how much is enough to retire (comfortable lifestyle)?

live of the interest or investments. I know you can spend $100 mil a year if you wanted to, but let's be realistic. No private planes or houses in every continent..

We're retired now.

on edit: It depends on your lifestyle. We have friends that feel destitute with a 200K annual income. We have others that 30K or 40K makes them happy. Our lifestyle requires something alittle over the former, therefore the 4 mil figure in case our investments decide to flop. (Yes, we are building/buying a house outside of the US. Not for political reasons, but for climate reasons.)

either way it's enough. I wish I had that option :)

House paid off. Farm paid off. Two new cars.

Yes, I worked my ass off to do it. Yes, my wife worked her ass off to do it.

We did the entrepenurial thing. She taught the whole time as well (public schools). The company went public in 2002. She retired in 2002 (from teaching). I retired in mid 2003.

on edit: I'm only stating what we did. Can others do it as well? Definitely. How? Find a need and fill it. Hard work and astute promotion of your service/product with a solid plan for growth of both the business and personal investments can make it happen.

No. You won't usually get "rich" on quirky t-shirts or bumper stickers - unless, of course, they're quirky enough to wholesale to the mass market. You have to fill a real (or perceived) need or want.

n/t

But I dunno. :shrug:

Also assume close to zero income on bank deposits. So $4 million is not too much.

you can buy almost guranteed securities and make a nice chunk on $4 mil, no?

Keep on going.

on edit: With brokerage accounts such as we have today, one needs only to maintain a relatively small traditional checking account. You have instant liquidity with almost any margin account via checks and debit cards. My wife's entire retirement check goes straight to our brokerage via direct deposit.

If I ever get to retre (unlikely) and get old enough to need to budget for a nursing home (also unlikely) I'm just going to spend that nursing home money in a last binge, and budget $.75 for a bullet and a walk in the woods.

Tucker

But I'd save some dough. I have a few hundred rounds of .45 ACP that i bought for about $0.11 per round. One of those will do the trick! I'll give the other .64 to DU.

You go offshore (Bahamas is good) and insure yourself with a life policy that you buy with your dough NOT ALL OF IT FOR CHRISSAKES and direct the investments made with the funds. You then "borrow" from the policy - loans are not taxable income - and never pay it back. You're borrowing your own money from a legal fiduciary vehicle, which is, in turn, growing from the return on its investments in construction, mutual funds, individual stocks, shipping, oil - whatever you choose. Then you distribute your "gifts" as you see fit as opposed to having a large chunk of tax dollars go into the military or some other program you do not support.

I've scarcely had two dimes to rub together my whole life. I can't figure out where all this money comes from. The average income in this country is, like, $22,000/year. This doesn't leave much for savings or retirement. I have a university degree, and I've often made less than $10,000/year. "Comfortable" retirement for me means having, perhaps, a roof over my head.

One income for living. One income for investing. Second or third entrepaneural job. (ie: farm, espresso stand, etc) Live on a budget. Stick to it. Brown-bag lunch. Reuse, repair, recycle. - or do as i did - Marry an heiress!

Work your ass off, invest what you can, then work harder.

Believe me, I never had the time for DU, surfing the net, or much of anything else aside from my family until I figured I'd "made it".

It's a choice. Trade time now for time later. Work harder, retire earlier, work less, retire to a wheelchair (no offense intended to those so bound - only making an age point).

You don't "come across it" you earn it.

I know that sounds harsh, but it's true. Take the time, find a need and fill it.

For you younger members, learn the Rule of 72. A very little invested now makes a bunch later. If you don't have money to invest, get a part time job. Fast food is always hiring. Invest some of the money from that job.

No job is beneath anyone. I've flipped burgers, cleaned public washrooms, bucked hay, you name it. My last job was as CEO and Chairman of the company I founded. It's still on the NASDAQ bulletin board, but it's growing.

I'm nothing special. If I can do it, anyone can - and I do mean ANYONE.

FYI education helps, but is not the be all end all. Dave Thomas got his G.E.D. around age 60.

You forgot...don't buy everything in sight...plan to invest and if one plays one plays with what is left..treat the investment like any other bill you have..it is a must not an option.

AND THE DAMN FINE EXCUSE FOR MY 1000th POST!

a good sum from someone who worked very very hard all their life for it. I intend to be really careful, wise (hopefully) and cautious with it, I don't want someone else's hard earned money to be "frittered" away.

We don't know how to act at the country club. It is a big problem. Mrs. "D" gets pissed when I scratch my ass and pick my nose at the posh DCC.

Oops, word is just in that Jr's economy has increased our wealth to $11.745 million and (AND) our taxes have been reduced sooooo much! How much? More than you peons make in a year! Bu$h is for u$! Ya'll eat cake.

I'll headed back to Dallas in a few weeks. I NEED to be at the Dallas Country Club (where they partied on 11/22/63, after JFK was killed three miles away). Maybe I need a driver. Eh, boy?

If you own your own house and live in an area with a reasonable cost of living, your expenses shouldn't be extreme. I would say to live comfortably, $500k in assets, and at least $30k a year with social security/pension/interest income.

4 million would be nice but way not necessary to live comfortably. If you figure that fairly conservative investments (and I don't mean money market accounts)yield about 5%, that would produce $200k a year. A more reasonable figure would be $750k - $1m provided that you're reasonably careful and debt free. When nursing home time comes, you would probably have to liquidate some assets or dig into principal but most people don't spend that many years in a nursing home anyway.

