Men in my family don't live much past 80. So if I retire soon (I'm 61) I only need to make it 20 years. If my savings stays on track I could have nearly $600K in my various accounts in total. If I can't live on 30K / year I'm screwed. Giving up hookers and blow is a certainty.

Amen, brother. I'm 50 and really haven't worked much at all for the past 25 years :)

Retire at a young age? What does the average American retiree do? Sit in a Lazyboy and watch 700 channels of television, or putter around the good ol' USA in a behemoth RV with a fat wife and a couple yappy poodles? No thanks. I prefer to think of life as an ongoing, relentless pursuit of interests and hobbies and adventure. Guess I'll still be doing crazy stuff when I'm 80... at least, I hope to.

Very interesting post. I'm 47 so retirement for me is a distant horizon. My parents made a very modist wage that was cut short when they were in their early 60's. savings? Ha, after the quick sale of their house they had maybe $7500 total in savings ( this was around 1984). They moved out to Albuquerque NM, got into a nice little HUD subsidized apartment and lived on my fathers $500 per month SS check. He ended up getting some part time work for the Forestry Service and my mom starting receiving her modest $460 SS check. They drove their car all over this beautiful country of ours and had the time of their lives. For 12 years they did this, eventually my dad had some health issues so they decided to move back east. At this point they had built their savings up to around $15,000 despite all the traveling and trips to Las Vegas, I was suddenly impressed with my parents. They finally had awoke and started living their lives, doing things they would have never done in their previous life. A few years later my father died of cancer, 86 years old. He wasted 65 years trying to "save for retirement" struggling and unhappy then a catastrophic blow to his business forced him to live without an income or savings. And he lived more life in that last 10 years than he did in the first 65. So don't let the $$$ run your life, it's all a big hoax.

Some of you that really seem to have figured out how to live well without working too awfully hard are advocating late retirement. I imagine I would feel the same if I had not 80+ hrs a week for most of the last 35 years. I would probably keep working if I could find a 40 hr a week job with real vacation time or weekends where I didn't have to take a laptop and a blackberry and spend 2-6 hours or more at home or in a hotel room working.

I would never quit/retire if I could not support myself or family without assistance...but I think I will happily retire as soon as feasible..,just to get a few days off.

To answer the OPs question, it seems to me that one would want at least $1M per person or the equivalent in rental income or defined benefit plan (but $2M each would be my goal). In most careers...once you stop work, it us almost impossible to start again unless you are willing to accept less money and worse conditions. Once you have lots of time...it would be nice to have the money to enjoy it.

Well said, Rich!! :)

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/suppo...s/beerchug.gif

I've always thought that it would be really cool to drive a 911 with a manual transmission when I'm 75 or 80, maybe older. I hope that my health holds up if I live that long.

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This becomes every Human Being's concern - eventually.
All else pales, unfortunately.

I don't plan on sitting around watching TV, or getting fat, I hope I have the good health to do some traveling, and work on projects I enjoy.

I may get a part time job doing something that interests me to keep from getting stale and have a few $$ coming in for health insurance.

You absoluely must be thinking about retirement once you turn 40 before it's too late to accumulate any money. Ideally, it's much easier to save alot of dough if you start earlier.

I retired back in 2007, I was 50 then. Now my life is an ongoing , relentless pursuit of interests and hobbies and adventure. The going to work was really getting in the way and time consuming.

And the crazy thing is I still don't have enough time to do everything that I'd like to do. Sometimes there is just not enough hours in the day.

Annual expenses (including income tax) divided by 0.5% (typical bank cd rate).

$60k in annual expenses would require $12m if you want the principal intact.

If you want to put a finite time limit on the funds you can drastically reduce the figure. A 20 year life expectancy would allow you to reduce the figure to $1.2 million if you're willing to spend it all and have nothing left at the end.

You, my friend, need to consider changing careers. What you're doing is positively INSANE!


My folks retired to a small beach town in Florida with less than $20K in savings, my dad's pension, and their SSI. Their expenses totaled a little over $2K/month. They lived in a nice 2 bdrm apt a short walk from the Atlantic, had a decent car, a little boat, and enjoyed 20+ years of retirement. One key to their success was living within their means and staying out of debt. They figured out how much money they had to work with and organized their lives to fit that number. One of the reasons they chose Florida was because of the availability of senior services, which included an affordable state-run supplemental health care plan. This all took place some years ago but I think it's still possible to enjoy retirement on less money than you think. You need to consider all the possibilities...including a move outside the US.
There is no "catch-all" formula for a satisfying retirement...everyone's needs are different. Plan as well as possible, do what you can with however much money you wind up with, and be willing to make some compromises.

my job is super stress free. pay is mediocre..but whatever.

i can see myself hogging up office space for a very long time :)