I have never found a retirement calculator that I liked. They can usually be found at financial sites all telling you that in order to retire, you will need millions. When you use their calculator, the neglect to tell you that what you are doing is leaving millions for your heirs and only spending the interest...so, you really don't need to save as much as they say. I found a retirement calculator at MSN Money that was very helpful for me to determine when my husband and I could feasibly retire. I would like to retire at 60, still young enough to travel and do things, but also a time when all four kids are out of college and on their own. It looks like in order for us to live comfortably, we would have to put in at least 15% of our earnings, and not retire until 62, but, I can live until I'm 103 and still leave some $$ to the kiddies...I'll have to work on that....
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I just went through the exercise with my financial planner. What we did was assume I would go part time at age 55 (til 60) and only use the retirement money that I'm saving, not any other pension which I haven't paid into yet... so we aren't counting on something that isn't concrete)except the Canada Pension Plan that every employee pays into (even if you are self employed) There is a website that you can go to and figure out what my yearly payout will be from that.
Anyway my magic number isn't in the millions, we figured around $550,000... I don't want to imagine my yearly contributions if I had to fund over $1,000,000!!
(We are assuming at 85 I will have spent everything...)
It's interesting to calculate though and go through the exercise!
What do you do if you live to be 95, although it's hard to think that far ahead...it's definitely a possibility? I plugged in living on 100,000 a year which is probably more than we need, but it was fun to do it!
Yikes! $100,000/year! We calculated around $35,000 for me.
My CPP goes until I die and we have Old Age Security that everyone gets. I figure by 85 I'll be in an old folks' home and if I don't have money, the govt will help...
It's so funny to be thinking about retirement. It's as if I turned 50 and said to myself, "Oh, no, what about retirement?" I really want to retire on December 31,2017. That's 2 weeks before my 60th birthday. I have so much debt to reduce and so much savings to do before then.
Let's keep each other motivated!
wealthy1 - ABSOLUTELY! I still can't believe I'm 46...but being over the halfway mark to 50 lit a fire under me and I'm working hard to fund a peaceful and stressfree retirement...
Hi Sharon - I just ran the calculator, and I like it because it makes sense. We haven't been aggressively saving and borrowed from our 401(k) 11 years ago to put a down payment on our house. I used to worry but now I'm not too concerned. I'd like Hubby to retire at 62 and I'll work to 65 - life expectancy in his family is much shorter than mine and both kids will be out of college by then, so I'd like him to enjoy life for a while. With pension, SS (even without it) and savings we'll be just fine.
CT Mom,
That's great! We borrowed from our 401K 9 years ago to purchase our home and we have paid that loan off as of this month! Now we will have an extra $500.00 a month.
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