It's just another way of saying most people could never retire. My dad told me that he never earned more than $600,000 in his entire working career, and he was an engineer! Although salaries are higher today, people have much higher costs and, also, an engineer or other technical person is not going to be able to work for 40 years straight -- there will be too many gaps in unemployment.

It's nice that occasionally people who are entrepreneurial make a lot of money. Many of not most people who start small businesses lose everything and end up bankrupt of course! And, even if you do turn something of a profit in your own business, you're in a huge hole because you don't receive benefits, can't get health care at a reasonable cost, etc. I say this as self-employed for 20 years and knowing many, many other self-employeds. If people want to be CEO, most of them better accept that they will PAY for the privilege of having a business rather than a job. Working hard doesn't seem to guarantee anything except that you have definitely lost your youth for a "chance" at maybe having extra money in your older age. Big emphasis these days on the word "maybe."

The days of being able to rely on your stock market investments, should you have anything left over to make such investments, gaining 10 percent a year are so over. If we have learned anything these past few years, it is that the stock market and even the mutual funds markets are riddled with fraud. "Secure" investments, because of the low interest rates, return almost nothing.

Someone who already has $4 million doesn't know the reality of what we're facing today. Yeah, my great-aunt worked hard in a little restaurant she started in the 1930s and bought some Florida real estate and went from literally rags in the 20s to millions upon millions in the 1960s and later. Try getting in cheap on some worthwhile FLorida real estate today. That boat has passed, and much as we all appreciated her advice on how to invest, it was entirely worthless because we can't live in the past, we can only work, save, and invest in TODAY's environment.

Pay off your house to keep down recurring expenses, save/invest what you can without indulging in fantasy that causes you to give up living today, and most important of all, demand of your representatives that they protect our Social Security -- because that's what most of us will be living on.


It's just my humble opinion but I live by it. If I hadn't put money into paying off my house in a no-property tax area first, I couldn't possibly live on my splenderifous income in the high four figures!

I know, I'm so cynical...but so is telling people they should just work harder and somehow amass $4 million cynical.

As far as the nursing home or hospice, quite frankly, I don't care how or if they get paid when I can no longer do anything except sit in a bed and watch TV. At that point, the less money you have the better if it gives 'em a motive to pull the plug. The aunt I mentioned above was kept alive for over two decades in a state of dementia. It might have been better if she'd been a pauper. You wouldn't make a dog suffer like that. There is enough dementia in my family where I truly worry about this.

if they made it selling cocaine they might not, but if they made working hard, they do. As someone who DOESN'T have it, the money is out there.

I'm feeling so inadequate. :-(

I've participated in a private online financial discussion group for a number of years. If there's one thing I've learned from that group, it's that many of the people who are shooting for un-achievable goals like $3-4 million are actually looking for an impossible goal to keep their time filled. Some people need work or structure to feel fulfilled.

The actual retirees and low income people in the discussion get quite a chuckle out of all the moaning about oh woe this five month's of unemployment before I found my new job means five more years before I will be able to retire because of how it delayed my investments, oh woe.

I have spent a lot of time talking to actual retirees, very very very few of whom have millions of dollars and some who have nothing except Social Security. When you spend a lot of time around lots of active old people, then it calms down these concerns, because the proof is in front of your eyes that you don't need millions to live well and enjoy life. And, once you lose your health, it doesn't seem to matter how much you saved -- the doctors/hospitals etc. get it all anyway.

My mom had a friend who had many millions who developed Hodgkin's disease, which generally costs six figures to treat. "Somehow" they managed to find all sorts of experimental treatments and to get every dime she had, while still killing her. While my friend who just got the usual six figure treatment off his company health insurance went into remission and is told he has a life expectancy of decades. Past a certain point, we don't buy health -- we just buy vultures.

It's good to be middle class or upper middle class but once you get sick, from what I've seen, I'm really questioning the value of riches.

I don't understand your point. Being sick and poor is a lot worse than being sick, and not have to worry about the sheriff coming to throw you out. I doubt your friend's mom died because she was rich. Most of us are in the same situation, we work, we eat. I'm not saying money is everything but it would be nice to have it.

30000 for comfortable lifestyle.

If you know how to spend money wisely I'd say even 20000 would be ok, but be careful once you're old and might need somekind of service you will need more money

There is no "one size fits all" answer.
For example, I'm retired and have a monthly income of about $3000 from pension and S/S. That's equivalent to an 8% return on $450,000.

When I crunched numbers prior to retirement in 1999, I had around $650,000 in a rollover IRA. So, effectively, I had a little over a mil. Plus about $350,000 equity in our house. Looked doable.

Thanks to the stock market, Janus mutual funds, a fee paid investment "advisor", and my being in denial about all of the above for too long, about 45% of the $650,000 is goners.

We're not going on food stamps any time soon, but we sure don't live quite the life we had planned on. We'll probably sell the house in the next couple of years. Since we live on the water, we can move to a nicer house inland for less than half the price. Probably pay cash and not have a mortgage. Then I think we can make it.

Did I mention my health insurance premiums more than doubled Jan. 1?
jeez

If you read my previous posts, you will notice that I stated VERY clearly that it takes different amounts for different people. What is comfortable for one is poverty for another - or luxurious for yet another. It all depends on your lifestyle choices.

Yes, I do have a clue. I grew up with an outhouse and a bucket in the well for water. I had hand me down clothes. On the plus side, we ate well because we lived on a working farm and raised our own hogs, cattle, chickens, ducks, etc. and had a very large garden. The only real cash at the time came from odd jobs and the tobacco crop. Nope. I did not grow up in the depression era. I'm a boomer. We finally got indoor plumbing in 1966. I'm not crying the blues, just stating facts.