Fewer ice floes for us old people..

down at the overpass.

I remember hearing some 'retirement expert' on NPR glibbly talking about needing $2 MILLION dollars for retirement. Seriously, what planet do they live on?

... but I also plan on retiring around 68 or so.

and also that it's distasteful to brag about your income.

There are plenty of people - the vast majority - who will be lucky if they've saved 1/100th of that by the time they retire. The issue isn't whether individuals such as yourself are set for retirement, but what the vast majority of the elderly are going to do.

You may take an 'every man for himself' stance but I'd prefer to live in a society where there aren't waves and waves of people living their last days in abject poverty.

I do think it's bully for me...

And before you go thinking I am some fat cat lighting cigars with $100 bills...

I am an active duty service member and I make a very average income. However, I don't expect anyone else to take care of me in my old age to include my kids or social security. I plan for it now in my ever declining youth and instead of casting asparagus you should encourage it in others.

Have a lovely superbowl...

I think you are dude on the internet tossing around meaningless bravado about your supposed income and completely missing the point of the conversation.

I'm an average Joe working in a factory and I will have WELL OVER a mill when I retire.

It's discipline...not luck

1 - your projected million falls well short of the 2-4 million the experts say you'll need

and 2 - you actually have no way to predict what might happen in the future. You *hope* to have over a million, but that relies on many factors outside your illusion of "discipline". You could lose your job or ability to work, an emergency or crashing financial markets could wipe everything out, social conditions could change in ways you have absolutely no control over.

My point being is that real security will come from creating a just and equitable society that bands together to create a safety net for it's most vulnerable members - if only because *anyone* can find themselves in that position through no fault of their own.

While you wait for Utopia to arrive, some of us are going to try to do what we can to take care of ourselves.

Do we know the outcome with certainty? Of course not. Doesn't mean I am going to sit on my ass and hope that everything just works out and that someone else will take care of me.

I see a tombstone in your DU future.

money magazine sounds to me like it is all about money.

the way the "money magazine" crowd makes money is wall street.

for them to make money in wall street YOU have to start investing in wall street.

and they are always ahead of that ball, since they have the computers that are fast enough to manipulate trades so THEY can make the money, either off the stocks going up, or the charges for each trade.

meanwhile, you, who DON'T have the fast computers, may make some bucks occasionally, but may also lose your shirt, while THEY, with the fast computers, know to get out while the market is up, and BEFORE you lose your shirt.

then they go in an bottom feed, buying cheap stock, then pumping it up again.

lather, rinse, repeat.

am i missing anything?

That's the magazine I read. Figuring out how to do as much as possible with as little as possible seems more to the point for my household.

Just put me in a cardboard box and turn on the roaster.
For those of us who live on SS and not much of anything else, stories like this make us laugh.

Maybe the next generation will be able to save tons of $$ for retirement but for those of us still around, it is laughable.
Never happen, not possible.

Maybe my kids or grandchildren will win the lottery or something. I fear for all of us 99%ers. Are we doomed to poverty?
BTW: If I made 50 to 70 thousand a year now, I'd feel I was on easy street.

Cutting back to an income in the 'teens has been a painful reality.
Don't get old folks, it stinks!

Hopefully we will run in to no shortages of cheap child slave labor, poor people to bomb, life saving surgeries to deny, seniors to rip-off, mountains to crush, forests to destroy and oceans to kill before I realize my retirement dreams!

Let's say a person makes $60,000 a year and they save 20% of their salary, which grows by 4% every year, and their investments make a whopping 10% average return every year.

How much do they have saved after 30 years?

Are any of those realistic assumptions?

$60,000 a year - over 50% of American households make less than that.
saving 20% of your salary? - I bet that's pretty tough
10% return on your investments? - doubtful, especially these days, although some mutual funds have averaged 8% over long term

anyway, the total is

at the end of 30 years the person is making a very surprising $187,000 a year, but they only have $2.74 million in their retirement account.

But THAT would seem to be plenty of money. If their safer investments are making a 5% return, their annual income would be $137,000 per year. Considering that they had been living, just 3 years before retirement, on $138,400 (as they saved 20% of their salary that year by this absurd assumption).

To suggest that $4 million might not be enough is the height of absurdity for all who are not living like the King of Siam.

was the one that said I should have saved $2000/year from the time I was 20 and blamed me for not doing so.

My net was barely $2000/year when I was 20.

Financial planners have absolutely no concept of inflation and what it does to either earnings or savings and how the 99% are completely programmed to fail by the way this country is set up, spending their golden years in penury and having to work to supplement meager Social Security benefits until they quite literally drop in their tracks.

we all worry about outliving whatever retirement savings we've managed to save in our working years.

you have to be REMARKABLY rich in order to have enough to not really worry about that -- they're putting the peg at $4 million. i'm used to hearing the peg at $2 million, but with interest rates so low they may have a point.

if you have no savings, you're stuck living on social security.
if you have a bit of savings, you can supplement it by drawing down your savings, "hoping" to die before you run out, or at least, if you do survive, you drop down to living on just social security.

but even $1 million in the bank isn't nearly as much as it sounds. with interest rates negligible, taking out an extra $50,000 per year will run out in 20 years. that can make the different between living on about $30,000 (at max benefits) per year to $80,000 per year. certainly a nice jump, but hardly ridiculous. plus it runs out in 20 years. if you're used to making that kind of money or more, it's "not enough".


the real point is that most of us are in the same boat, worrying about largely the same things. having enough to maintain a familiar lifestyle in our golden years. those starting out retirement with even a million or two in savings should be seen as ON *OUR* SIDE, as opposed to those with vastly more savings. THOSE are the ones living on a very different planet.

I'm figuring it will be just about $1 million for me. And most of that comes from my pension and Social Security.

Let it compound at 3% interest while you are doing it - that's another $1.26 million.
Wait, it is still only $3.26 million. holy shit, that means back to plan B - lottery jackpot.

Factoring in taxes, cost of living and other assorted landmines, of course.

"WHAT? YOU DON'T MAKE THAT? Hooo boy are YOU behind in life."

It's what I'm shooting for, but it looks like it will be real tough, with the speed at which we're saving.