I have thought this for some time.
Well I have at least that much already invested in Social Security, so I’m not worried.
(Do I really need the tag?)
I could live quite well on 40 /50,000
Yep, that’s the truly evil thing about big govt and inflation. They not only steal from your current and future earnings, but from your life’s savings. A swift kick in the balls for doing the right thing all your life.
Debt ceiling whores are nothing more than common thieves, but on a much larger scale. Madoff was an amateur. They all belong in prison, or hanging from ropes.
A big part of the reason why retirees will need so much more capital to live off in their retirement is the way the Federal Reserve has warped the yield curve to bail out the banking sector.
The Japanese learned this the hard way. Mrs. Wantanabe had to turn to speculation in the FX market to make up for their ZIRP.
Most people, even moderately high income people, will have a very, very hard time saving $2 million for retirement under the current tax policies. At least in the 80s and 90s, you could hope the market raised your investments to a decent level. Now you can’t even hope for that. When we talk about robbing the future for current consumption, this is another example.
People should be taking their potential retirement and reviewing it every year or so.
Take private pensions (some of us still have them.) Take your social security and your 401(k)S.
Add them all up and subtract your expenses. Will you have car payments or mortgage payments? Will you still be spending as much on insurance, or healthcare (we know the answer to THAT!)
I have been doing that every quarter since I started working. To date, my wife and I will be in good shape when we get to 62 years old.
Getting there, 11 years for us, is going to be the problem!
“All your 401k are belong to us” is the new 1 million.
I’m not clear on whether the thrust of the article is (1) withdrawing $40-50,000 per year out of the corpus of the one or two million dollar nest egg; or (2) living off the dividends/interest from the principal amount, while keeping the principal essentially intact for the retiree’ heirs.
Those of us who were unfortunate enough to work in the private sector all our lives will have to work til we die. We’ll be waiting tables for all the public sector retirees who are living high on the hog.
I am about to retire and think I have planned fairly well ... for things I can control (mortgage - get it paid; car - don’t need a new one; expenses - don’t need all the movie channels or to eat out all the time; etc.).
But, what concerns me are the things I can’t control (stock market - not looking rosy in the near future; cost of living - the price of everything is increasing; tax rate - it’s bound to go up; Medicare coverage - it’s bound to decrease; Medicare Supplement cost - it’s bound to go up; etc.).
And, what’s most frustrating is that this president seems to be doing everything in his power to try to make my retirement as difficult as possible. What he doesn’t know is that my happiness doesn’t, in anyway, depend on him - it depends on Him.
How can anyone survive on 40,000 or 50,000 a year? I’m wondering how I’m going to scrape by on over twice that amount. And that’s with a paid off house and no debt. The way prices are going up on everything I worry about my retirement years, which will be starting up on June 1.
I retired at 60. We had it all planned out to do so and live easily on our savings, soc sec and pensions.
Living expenses are as we expected.
But we did not anticipate what ObamaCare would do to insurance and medical costs before it actually kicked in this year (60% increases in premiums and deductable/co-pays over 2 years).
What we had saved and planned may get well zapped before we his 65.
Thanks Obamanomics. You’re the greatest.
Who’s going to have retirement accounts anyway? Some progressive will see that big pile of money and confiscate it some day. For the children of course.
How much will I need to live like King Barry?