What's your monetary goal that when you've reached it you'll know you can retire? THe reason I'm asking is I was at the barber and the barber and a customer were talking about this very topic. They both agreed they needed at least a million and that assumes their homes are paid off.
Good question. How sure are you that you will earn 4 to 6% return on your investment? How long will you live?
Give this a go and be discouraged.
http://www.bankrate.com/calculators/retirement/retirement-plan-calculator.aspx
or this one
http://cgi.money.cnn.com/tools/retirementplanner/retirementplanner.jsp
or this one
http://money.msn.com/retirement/retirement-calculator.aspx
Just search for “retirement planner” or calculator.
Many of the online retirement calculators are now just showing the savings rate required to achieve a certain nest egg and you put in the interest rate or rate of return on your investments. They are doing this because they don’t want the liability of somehow indicating that there is any certainty in the retirement assumptions.
The best plan is to work until you die. Good luck.
“They both agreed they needed at least a million and that assumes their homes are paid off.”
Those are my assumptions too.
That is what I am aiming for. I do not know if I will make it unless the economy grows and .gov quits raising taxes and taking control of my profession. I am a physician and have saved the max that was allowed in my IRA since age 26 and a 401K the past 10 years. But so far it does not look good to me.
Your barber is right - a million & no mortgage debt to retire (we aren’t there yet, but that is the goal).
For us, it made sense to refinance to a 10 yr mortgage (it’s not that much more a month, but the house will be paid off alot quicker).
No matter the plans made or what is set aside retirement is only possible if there are enough young people working to produce enough goods and services to meet basic necessities of life for those who are retired, if you think about it you will realize this is not opinion, it is mathematical certainty. Imagine yourself the only person on Earth, you would own everything by default but you could not get a ham sandwich without producing it yourself. What we have is a lower and lower ratio of young people of working age to retirees coupled with an ever larger percentage of young people who are leaches rather than producers. The situation is mathematically impossible. I am about to turn 68 and I work two part time jobs right now. I try to learn all I can about how to stay physically able, once I lose my physical competence the best I can hope for is a swift death. The idea of being a nursing home patient makes me want to jump off a cliff.