So, almost half of our SDMB voters are millionaires!!! 
I’m dating the wrong people! 
You’re dating?
(Hoping it was obvious this was intending to be funny. It being a sin to waste a straight line and all)
Your disclaimer was ten times longer than the joke! LOL
Well crap. I forgot about my 401k.
Unlike the old board, you can correct your vote in polls.
Agreed. My delivery on that one left a lot to be desired. Thanks, though, for graciously indulging me.
We’re almost 40, with two younger kids. We both have maybe $250,000 in retirement investments. We have a house worth maybe $150,000 more than the mortgage. We have a lake house that we could get 50,000 from. Two cars with loans under 10,000. Revolving debt on average 3,000. My wife will get a good pension
I think we’re doing great for our age. Over the last five years I/we turned a $160,000 foreclosure starter house into a $280,000 house that left us with 150,000 down payment on a crappy $415,000 house in a $650,000 neighborhood 
This will be my last flip though. We had a five year plan to get into the neighborhood and schools we wanted and it worked. But I’m getting tired and don’t want to be doing this when I’m fifty.
I had an idea when I was younger that I needed to accumulate in retirement investments about twenty times my annual income, on the theory that if I could generate five percent return annually, I could replace my income from work. Five percent is probably too much to pull out of investments with two percent or so more realistic. So if I’m counting only on my own investment income, I’d need forty times my income.
I think 5% is a reasonable assumption for an average. Some years will be higher, some lower, but 5% works for me. More important though is to realize (for some reason it wasn’t obvious to me until the day that I retired) that retirement is a finite time period. You won’t live forever and there is no reason to never touch your principal. A sin while you are working-common sense the day after you retire. Of course you need to be careful in the early years, but using your principal gives you a lot of income when you need it. And as long as you have a base (ie a pension), you should be fine. Think it through. It took me some time but the numbers work.
Agree. I keep getting projections from my CFP that I’ll start with $X-big-number when I retire in 8 years, and die at 90 with X + an additional $500k. Like, dude: you don’t get it. Nobody left me money, I don’t have a great need to leave some to somebody else. My life insurance is plenty for my son to bury me and go put a down payment on a house. He’ll be 51 and can take care of himself. Let’s spend it all.
Dewey Finn - Don’t forget while you’re socking away that money, you’re living on less than your gross salary. If you’re saving 30%, your replacement income plans can be lowered by that 30%. So if you’re making $100K, saving $30K, all you have to plan to replace is that $70K you’re taking home now.
StG
True. And of course I’ll be receiving something from Social Security.
No, no, no, no, no. Let’s save a bunch and get into the most luxurious nursing home in the area.
You may think I’m kidding. Start touring homes and you’ll see the differences.
True only if you intend to live in retirement exactly as you did during your working years. It’s probably not wise to plan on that. Most folks want to live it up a little after they retire, e.g. by traveling more or by ramping up their hobby activities. Even if you don’t plan to do such things, you should sock away money against the possibility of an extended stay in assisted living, which doesn’t come cheap. Median cost is about $50K per year, and from what I’ve seen, median isn’t terribly impressive. It’s in your interest to strive for something better on this front.
You need to get into the nicest place that you can find that also accepts Medicaid. You don’t need to be on Medicaid when you first go in. It may not be the most luxurious place in town but you can probably get into a nice one if you start as a private pay patient.
Nursing homes are expensive. In my area, they were 10K to 12K a month for a standard care unit and 15K to 20K a month for a specialized unit, such as extensive nursing or memory care.
And these prices are skyrocketing every year. Even a well-funded retirement account can be bled dry in a surprisingly short amount of time.
Once that happens the solution is to apply for Medicaid, which is a complex procedure that I’m not going into here.
But if the place you’re in accepts Medicaid, you get to stay. If you are in a place that doesn’t take Medicaid, you will need to move to one that does.
It is MUCH more difficult to get into a decent place as a Medicaid patient than it is as a private pay patient. The good places that accept Medicaid often have a limited number of Medicaid beds, and you may not be able to get in unless you are already living there.
This was the single most valuable piece of advice we got when I was dealing with my mom’s long illness.
This is good advice. Thank you.
I didn’t pay off my mortgage for a long time because with the tax benefits, I could make more in the market than I could by investing the money into my mortgage. Plus the money was more liquid. With the change in the tax law and reduced official income from retirement it became a better investment, and I paid it off.
But many people are very odd about mortgages.
I’ve never had a car loan. Why pay interest for a depreciating asset?
But really, it is all about cash flow. My cash flow is good, and will be even better when I go on Social Security at 70 next year. Simulations show we’ll be fine at over 90 when they stop. Plenty for my kids who don’t need it even now.
There are many ways to financial independence , as shown by the various strategies on this thread. That is what disturbs me about the narrative promoted by some that upward mobility is unachievable. It is bullshit that appeals to people who don’t want to do what is needed.
I remember changing a fuel pump outside in winter in Wisconsin . I had to have my wife set the temperature of the water in the sink I used to warm my numb hands because I could not judge if I was scalding my hands.
Yes, that drives me nuts. So many polls have a natural order that is much more readable than “most common first”.