Sunny beach, sipping icy drinks with umbrellas, and hammock swaying fun… Retirement! Most people dream about wanting to retire…but I tend to find very few people actually make any plans for it. At least not any that are formed in any kind of reality. Most people run the rat race. Get up, Go to Work, Repeat. Some manage to break into the "self employed but really I just am a sales person for someone else" model…. but few I find answer this very simple starting question.
Exactly how much money would need to appear in your bank account every month for you to call it quits to going to work/job/cubicle everyday.
Before you answer, don't just do a budget of your current life situation. Would you give up your current minivan, house in suburbia, and cable tv package if you didn't have to go to work anymore? Would it be ok if you suddenly re-gained those 40+ hours of work life a week and instead had a slightly older car, smaller house and no HD tv package? Could you live? At least to start?
If you can grasp that concept, you are on the road to breaking out of the rat race.
So, Internet… I ask you… how much monthly income would it take for you to retire?
You never know what inflation will do… If the figure is adjusted for inflation, then £2,500 per month would let me retire.
I actually once made this kind of calculation but with the idea of living the dream.
I can actually retire tomorrow if i feel like it… I'm 42 btw.. but if I were normal I'd say £400 a month
, my retirement plan is to eat a lot of fast food. With that in mind, how much would 10 fast food meals/week cost me?… Hmmm…
To retire right now, or to retire in an ideal situation? To retire right now I'd need to make more than my current salary to squeak by (we are hardly paying bills right now), preferably double if I actually want to be comfortable in my retirement.
If I were to suddenly have all the major things taken care of, such as having a house and a car that are paid off, I could retire on what I make now.
Actually last week, my wife and I met with our investment banker who has been managing our money for decades and he assured me if I retired this morning (Wednesday) I'd have enough money for us to live on for the rest of our lives. Assuming we were both dead by Saturday afternoon.
me too
For Americans about 75% of your current income is a good first guess on what you need at retirement.
If you want to figure out how much you need to save, figure taking out 4% of your total savings every year. That means you would have an income of about $40,000 a year if you saved $1,000,000 for retirement.
That's pretty accurate. 😉
I would retire from my day job with a small annuity. Maybe $2000 a month. I could make enough doing what I love to make up the difference I think. If not, I could still make it and be happy.
For $4000 a month, I could just give away my work at cost.
At my current rate, I have 7 years. I was set back by two years due to listening to a financial investor.
I live a pretty minimalist lifestyle….well, relative to what is "typical". I don't have cable (but I have a faster internet connection so I can stream better content), I use a push reel mower (for exercise & the fiscal aspects of not having gas/maintenance), I try to bike a lot of places if I'm not with the kids…you get the picture. That being said, I'm still a gluttonous person. I would need at least $60k/year in income, and that would be if I made sure my wife were still in charge of the budget. If it were up to me, well, I'd have to win the PowerBall…which is kind of sad to say now that I think about it….
In all honesty, I would never want to retire. I've done something similar to it before, and there's a reason that it is the same level of stress as the loss of a spouse. I do not have enough words for how much it sucked & the toll it took on me.
I can even afford a house with a garage and a yard and I'm making six-figures. So, "alot more than I'm making now". And, I don't want to live in retirement without HD TV, what am I going to do with those extra 40 hours a week, golf? Do you know how much greens fees are?
I tend to find most people can have a hard time grasping the…. "i have to change all of my life situation"… ie sell the house, the cell phone, the whatever is costing you money… downsize.. and you would then be able to live on X amount… but you now have 40 hours a week to figure out a new way to make you money… 🙂
If you really want to know, make me an offer! 😛
ugh but the boredom! I hope I'm still able to mountain bike when I retire…
About four grand a month.
A simple grand every week would do just fine.
If by the time I retire I've not gotten over my delusion that more money than need will make me happy then no amount would be suffice 🙂
Hahahaha..
Come live in Morocco. Life is cheaper here :p !
