Retirement Savings

[ringmastery]

How much money have you saved up? How much would you say you need to retire comfortably?

[Throckmorton]

1. Not enough, but then again I plan to die at work

Bartleby has nothing on Throckmorton.

[supernova]

2. I was building a nice little nest egg

that is until I got laid off and had to live off said savings. :grr:

I'll be lucky to escape this recession without totally bankrupting myself.

[everythingsxen]

3. Nothing

I have nothing. I have no potential to earn anything.

[Braden]

4. I have one years salary saved so far

I plan on working another 30 years. I figure I will need $2mm to live another twenty years the way I want. Which translates into a required rate of return of 15% on my portfolio over time. wish me luck.

[ringmastery]

7. pipedreams

My dream is to retire to the florida keys when I'm 40 or 45 and start living the good life.

I'll need at least $1 million to do it.

My plan was to buy a house or condo down there for a few hundred thousand in cash. Put the rest of my money in income generating bonds and live off of the interest. Maybe also take up a part-time job if I get really bored. When you don't have to worry about mortgages, $30k a year in income can go a long, long way.

It looked like I was going to make it a few years ago. Now, most of my stocks and investments are in the shitter. Oh well, it's my pipedream and I'll still keep dreaming it.

[Kolesar]

9. Health insurance is about $300/mo in your forties

You need that to protect your assets against a major hospitalization that could easily hit $50,000 or more.

[ringmastery]

11. yeah

I was thinking about getting catastrophic loss coverage with high $1k or $2k deductibles. I can take care of routine medical costs out of pocket. It's the major hit like you said that I need to protect myself from.

[Braden]

13. pipedreams get us out of bed in the morning

maybe you will have to settle for something a little more manageable but the stock market is bound to rebound sometime in the next forty years!

the problem with the bonds is that the coupon rates are so low that you have to double the principle to come to the same returns you were getting 5 years ago.

[ringmastery]

16. right

The other option is to keep my money in stocks and hope for higher returns that way and just sell them when I need the money. I don't think I would be able to tolerate that much volatility though when I quit my job. Bond income is more secure.

[izzie]

12. Boy do you see the glass half full. Good luck.

:eyes:

[Braden]

15. me? hell yeah its half full.

$2mm sounds like a lot of money but in thirty years its going to sound like a hell of a lot less.

[izzie]

17. Well my father had to do it all him self as he worked for him self.

And 20 years ago he would have said 500,000 was enought but if he was alive to do I am welling to bet he would also say house paid for and something for medical with the #5 on top of that.And learn not to buy every thing in sight.

[Braden]

19. I own my business as well

my priorities are $0 mortgage in 8 years. I don't live a particularly frivolous lifestyle but I hope to one day.

Not buying everything in sight and avoiding divorce and Bankruptcy are pretty important helpers in long term financial goals.


20 years ago $500,000 sounded like a lot of money. Adjusted for inflation that would amount to $1,326,648.853 depending on the discount rate you apply.

[NewGuy]

5. I think you need to have about $500,000

This way with social security at around $13,000 and 5% of the $500,000 you would have $38,000/year to live on. This would easily provide a home, food on the table and a bit left over to have a life.

Of course this is a minimum amount. To get to half a million or more is pretty easy if you are young enough when you start.

[Tyler Durden]

6. Not one nickel.

And I owe a ton.

I should be able to get the cheapo house built on the land in Canada free and clear, then if they let me be a citizen, at least healthcare won't be an issue, and the wife and I can make it all right on her and my SS.

[GOPisEvil]

8. Thankfully, I have a defined benefit retirement plan.

Run by the state, so hopefully it will be there when I retire. As of right now, it would pay me around $2400/mo. + health insurance. I also have a 401(k) that has dwindled below $10k. It's not worth crap, really.

Once all my bills are completely paid off (by the summer, I think), I'm going to start contributing to the 401(k) again. For what good it will do, at least it's something.

[izzie]

10. I have a very good retirement saving and since Bush got in

It is paying me just $100 a month. I must pay tax and a fee for the bank to run it and it is over 6 figures. I make more from my SS. I do not believe we should let the market take over the retirement of people. I also have it in a blind trust so I have very little say.The only people who can get into is the govt. as they can always break a trust as it has to be set up that way. Better think this over. If you got sick and ran up a very large bill the hospital could wipe out all you saved and they could go to court to get it. See if their is a lawyer on this site and get him into it. I had to see a trust lawyer on this thing. Also they will not ever start a trust unless you have $100,000 to put in. So I do not think you could even get these retirement saving as safe as this trust is. But do talk to a lawyer.With the Bush family heavy into Wall Street I would be even more un-sure about it. Bush and Co always come out smelling like a rose, and you will be in a poor farms, which I am sure will be started up soon.I really did believe the GOP knew something about money but they are just awful.

[SheilaT]

14. Don't forget inflation.

It will destroy an otherwise adequate income in twenty years.

Are any of you old enough to remember the magazine ads from the fifties and early sixties that said things like, How I retired in 15 years on $300 a month. Or $250 a month. It was some kind of insurance/annuity plan in which you put aside money every month and after 10, 15, or 20 years you'd start living off the proceeds. By the mid 60's I'd shudder at those, knowing that that sum wasn't going to keep a person in food, let alone pay utilities or any sort of medical expenses. Perhaps as a supplement to social security it made a permanent good income, but I suspect a lot of those people were in very bad shape long before their lives were over.

I'll probably do okay. I have a small pension coming to me from a previous employer -- less even than the amounts named above, but I don't plan to live on that. I've been saving, and maybe I'll keep on working at least part time as long as I can.

[trof]

18. Kinda personal, but since you ask...

I crunched numbers for several days before I decided to retire/quit in 1999.
I factored in the $1500/mo pension I was already getting, and the $1400/mo I started collecting from S/S in Oct. Together with the income generated by my rollover IRA (over half a mil) that should allow us to live pretty comfortably.

No problem, except...I now have about 55-60% of what I had in my rollover IRA back then. It took me a while to finally bite the bullet, cut my losses, and leave the stock market (forever). Now, things are a bit tight.

I did find an investment vehicle that's returning upwards of 8%, preferred stocks.
Here's a website with a lot of info, if you're interested.
http://www.quantumonline.com/Please_register.cfm
Woops, now I see that you have to register. That's new, but they say it's free.

[nannygoat]

20. This website was featured on NPR a few weeks ago

http://www.retireonyourterms.com/