my dad retired at 56 with over a 100k in the bank in the 50's
he and mom who never worked after marriage lived off the interest
and flipping cars like 356's jag's fascel's and mark II Lincolns
and a few houses and raw land deals too

just interest income grew the 100k to 240k by the time mom died
no stocks or other paper just CDs

but at current rates you can't do that anymore
I retired at 49 a month before I turned 50 in 2000
but I can't make the accounts grow in the current low rates
and high cost of living we now have like the parents did

so SS at 62 next spring is going to happen
in addition to the state pension that in fla ain't much today

I'd check that if you can.

http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1321634148.jpg

No offence, but IMHO as a source, it's pretty vague

If you can find me the option for powered windows, in the Online configuration on
Mercedes-Benz Deutschland - Personenwagen , i guess it would be more convincing.

(i looked, i did not find).

I re-fi'd my house last year from 4.625% to 3.50%, kept the same 7 years on the note, lowered by payment by about $500/month and plow that savings back into the mortgage to try and get it paid off in closer to 6 years. I want to be mortgage free a few years before I "retire".

Putting money in a Roth IRA if your starting out is a good way to go. If your older like me (57) not so much.

There is the age old question of"how much $ do you need to retire?". The answer to that is that you dont know. There are too many variables such as, how old before you pass on, do you need long term care, does your house reduce in value, has your stock portfolio melted down?

On the positive side the more $ you have the better! Duh! To get that way, be debt free before u retire. Diversify. Dont have all your money in real estate or stocks. Beware of people selling investment products- they make money on sales but are the underlying products any good?There is no magic solution. Be knowledgeable about money, investments.It is not only about how much $ you make, but also much u spend. If both u and your partner are similar in spending ie. hopefully not much, then it makes for a happier retirement. There is a middle road somewhere though!That is my 5 cents worth.
Cheers

For those of you whose retirement plan is to essentially just keep on working, a bit of unsolicited advice: you best have a plan B.

I know way to many of my peers (lets say 55-70) over the past 5 years who:

1. Lost their jobs, were unable to find anything and lived off their IRA/401Ks until they could file for SS and are still in dire straights financially.

2. Lost their jobs and eventually found similar work but at greatly reduced salary and benefits.
Note: most of these were well educated white collar workers who never thought this could happen to them.

3. Had health issues (i.e. my BIL's wife (age 56) was just diagnosed with early onset Alzheimers. This is the one area you have very little control over for the most part and there are absolutely no guarantees on this one.

For those of you who are contributing to IRA's/401Ks, pray for another great bull market like we had for most of the 1980's and 90's. Another decade like this last one or the 1970's and you're just treading water at best.

Everyone should read this post 2 or 3 times. There is a lot more that 5 cents worth in this.

My German isn't that good and you may very well be correct, not enough to start WWIII over.

I hesitate to post here because of the potential for getting this thread tossed to PARF but I think one of the most important factoids here is the earnings profile of American families. While there are a small handful or half-handful of families out of 100 that are making very comfortable money allowing seven figure lifetime savings or even more, the majority of families are are living on subsistence-level incomes. Some of my conservative friends like to say "they should have worked harder, then they could have earned more" but I don't see how 90% of Americans could earn comfortable-level (70K+) incomes simultaneously. Sure, there are winners in our society. And there are losers. It's just not set up to allow an entire society of winners.

I guess we all should go into music publishing. Retire at 30.

retire, many people ask me that question and my response is " no, my truck does not need to be re-tired ". I have also told people that " I have been semi-retired now for 30 yrs, I don't work too much but I will work the rest of my life".

For me this works, for you maybe not.

Yrs ago I had patients get all excited telling me they were retiring with 350K in the bank, now 15 yrs later they are taking out a reverse mortgage and treading lightly. I have seen too many people outlive their retirement, so it made sense to me to maybe work longer so outliving the funds would never happen, afterall, I have 3 children to think about and its always nice to leave them a golden nugget.

Could I pull the plug now, absolutely, do I want too, nope. At 63, I enjoy going to work, love helping people out, give alot of free service away, take time off when I want and for the most part do what I want. Yes, there are limits but nothing I can't live with.

