Sorry, I think you’re off. If you have a couple of kids who may want to attend college, and you’re prudently planning for retirement, than $500,000 isn’t rich. Secure, maybe. MAYBE. But not rich.
Hi, my name is Cranky, and I just like repeating what others have said.
Well actually most of us are planning on living a bit longer than 10 years after retirement so if we assume 20 plus, living on less than 25K a year gets a bit tricky with inflation and health care costs.
What happened was that you failed to achieve a modicum of financial success, possibly because of pissing away your time and opportunities noodling rich Jewish girls and partying with the homies. As a result, even the sort of modest success you’ve described here seems like something enormous and unachievable to you. All you think you can do at this point is whine jealously. Advice: get off your ass, get to work, and make some money.
I recognize most people want to live more than ten years after retirement. I was referring to DrDeth’s comment about annuities. Off of $500k, plus whatever social security benefits might still exist at that point, that’d round up to a little under $50k a year. Sorry for not being clearer.
And I, personally, want a hell of a lot more than that to live on. But it’s still sad to realize how very little that is in the minds of most people when that’s almost five times what I make now. A lot of it (in my case, I’m not sure about his) is being young, fresh out of college, in an area with a depressed economy, etc. Whatever his situation, VCO3 would be better served trying to find a better job and figuring out how to start amassing some savings and investments instead of bitching about the evil “rich” people, but I can see where he came up with his viewpoint, even if I don’t really agree with him.
Are you taking your savings and stuffing them in your mattress when you retire?
By the time you hit 65, you shouldn’t need 50k a year. For one your home should be paid off. Your taxes go down, and you get those nice discounts at Denny’s.
Of course, you’d better stay healthy.
This was by far my least favorite song on the Tony Hawk’s Porject 8 soundtrack.
I work with retirement accounts so I’m getting a big kick out of these replies.
500k isn’t enough to retire.
BTDT, too. What I have now (well, actually the bank still has about 80% of it, since much of it is my shared-with-the-bank apartment) doesn’t amount to $500K, but then, I also live in a place where people make about 60% as much as a US worker for comparable jobs.
Many of the people in this board live in very expensive places. 50 grand a year are much more than I need, but if I lived in Barcelona I would need half of it just for rent unless I shared (rent on a 4B apartment in my home town will get you a bedroom of your own in Barcelona, if you are lucky or not living in the city itself). Many of them are also including children who want to go to college. Many want to spend the earliest part of their retirement years going to places to which they couldn’t go before (no time) and won’t be able to go later (no health).
I for one know my life expectancy after retirement to be about 35 years. I’m frugal on many things (clothes, jewelry, car), but dang, I’d like to be able to go places and stuff during the first 10 or 15 of those years, you know? And a government pension won’t cover that.
I can see where VCO3 is coming from, too, but you are so right about what the solution is. One thing I learned after working that less-than-minimum-wage job I referred to earlier is that, quite often, people don’t make decent money based on their education…rather, the “good” money starts rolling in when you have experience. Working even at a low-level job isn’t necessarily bad, if you are willing to try to bankroll that experience and use it to get better jobs with more responsibility, either by getting promoted or by going to a different workplace, but where your previous experience is relevant. Do that every few years, and by the time a person is 35 or 40, they might be surprised at the progress they’ve made.
Sarahfeena, well said as usual.
That’s certainly been my experience so far. I’d thought when I got out of college that my shiny new English degree and brilliant grades would get me started at $35k a year, at least! [Insert hysterical laughter here.] Yeah…no. I also thought I’d find one good job and stick with it. Again, no. I was surprised that I went through a couple of jobs after graduation, when I’d only had two jobs in my life before this, but I’ve slowly been making better money and figuring things out and I’m finally breaking into my field, which will improve things tremendously.
So I sympathize completely with being decades away from retirement and young and poor, but it is possible to make life better and figure out how you’ll survive in old age. Even if you start late in life, as my mother did, there’s always room for improvement.
I want to frame this on my wall.
To the OP, I’d say that it burns being broke, hurts to be heartbroken, and always being both must be a drag…
I feel like I should drop in a PSA here (regardless of the fact that this is the August SDMB board):
***Please be very careful and super-granular when it comes to reviewing an annuity you’re about to purchase. * **
There are fine annuity vehicles out there, but be aware.
-Cem
Yes, but apparently he will not do anything about except complain and rant.
He drives some over sized vehicle he does not need and bitches that his terrible decision costs too much to fill. D’oh, should have bought a used little car, not a gas guzzler.
He does not want to work.
He does not want to save.
He is doing nothing to not be broke & heartbroken.
What does that make him except a whiny idiot?
Jim
Mike Fun (and others!), I’d like your opinion on the 80% of earnings that most calculators use for a gross-sum spending benchmark (including SS, 401(k), pension, etc.).
Everything I read/subscribe to/hear tells me that I’ll need to have enough investment income to create 80% of my pre-retirement earnings. For some reason, that just seems way high.
For that matter, a calculator on TD Ameritrade’s website tells me that my wife and I will need $4.8million to retire. That seems to be crazy-talk.
Thoughts?
-Cem
How much is? What’s the absolute minimum one needs to retire?
I figure I’ll be getting about $2000 monthly from SS and a pension. If things go as planned, I may have as much as $20,000 saved in addition to that. What are my options? Move to Mexico? Take up bank robbery?
My hope would be for the same discussion Cem, maybe in IMHO so it does not derail the richly deserved bashing going on here in the pit?
The absolute minimum? Zero. Not that I would recommend it, though. It also depends on your family structure, and how much support you can expect from them.
Your options? Save more, or scale down your expectations of lifestyle post retirement. Also carry on working later, and delay taking SS.
Keep working and/or move in with your kids. Both would suck ass.
Or I could just go on doing what I do now: live very frugally and take a great deal of pride in meeting my simple wants and needs on a budget most Americans would consider poverty level.