Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Plan now for retirement - don't victimize yourself.

It's going to happen. My job is to make sure it doesn't matter if it does.

Now, granted, I don't really see myself fully retiring until my dotage, at least according to the current succession plan, and I expect to create an income well into my 70's, so I really don't much care about SS. The stinger would be if they means tested medicare. Can you imagine what the health insurance premiums would be at 90?



I actually planned my retirement assuming I would not get SS. But I started it at age 66, full retirement age. I’m getting it, but expect it to go away, some day.

I turned 66 this year. I’m getting my SS now, but it will be reduced when I begin getting teachers retirement. That doesn’t seem fair, I earned it.

I did save along the way, but if I knew then what I've learned now, I would have saved until it hurt. I was lucky and had matching Thrift Plan where I worked, but I could have maxed it out and probably adjusted to the pay difference. It would have made things easier these days!

I did the math. If my son saves $168 bucks a month in a Roth IRA, starting at 18, and his investment grows at 6% per year, he’ll have $320k at 58.





P

Too late. I wish I would have seen this 35 years ago.

Lost it all. But I am still alive and can hunt and fish once it a while.

From the article:

"According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), nearly half of Americans aged 55 or older have nothing set aside in a 401(k) or other individual account. Nothing."



If true, then a few million people need their rear end kicked. They've had plenty of time to save something.

T O M ,
Are you a gov't worker ?

Taht's easy enough to manage by simply never getting married in the first place.

I am looking at retiring early, so I am looking at the numbers and rules people use for retirement planing. There is a staggering amount of assumptions, and slight changes compound. So below are the rules most discussed, but they are easy to argue.

For you example of 320K, and using the rule of thumb of a 4% withdraw rate so the nest egg lasts maybe 30 years, then you divide by 25.
So 320K/25 is 1280.00 per year, of about 1066.00 per month.

Examples:
If you had a cool 1 million, then 1000000/25= 40K/year or 3333/month before taxes, assuming 401K taxable.

Naturally the 4% rule is just a guess, but it is a bit conservative to account for inflation. Anyway no one knows future returns, laws, health, so this is all just a rough estimate. Naturally Social Security is also a question, but a quick estimate is 20-22% of your highest years (maybe at 62).

Another thing that gets tossed around is the savings goal. Seems 10-14 times your highest salary to get 3/4 of you working paycheck per month.

I also used various online calculators, and they give a wide range of numbers, mostly based on your guess on return, and inflation. Typical mix of investment is 50% stock, 25 bonds, 25 fixed low yield. Again that means nothing, and those ratios get applied to a wild a$$ guess and a estimate pops out.

If you use a nominal salary of 100K, a savings of 1.4M, and 62 year SS, the number work out to 3/4 full salary kinda depending on taxes.
4600 in IRA, 1700 in SS = 6400/month? - then some reduced tax is applied for a 401K earnings.

Naturally if you have 10X salary, a million, then 4000+1700= 5700/month? This assumes retiring "early at 62" and no taxes on earned interest. Roth does not get taxed, 401K is taxed.

So if you think this is BS let me know, but this is the best guess I have going.

How do you predict when you will die?

At 66 1/2 I've been off the clock for two years now. Been thinking of getting some part time work. Not because of the money, got a fair to middlin IRA and investments to suppliment SS, but if I have many more days on the golf course like yesterday I'll stroke out for sure. Sometimes that damned ball just won't do what I tell it to.

Good rule of thumbs. Of course you can make it as complicated as you'd like but another thing to consider is we will spend more up front in retirement, especially if you are like us and moving, and then travel etc and much less as you age.

My parents retired 22 years ago (at 59) and have done some really great traveling, moved to FL and bought a house and basically have done what they wanted within reason and they now have more money than when they retired thanks to my Dad being and early and often saver and investor his entire career. It can be done. They are in great health and I have no reason to think they won't be around another decade.

I hope I have followed his lead. Have certainly tried and another 3 1/2 years to go.

doing OK with retirement.......

still waiting to hit the powerball

Me too!!

Retired at 61 been almost 7 years, Wonder how I ever had time to work.