How much do people have saved for retirement?

[Anonymous]

None. Trust fund. I don't see how people it plus college.

[Anonymous]

I love the idea of retiring abroad, Op. especially where there is good private or socialized health care and lower COL. After my mom died early at 78 (cancer that came on quickly), my dad sold their house in Bay Area and moved to India (their home country). He has a serious illness/disability, but lives in a paid for home my mom had bought in the 90s, amazing healthcare that is extremely affordable (and managed my father’s condition far better than drs here at Kaiser In Northern CA). Living expenses are Extremely low by us standards especially considering he would need a nurse or nursing home here. He has top notch help that he pays for and family around, every convenience- amazon, Uber, at his doorstep, but also a driver and personal car.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DH is early 40s and has 350k, I'm mid 30s and have 500k. I feel we are a bit behind...

Probably better than us, 350k for me (about to turn 40), ~250k for my spouse (mid-40s). Also have almost 200k in home equity. I started investing early but I wasn't able to put much in for a long while - have only had the means to max out my TSP for the last 4-5 years.

I should be getting a federal pension as well, which will help at least.

You're not doing all that bad. Think about it: if everything goes to plan, you'll work another 25 years. And the last 15 you can contribute a lot more to 401ks and IRAs. You see people on this board with $3 million, $5 million, heck $7 million in assets. This is the top 1% of America. You don't need 5 million dollars to have an enjoyable retirement. That is, unless your idea of "enjoyable retirement" is skiing in the Alps and spending summers in the Italian countryside, dining out at 5-star restaurants and leaving your kids multi-million dollar trust funds. But I'd imagine that's not how you're living now. If you can pay off your home, you'll have your pension and plenty of retirement savings to live a really nice life.

Thanks! I think sometimes I have to remind myself the "normal" here and on sites like Bogleheads is not really representative of how most people live. I've run the numbers and I think we'll be in pretty good shape so long as we keep maxing out accounts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I always feel that DCUM oversaves

I don't get why people need over 100k in retirement. For most people SS almost gets you halfway there. And SS isn't going away, the age might go up and benefits might slightly decrease but most people should be expecting at least 2500 a month if they are working

Main point being 1-3 million retirement account fund at age 60-65 is plenty.

Some realistic benchmarks 1 million at 55

500k at 45

250k at 35

Our HHI is over $400K a year. We are certainly not going to retire if we have to live on 25% of what we currently make. It depends on current income and current and expected lifestyle

Our HHI is the same as yours and we could comfortably live on 25% of this in retirement. We'll no longer be saving for college or retirement, we'll have no mortgage and we won't have kid expenses (which I swear are about 90 cents of every dollar we currently spend). I could live large on 25% of this!

[Anonymous]

Most of the posts on this thread are junk. The starting question is how much money do you need? As one PP said if you need $120,000 a year you are in good shape.

But for the people that say you do not need more than a certain amount ----- it all depends. I have made near or over $1 million for a long time. I am 5-10 years from retirement. We do quite well. We save a lot; we spend a lot. I could decide to reduce the current lifestyle; I do not intend to. As a result I would like 50,000 a month in retirement.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Most of the posts on this thread are junk. The starting question is how much money do you need? As one PP said if you need $120,000 a year you are in good shape.

But for the people that say you do not need more than a certain amount ----- it all depends. I have made near or over $1 million for a long time. I am 5-10 years from retirement. We do quite well. We save a lot; we spend a lot. I could decide to reduce the current lifestyle; I do not intend to. As a result I would like 50,000 a month in retirement.

I don't think I could spend that much if I tried.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I always feel that DCUM oversaves

I don't get why people need over 100k in retirement. For most people SS almost gets you halfway there. And SS isn't going away, the age might go up and benefits might slightly decrease but most people should be expecting at least 2500 a month if they are working

Main point being 1-3 million retirement account fund at age 60-65 is plenty.

Some realistic benchmarks 1 million at 55

500k at 45

250k at 35

Our HHI is over $400K a year. We are certainly not going to retire if we have to live on 25% of what we currently make. It depends on current income and current and expected lifestyle

Our HHI is the same as yours and we could comfortably live on 25% of this in retirement. We'll no longer be saving for college or retirement, we'll have no mortgage and we won't have kid expenses (which I swear are about 90 cents of every dollar we currently spend). I could live large on 25% of this!

Yeah I don't get it. Most of our costs involve:

Mortgage (will get paid off)
Saving for college
Kids school, activities, food
Ancillary work expenses (commuting, parking, work lunches)

Eliminate that and we spend like $50k. Seriously.

[Anonymous]

We are 45 and 42 in Texas. Have 3.1 million NW including 529 and equity. HHI recently increased , planning to save $225k per year. Another 7-10 years and we will retire

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Paid off house. 1 Mil savings. 180K pension. Kids college paid for. Kids cars paid for. 1/2 mil for each kid. Health care paid for. Lots of insurance.

This is so unrealistic for most Americans.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This thread is depressing. Now I am convinced I will have to move abroad to live a happy retirement. Ecuador, here I come!

Seriously why not?

DCUM is not real life PP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Most of the posts on this thread are junk. The starting question is how much money do you need? As one PP said if you need $120,000 a year you are in good shape.

But for the people that say you do not need more than a certain amount ----- it all depends. I have made near or over $1 million for a long time. I am 5-10 years from retirement. We do quite well. We save a lot; we spend a lot. I could decide to reduce the current lifestyle; I do not intend to. As a result I would like 50,000 a month in retirement.

$120K per year is not that "little", still need $3.5M invested to pull in that much safely.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Most of the posts on this thread are junk. The starting question is how much money do you need? As one PP said if you need $120,000 a year you are in good shape.

But for the people that say you do not need more than a certain amount ----- it all depends. I have made near or over $1 million for a long time. I am 5-10 years from retirement. We do quite well. We save a lot; we spend a lot. I could decide to reduce the current lifestyle; I do not intend to. As a result I would like 50,000 a month in retirement.

$120K per year is not that "little", still need $3.5M invested to pull in that much safely.

Not if Social Security covers some of it.

[Anonymous]

We followed a very simple approach which for many is hard to do. We always saved one of our salaries as we were able to live just fine on one. So every year we were saving maybe 30-40% of our gross income. We both maxed out 401k’s but the total was still 30-40%. I worked until I was 55 and my husband retired at 60 at which point our retirement and other savings totaled over $5 million. Now it’s almost $8 million which is a stunning number to me because we never made huge salaries.

[Anonymous]

We have over saved at this point. We did not anticipate the growth of the market over the past decade. We saved as if social security would not be there too. However, it is still there and we are at or nearing 60. We are helping our children and increasing our donations as a result. We will pull back if there is a significant down turn.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have over saved at this point. We did not anticipate the growth of the market over the past decade. We saved as if social security would not be there too. However, it is still there and we are at or nearing 60. We are helping our children and increasing our donations as a result. We will pull back if there is a significant down turn.

We are grateful to be in the same boat. We were always big savers and maxed out 401K’s, SEP/IRA’s, deferred compensation- you name it. We also saved well beyond that. Our kids/grandkids will benefit as we have already funded 529’s and when we have to start taking money out of our retirement accounts much of that will go to charity. A big gift you can give your kids is to encourage them to save and invest early on.