studio is over $600K and a 1 BR over $1M. The rest of NYC has a wide range of prices and can be pretty affordable in most of the other boroughs. The average for NYC is much more budget friendly, with the average prices outside of Manhattan being close to 500K for an house. Retiring in NYC is much more affordable than many think.
if it is a desirable area the single family homes are going to be closer to 7 figures . but nyc and the boroughs have a lot of co-op apartments ... a 2 bedroom in our area is about 350-375k in a high rise ... my daughter bought in howard beach queens . it is off the beaten path and is slightly remote . they paid under 200k for a 1 bedroom .
real estate taxes took a nasty jump in the city . many saw 20-30% increases last year in to the 5 digit range . over all most homes are up 100% in tax the last 10 years ... plus nyc has its own income tax which is on par with many state income tax levels by itself . then we have a ny state tax too .
there are a lot of soft costs like tolls .. the gw bridge can run 15 bucks for cash ... the local bridges that lead north can run 16 bucks round trip .. we use both those bridges to see the kids almost weekly , you get a slight discount with ez pass ... parking meters are everywhere . we must pay about 30-40 a month in meters going to the gym and shopping .
it cost us almost 200 bucks a month for a parking spot in our building because there is little on street parking because driveways of single family homes take up most street in the area .
want to own a firearm here ? it is 340 bucks for a hand gun permit every 3 years or a rifle/shotgun is 185.
auto insurance is way higher here .
medicare supplements are extremely high because ny is a community based state not age based like most states .. we have no increases like other states based on age , nor do we have medical underwriting to switch plans but we pay as much as 330-350 a month for an F plan
just about everything cost more because the cost of doing business here is so high so there are lots of soft costs to life here that one does not even think about but that add up .
but it offers a lot here . especially for a retiree with time to fill . you can spend 23 years here eating out once a day and not repeat .
it is a cultural center for the arts , museums , theater and dance .
i work one day a week here and i get paid as much as 3 days of work doing the same thing,where we had our home in PA . proportionately PA was not 1/3 the cost .
in fact these higher wages here can lead to much higher ss checks for many who don't max out earnings . move to cheapsvelle and those bigger checks follow you forever .
so for those who can afford to retire here it can be a great place . we have the best of both worlds . we are 15 minutes from manhattan by car , 30 minutes by train and yet our neighborhood is a beautiful , quiet area with single family homes and co-op apartments . we can be at the beach in long island in 40 minutes or in the forests upstate in an hour.
Last edited by mathjak107; 07-29-2019 at 04:15 AM..
So Mathjak and others, what do you think the magic ratio is?
I was just doing a quick mental rundown of my budget. I know my expenditures pretty well by heart. I would say our ratio is about 50% of our available steady net income is non-discretionary (mortgage, utilities, taxes, insurance, auto, food, health care, etc), and 50% discretionary (gym memberships, clothing, golf, toys for ourselves, travel, dining out, money left over at the end of the month). We also have some taxable variable income that is thrown on top of that, and we use that income for projects and vacations and what not, so I'm not including that income in the ratio, because it is highly variable and might even be zero in some months.
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