To me not working is scary, I guess since I have been self employed most of my life, I have expected that steady stream of funds flowing thru the doors and the only way that happens is to work, the old fashion way.

How many people have you seem that retire and 6 months later are pushing up daisies???? There seem to be plenty of you that beat these odds but there are plenty out there that haven't.

You have but one life, enjoy it to the max and before you know it, poof, its gone.

Next.

How about Medical ???

I have a friend at work who could afford to retire comfortably at 60 (savings, house paid for etc..), but he will not because medical care for his spouse would be murder between retirement day and medicare kicking in. He quoted some brutal numbers to me...

For those of you thinking they can retire early, what's your plan re:medical ? Will that plan still work 20y from now? Seems to me medical costs are climbing way faster than my income !

My wife and I both retired at 50. We are able to stay on my wifes medical plan as long as we pay the cost, we pay $1130 per month. Like everything else we just budget for it.

Ive been retired now for 5 years and its great! I stopped by my old office yesterday to have lunch with the guys and just check up. Its nice to visit, but I sure don't miss it. I was a construction manager for a Highway and Bridge construction co. All highway work in the St. Louis area had to be done at night. County work was done in the daytime. So for years I was literally working day and night. I figured if I didn't retire early I would never make it to retirement anyway. The job paid well but you really had no life outside of it. Now life is good.

I've been looking for some sort of calculator that would give me that number for a long time. Turbo Tax offered to do that for me many years ago, but I haven't been able to find anything that would do that. If you know how, let me know. I suspect it's a fallacy. I'm not sure how it could work (except maybe if you're in a low tax bracket). If you're in a 25% tax bracket, and you put $5000 in an IRA, that reduces your tax liability by $1250. I just don't see how you can get those two things to be equal even with the other payroll deductions that get added in.

Save for college? My folks didn't give me a dime for college. They told us they expected us to go, and as adults who could vote, drink, and sign contracts, they expected us to pay for it. I was the only one of the siblings not smart enough to get scholarships. If it wasn't for guaranteed student loans I would have been in college & working two jobs for 10 years.
I told my stepson the same thing. He worked it out for the first couple of years, and got scholarships to pay for the rest, right through his Phd.
I don't see it as a parent's responsibility to pay for a kid's college education.

Man, stopping work with only $350K banked seems like a very scary proposition, at least at any reasonably young age (65 or less).

You could easily live another 20 years. How is $350K going to come even close to supporting you for that long, much less supporting you and a spouse?

For 20 years, that's $17,500 per year. Not much.

AND, that doesn't even include the really scary things, like devaluation of the dollar and inflation. 10 years from now that $350K will be worth $250K, if you're lucky.

And, there's nowhere really to earn any decent interest on that money in a safe way. At best, you might be able to come close to matching inflation. Maybe.

I don't understand how people think that number can work.

There is no more magic in interest anymore.

All those old articles on retirement, etc., from even a few years ago, they are funny, they all are based on presumed interest of 8% or 10%, solid and paid every single year for 40 years straight. With never a year of "negative" interest (i.e. losses on the portfolio).

The reality is a lot harder than that.

I think that social security will eventually be weighted. So regardless of how much you put into it, you wont get benefits unless you need it. So screw it. I am spending all my money now and let Uncle Sam support me when I am back in diapers.

McLovin, I agree. But lets take Supe's position that some just can't save anything. If you plug into this link Savings Calculator - Financial Calculators from Dinkytown.net

You can calculate that if you put $1/day away for 30 years at 2% you'd have $16,000 at the end. Plug in $2/day and you end up with $30,000. More than the original article posted about not even 7% of those surveyed had $25,000 stuck away. My point from the start was you can save, if you put your mind to it. I can't believe a family of four making $50K or $70K/year can't actually put $2/day away.

If that's true, smart investors would put away $1/day twice - maybe $1 at breakfast and $1 at dinnertime - and get $32,000 vs the $30,000 you'd get for putting back $2.