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Here's how much the average family in their 50s has saved for retirement
CNBC ^ | 04/22/2017 | Kathleen Elkins

Posted on 04/22/2017 11:01:48 AM PDT by SeekAndFind

By age 50, your golden years are just around the corner.

To be financially ready to retire by 67, retirement-plan provider Fidelity Investments says you should aim to have eight times your salary saved by age 60.

Are Americans on track?

According to a report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), many Americans have some catching up to do. The mean retirement savings of a family between 50 and 55 years old is $124,831. For families with members between 56 and 61, the mean retirement savings is $163,577.

But those numbers aren't representative of the state of American retirement. Since so many families have zero savings and since super-savers can pull up the average, the median savings, or those at the 50th percentile, may be a better gauge than the mean.

The median for families between 50 and 55 is only $8,000. For families between 56 and 61, it's $17,000.


(Excerpt) Read more at cnbc.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Society
KEYWORDS: fidelity; retirement; retirementsavings; savings
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To: RooRoobird20
husband retired early in 2015 following a stroke caused in surgery. [...]Fortunately As a younger woman I decided, “I think being an engineer might be cool” and I ended up in an interesting and lucrative career.

In so short a time? From being a - what? - housewife, or at best a woman with, e.g., a B.A. in English from the 1990s, you were able to re-train and obtain a lucrative position as an engineer in so short a time?

Amazing!

Regards,

101 posted on 04/23/2017 11:44:14 AM PDT by alexander_busek (Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.)
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To: alexander_busek

I earned a master’s in engineering in 1985, have been an engineer for almost 32 years.


102 posted on 04/23/2017 12:08:09 PM PDT by RooRoobird20 ("Democrats haven't been this angry since Republicans freed the slaves.")
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To: cherry

I must respectfully disagree, MND is a good book with a lot of good advice. But actually hubby and I were already doing what MND and Dave Ramsey were recommending before they both became really popular.

I don’t know anybody around my age who is still working and has paid off their home. When we paid off our home back in 2004 our friends looked at us like we were aliens. Most middle class people rent their lifestyles, “big hat no cattle” as they say in Texas.


103 posted on 04/23/2017 12:18:52 PM PDT by RooRoobird20 ("Democrats haven't been this angry since Republicans freed the slaves.")
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To: DeFault User
You might also want to contact an attorney to set up your estate as a trust for your heirs in order to reduce any burden at your passing.

Already done, long ago. Sorry to hear of your wife's terminal illness. My wife has cancers and has undergone many treatments over the last ten years (and surgeries going back twenty years). She has beaten most of it, and has chemo as a maintenance regimen to prevent flareups when any lymph nodes show problems.

You're right, one never knows what will happen as one ages. My wife didn't drink or smoke, exercised daily, ate healthy food and was otherwise physically fit. As for me, I abused my body with alcohol and drugs when young, don't exercise and eat unhealthy food, but I'm going strong in my late sixties. Go figure. Our life insurance is principally on me, because my Dad died when I was a teen and his life insurance helped my Mom and younger siblings get by, and I wanted to make sure my wife and kids would be okay if I passed. Everything now in our trust will pass to our kids and grandkids, although our adult kids are doing fine with their lives.

104 posted on 04/23/2017 12:33:15 PM PDT by roadcat
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To: roadcat

Good health is a blessing and a gift. If you don’t have good health, you can’t work and earn money. So far I’ve won the good health lottery in life, and I am very thankful.


105 posted on 04/23/2017 12:41:57 PM PDT by RooRoobird20 ("Democrats haven't been this angry since Republicans freed the slaves.")
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To: RooRoobird20

“We owe our lives to that brilliant little doctor who looked like she was twelve yesrs old. :0)”

-

I think I was meant to read this.

I had to change my Medicare plan the first of the year and the new plan has been plaguing me to make a “wellness” visit. (I despise the word “wellness”).

I told my daughter the other night that there was no way that I,at age 84,was going to let some twenty-something lecture me on health.

