How much money do you need to retire?

[Webbed]

How much money do you think you will need if you were to retire now?

In other words, how would you spend your free time and what will it cost to do that (or more) for the rest of your lives?

I was surprised to see what I would need. If I lived to be 100 (which is 65 years from now), maintained my current standard of living (assume a 3% annual increase in spending), assumed a modest 5% return on investment (very modest), then I would need $6 million!

If I were to increase my annual spending by 4%, I need $8 million!

OK, I'd better start buying lottery tickets..... or keep working.

So, what would I do.... my wife and I are going on a cruise later this year, and I thought about what it would be like to spend a whole year on a cruise, seeing the world. I would like that.

[last_dance_rodeo]

How'd you calculate all this? Is there some calculator thing?

[Veilingmeat]

HAH...we no need no stinking calcultor thingmebobtypethingy! i'd say in order to live a life of complete and utter luxury, yeah £6mill would be chuffin grand, especially in this day & age, where you cant help but consider your tight budget when buying a measly pack of chewing gum these days...or a place on this earth where you cant even take a muzz on the sidewalk without some goon wanting money for it! in my own humble opinion i'd want £10mill its never gonna happen, i seriously doubt that i'll ever see double figures in thousands in my bank before i die :laugh: and theres no such thing as being greedy this day & age...we're in a money grabbing world!!!

[Eibhlin]

I have held $35,000 in my hand once...before we deposited in the bank and then it's amazing how fast it goes...

[Webbed]

How'd you calculate all this? Is there some calculator thing?

Being the accountant, I created an amortization schedule. I'll load it up after I make it user friendly for the non-Excel users.

[last_dance_rodeo]

I think I would hopefully only need like a couple million. Which I'll probably never see but I could live off of that.

[Little Bird]

I am not sure but I've been paying into my pension since I was 21. I'll have paid into my pension for 44 years when I retire. Every year the payments increase slightly so that by the time I will be a few years away from my retirement, most of my pay will go towards my pension. I won't be living a luxurious life but I should be relatively comfortable but who knows what the economy is going to be like then so the pension may not be enough but it's all I have to work with at the moment.

Winning the lottery is a great easy way out of it but what are the chances of that happening?

BUt I'm glad I've been looking out for my future and my families future.

[kjm030584]

okay, I don't have a job, but I don't think I'd need any money to retire... I plan on living out my days as a hermit in the mountains eating tree bark and small insects to survive. I guess it would be nice to have enough money to move a dumpster up there so I have a safe place to sleep.

[Webbed]

OK... here is the spreadsheet. Go to http://www.shuweb.com/jewel.html to get the spreadsheet (save it on your computer to use it, or else the spreadsheet's menu bar may not come up). I tried to attach it here, but I couldn't do it.

There are 3 tabs (ages 25, 35 and 45), so select the one that you're closest to, and fill in the 3 cells in yellow (example numbers are put in there). Then, run the goal seek. The detailed instructions are shown as a cell in the spreadsheet (in green), so place your mouse and follow the instructions.

In case you want to mess with the spreadsheet, the password protect is: jewel

Have fun! I'm off to find that rich wife... oh wait, I can't do that, I'm married (happily, I might add).

[Little Bird]

Wow - according to that, I need $4.1 million. I'm assuming that's dollars so I'll have to convert that to Euro which is roughly EUR3 million (€3m)

Ah yeah... just need to win the lottery here once, maybe twice and I'll be set for life without needing to worry.

The attachment didn't work as .xls files are blocked. I have set that for security reasons as code to gain security access to the website can be trojan'ed in on Excel spreadsheets. Too dangerous sorry. I know you're file is genuine but I can't lift it for just one file.

[Webbed]

No worries, the link works fine. And it looks like the spreadsheet was easy enough to maneuver.

[Remase]

According to the calculator (what a great job btw) I am gonna need about 13.707.692 swedish crowns ..
no idea how much that is in dollars, but it should be like 1,5 million euro?
Is that correct? Am I that cheap?

[Webbed]

It all depends on how much more of an expensive taste you think you'll develop over time. I make 6 times what I used to make just 13 years ago, and yet I still can't seem to save much money.

It also depends on the country or region that you live in. For example, the national average income in the US (based on a report that came out this week) is around $44K; the average in Silicon Valley is $76K. And I can tell you that you can't buy a house in Silicon Valley for $76K, cuz a small 3 bedroom house costs $800K here. If you took the same $800K to another part of the country, you'd have a huge house with a lake view, in-law quarters, and land big enough that you wouldn't see your neighbors' houses.

[Remase]

So right, so right .. up here the livin' is easy *lol* Except ofcourse for the heating expenses in wintertime!!

[last_dance_rodeo]

an 800k home in south dakota would have the talk of the town