Quote:
Originally Posted by Lord Larehip
Not.
The older you get, the more you have to think about retirement. I hope you are investing your savings to get it to grow--I hope you have savings to begin with. To retire, you MUST OWN a house. I mean, it must be paid off, you must own it. You cannot be making mortgage payments in your retirement, you cannot be paying rent. It will eat right through your savings. If you don't have money saved up, what are you going to live on when you can't work anymore? Take a look at those old homeless bums with their hand out for your answer.
And those who say they will work until they die, you'd better plan on dying at around 62 to 64 years of age because very few places will keep you around much beyond that. If you refuse to retire, they will retire you. If you lose your job, NO ONE will hire at that age. That just happened at my company--big retirement purge; people who had no intention of retiring just got retired and are frantically looking for work which they can't find. Working until you die is really not an option unless you own your own business.
You need around $250,000 to retire--bare minimum. Don't have anything close to that? Start saving and investing. Or win the Powerball. Don't count on social security, it may not exist by the time you retire and even if it does, you'll be living hand-to-mouth if that's all the money you have to live on.
Traveling around with your little backpack is all well and good when you are young. It won't cut it when you're old.
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You've basically put what is an ideal scenario for people to retire on, but the reality is actually quite different, as a lot of people retiring don't have 250.000 and still manage to retire quite well. The fundamental point about retiring for most people is firstly to downgrade their existing home to something smaller or more practical and also to have access to funds if needed. As DJ has pointed out, there is the option for a lot of American retirees to retire to another country where the cost of living is a lot cheaper and therefore a person is able to maintain their standard of living. I'd also be very surprised if there aren't economically viable options within the USA to retire to as well, where the cost of living wouldn't be so high. Also half of Northern Europe seems to retire to Spain and central and southern France, and those with more money to Italy, and the adventurous ones to Turkey etc. and most of those don't have anywhere near the finances that you say are needed. Americans have a similar backyard to play with in Latin America which has a lot of American retirees.
Also your advice about relying on investments only holds true to a certain degree, as property and investments are far from productive these days and shouldn't be relied upon. A successful retiree is actually somebody that budgets and plans well, based on their economic means, as not everybody will have the luxury to retire on 250K.