How much money should I have in order to retire. Besides SS?

Question

I would like to thing about retiring within the next year. I will be 59 in January and probably can wait to collect SS till I am 62 or even 65. From the average Joe, how much savings or investments should I have? I don't live and will not live like a man of means but also I don't want to live like a destitute person. I don't own my own home here but do own a very nice home in another country. I would love to live part time here and in that other country.
Let's hear your thoughts.

Answer 1

In order to determine how much you need for retirement, there are a couple of things that you need to decide. First of all, how long do you have until retirement? You have specified that this is only a few years out. Also, what returns do you expect on your money while you are in retirement? Let’s assume that you will invest mainly in growth stock mutual funds that have averaged around 12% over the last 80 or so years.

You should expect to be able to live on the returns that your nest egg generates once you retire. Therefore if you expect to return 10% average per year once in retirement you should have 10 times the annual income you need in your nest egg. That way you can leave the nest egg alone and just take the returns. Your money will never run out as long as you live and you can leave some inheritance.

A quick easy calculation would be to assume that you plan to live on $50K a year. This means that you would need a nest egg of around $500,000. If you plan on making 12-14% in good growth stock mutual funds on average, you would drawing off 10% and leaving 2-4% each year to account for inflation. This is also assuming that these are tax free investments such as a Roth IRA. If the gains are taxable, you will need a larger nest egg to account for this.

Hope this helps!

Answer 2

How long do you plan on living? It's a morbid question but it helps to know.

If you plan on living until you're 85, and you want a comfortable income of $60,000 every year until you die, then you'll need $1,560,000.

Are you close to being debt free? How strong is the dollar where you want to move? What are your investments in now? How much do you CURRENTLY have saved for your retirement? Are there pensions or 401(k)s involved? Are you married? How much does your wife have for retirement?

These are all good questions to ask yourself. Hopefully you have a nest egg saved up, but it kind of bothers me that you're asking this question online and not asking a financial planner or investment planner.

Since you don't plan on living unreasonably in your retirement, I'd say you should be fine with $1.2 million, but more is always better, and you definitely need to start thinking about long term care insurance now that you've hit 60. That's a very important thing that most everyone will need near the end of their lives.

Hope this helps and good luck!

Answer 3

We don't have nearly enough information to give you a guess. We don't know your income, we don't know your employment history, we don't know anything about your lifestyle or what you are willing to give up in retirement. We don't know about your health and how you plan to insure it, etc. Did you work for a state or government agency and have great retirement benefits? Do you have a pension to fall back on? All those things would affect the amount you need to have.

We don't know about other goals you might have. Finish putting a kid through college or give a grandchild some money, etc.

Most people need between 85-100% of pre-retirement income.

good luck!

Answer 4

Your yearly income x 20.