I never understand when people are 'bored' after retirement. I could do so many things…….
I would give a lot for those 50 hours a week. But would never sacrifice the well being of my family for my comfort.
Great question. Surprisingly very little when you have residual income.
Indeed Life in many other countries is MUCH cheaper than the North American/uk/australia ideals…. 🙂
I just hope to have all the stuff that i need.
– Garden with endless food with a little bit of work/hobby.
– Reactor with heat for at least 35 years.
– Building made from plastic`s, so i don't have to repair it.
– A big pond for collecting and cleaning water.
– Neighbors with a unsecure WiFi connection for communication.
– Cloud: NaaS, SaaS, IaaS, So i never have to buy a new computer.
– And last: J-Tube rocket stove mass heater.
Just for fun and burning garden things…
5000 a month take home
The problem is in trying to figure out how much things will cost when I retire. I can save half a million dollars but that may not be enough by then.
I can live on a lot less than I am currently, and probably will when I retire
sounds about right….
I'd submit that the question to ask is "Do you have a system or method to provide a steady (residual) income that will support your current lifestyle or improve with time?"…..maybe its a 'secondary question'….but again…great question…gets you thinking!!!
Im so blessed to be able to collect my pension in 10 months ill be 44 and it should be around 5-6 grand a month my plan is to move to a place where the housing prices and cost of living is cheaper so my money will go further and get another job to keep busy and have somw extra dough-Much gratitude
not that long ago the 'average' for a comfortable retirement was basically a nest egg of about $2 million, but that is based on basically everything staying the same .
Does everyone believe everything should still the same or that it will ?
Being a musician….hopefully I'll never retire! Money or no money!
more like based on my current rate of expenditure…
that is indeed the important question of "how it appears in your bank account every month"… 🙂
<- Young
At this point in my life, I wouldn't retire no matter how much you gave me. My job and my life are Rockstar awesome!
If I had to retire, I would want at least double what I get now because I wouldn't know what to do with all the free time. 14 grand a month sounds about right 😉
I'm out of the rat race and comfortably retired.:) but In this forever changing political environment, who knows for how long. Bob and weave.:)) Group Hug.
When the kids are grown up and hopefully standing on their own two feet, I'd like to think "all I need is a pint a day". Hopefully I'll have decent health, a good pen, a stack of paper and enough imagination left to write a good book. If not I can at least go to a library and read a stack of good books.
Health is paramount
Im going for a run 🙂
no matter how much money I make I always end up spending it, I figure what the hell, you live once might as well enjoy it. 🙂
How much are you offering, ?
?
Earliest age you can draw your pension in the UK is 55. I'll be drawing it then and calculate I would need a pension pot of about £400,000. That should give me a pension of about 16-18k.
$10k/month net. This is outside of my wife's and mine 9-5 job. Once our personal business is stable at that level and we can bank our entire job paycheck for 6 months in a row, we will retire – keeping what we have and planning on expanding after that. Right now we are targeting a Dec 2013 retirement date. When we hit Jun 2013 we will re-evaluate where we are and what our dreams/goals are to make sure this is inline with the current situation.
I think you might have asked the wrong crowd. looks like we're dreaming big.
Well my needs for retirement are everyday comforts, i.e. have bacon, beer, house and golf without worrying too much, and be able to travel a lot.
But ideally I wouldn't want to retire until a very long time, and would prefer a consulting role, way after the standard retirement age, where I could take projects for only a few months a year…it's for fun and also keeps the money coming in to enjoy what you want, and keeping you active. Just plain retirement sounds so dull.
I can't put a dollar amount on it but I need to. We were just talking last night about where we should settle and in what.. house, house with land, or low maintenance condo.
Also we own our own businesses & our son works for us. So we are taking that into consideration. Big important, scary stuff ahead :-O
Wealth is actually defined in Time, yes?
lol amanda!!
That would be a nice conversation over dinner with the right person…………… ?
$2k/mo is possible but $20k/mo is a lot better.