And then I read your post. Hmmmm ! :-)

.


106 posted on 04/23/2017 1:09:17 PM PDT by Mears
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To: Mears

Some of those little millenial doctors are awfully good. The one that saved my husband’s life maybe weighed 100 pounds soaking wet. Seriously, she looked young enough to pass for an eighth grader. :0)


107 posted on 04/23/2017 1:19:45 PM PDT by RooRoobird20 ("Democrats haven't been this angry since Republicans freed the slaves.")
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To: Chgogal
With what? They already have all our money.

When Congress passed the 2015 "Cromulus" bill, stuffed within was an almost criminal provision that taxpayers must back all banks risky derivatives gambles. The banks paid off Boehener and other Congressmen to change a provision in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act so they could once again use deposits to underwrite risky derivative trades.

Presenting The $303 Trillion In Derivatives That US Taxpayers Are Now On The Hook For

This, on top of an incredibly inflated stock market, makes me very nervous.

I know a couple of financial advisers. They are good guys, but are complete robots who spout the party line when it comes to these hard questions. If I ask them about the triple risk of the inflated market, the derivative time bomb, or the looming pension crisis, they both try to laugh it off and say, "That will never happen." If I persist, then the attacks come out: I am a "conspiracy theorist" or worse.

I don't know when or how this will all end, but most people seem completely taken over by normalcy bias.

108 posted on 04/23/2017 1:39:13 PM PDT by SkyPilot ("I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." John 14:6)
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To: alexander_busek
Yes, but at least - at present - you have a little bank book (or IRA, etc.) with a positive balance in it. After the govt.-mandated "bail-in," you will have a balance of zero.

Wow. Someone who get it. Congrats. You are not the norm.

109 posted on 04/23/2017 1:40:33 PM PDT by SkyPilot ("I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." John 14:6)
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To: AppyPappy
You can start withdrawing from your 401K without penalty at 59 1/2.

Generally not advised if one is near peak earning years and has not saved enough for retirement. There is no penalty per se, other than running out of money during retirement.
110 posted on 04/23/2017 3:46:25 PM PDT by af_vet_1981 (The bus came by and I got on, That's when it all began.)
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To: roadcat

Sorry to hear that your wife has had to undergo so much chemo. Mine had it for seven months to no avail and it was most unpleasant.

I’m glad to hear your wife has beaten the disease so far. I’ve told some other patients about my aunt who had a mastectomy in the 1950s. She just recently passed away one month short of her 106th birthday. If that’s not beating cancer, I don’t know what is. :D


111 posted on 04/23/2017 3:50:23 PM PDT by DeFault User
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To: Windflier

Windflier: “ Well gee, aren’t you special?

It’s not good form to brag on a thread where 90% of those reading, have a completely different life picture.”

I just wanted to send a “thank you” for that post. I’m always looking at this type of thread to perhaps get a clue as to how to better my situation. It is almost always spoiled by the Free Republic Self Congratulation Society, who can’t resist chiming in to tell everyone how splendidly they have done everything related to finances. They probably sneered at their frozen schoolmates as they walked both ways uphill to school in blinding snowstorms too.

So, “thank you”.


112 posted on 04/23/2017 8:01:51 PM PDT by LostInBayport (When there are more people riding in the cart than there are pulling it, the cart stops moving...)
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To: LostInBayport
I’m always looking at this type of thread to perhaps get a clue as to how to better my situation. It is almost always spoiled by the Free Republic Self Congratulation Society, who can’t resist chiming in to tell everyone how splendidly they have done everything related to finances.

I hear ya. I see it too.

If those types had any real compassion for their fellow Freeps, they might spend more time passing on helpful finance tips, and spreading a little encouragement.

In my personal situation, I've built a good small business that will likely take care of my wife and I for the rest of our lives, but there really are no guarantees that our kids won't do something to screw it up after we're no longer in charge.

My wife and I have made plans to mitigate that eventuality. Doing the best we can, is all I can say.

113 posted on 04/23/2017 8:28:40 PM PDT by Windflier (Pitchforks and torches ripen on the vine. Left too long, they become black rifles.)
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To: Windflier

.
>> “ I’ve built a good small business that will likely take care of I for the rest of our lives” <<

This is how to tell when the correct first person pronoun should be “me.” (90% of the time) :o)
.


114 posted on 04/23/2017 8:34:18 PM PDT by editor-surveyor (Freepers: Not as smart as I'd hoped they'd be)
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To: RooRoobird20
husband retired early in 2015 following a stroke caused in surgery. [...] Fortunately As a younger woman I decided, “I think being an engineer might be cool” and I ended up in an interesting and lucrative career.

I earned a master’s in engineering in 1985, have been an engineer for almost 32 years.

Sorry, I misunderstood your first posting to mean, "...being a younger woman, I decided..." rather than "...already, decades ago, as a younger woman, I had decided..."

Well, yes: Of course! Since you and your husband both had excellent earning potentials...

I must say, I really don't understand people who respond on threads like this (about how most Americans are ill-prepared for retirement, etc.) with such self-congratulatory postings as, "Well, at least I've got my millions..." or "Having both gotten top professional qualifications in early adulthood, my wife and I..."

It really doesn't add to the conversation.

Regards,

115 posted on 04/23/2017 8:41:12 PM PDT by alexander_busek (Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.)
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To: RooRoobird20

We has his, mine, and ours and each have our own Credit cards. I set aside X $ for mad money monthly, since I don’t do make up, except eye brow courtesy of hypothyroidism and eye issues, I can afford high end lenses. But big purchases are a joint things. Like downsizing the house. He’d still be living in crime riddle Memphis and falling off the roof of the house if I’d not pushed him into a starter house which is what 2 older people can handle in the next county.

He will buy his own lawn equipment after all that is his job. I want new pots and pans I buy them.

He has a hard time letting useless things go, I don’t and I’m a hard headed Scot skin flint. When We moved I ditched 40 year old junk when he wasn’t looking. He never missed it. Still to much in the attic to be pitched. Some of it salable to a Ham Radio club. Most just junk. He can donate mine to a quilt club, I’ve tubs of fabric. I’d planned on a quilting room up there until the eye site went south. Will find out next month if the Lasix was worth the $5K to fix it. When I get the new glass script they best get it on the money or they will get it back and I’ll get a refund and go elsewhere. Tried of getting second rate junk. And I don’t use those box stores. Examine the blank before you cut the things. I make the Othomologist get it right, now you get it right.


116 posted on 04/24/2017 4:38:45 AM PDT by GailA (Ret. SCPO wife: suck it up buttercups it's President Donald Trump!)
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To: alexander_busek

Hello Alexander Busick. I made a good career decision a long time ago, at the time I didn’t know how good it was LOL.

Again, I have been blessed with ridiculously good health so far. I’ve never had a health setback affect my career and earnings—I’m so thankful for that!

My sister, a heart transplant patient, had to stop working in her early 40’s and died two months ago from heart failure. She lived a near poverty existence because of her catastrophic health problems. Before she had to stop working she had a very good career doing molecular genetics research.


117 posted on 04/24/2017 6:06:44 AM PDT by RooRoobird20 ("Democrats haven't been this angry since Republicans freed the slaves.")
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To: RooRoobird20

I guess what I don’t understand why so many couples who have good incomes save nearly nothing for retirement. I work with a lot of fellow senior engineers who have the years (33 plus) to retire but they still can’t retire because they still owe on their mortgage, second mortgages, their little cabins in the woods, their boats and ATV’s etc. It all comes from a “keeping up with the Joneses” mentality.


118 posted on 04/24/2017 6:18:02 AM PDT by RooRoobird20 ("Democrats haven't been this angry since Republicans freed the slaves.")
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