I never saved enough when young and at age 50, I got a job with a big company that had Fidelity 401K options, with about a $2-3K match on my money per year. I socked away about $24K/yr for 12 yrs from my salary, which of course grew, and I managed it myself with no load mutual funds. When I got laid off at age 62 and consulted several financial planners, -mostly free but 1 as a fee only CFP- the idea of living on 80% of my income was used as data to determine my expenses in retirement. My spouse and I were ALREADY living well below our means, with little travel, older cars, doing my own minor home maintenance jobs, minimal eating out, etc. So I argued against our expenses going down in retirement since we were living on $50K/ year without any debt...in a state with high and ever-increasing car and home insurance prices. So our post-retirement expenses were what we were already spending, plus adding costs for travel or hobbies, inflation, and my health insurance pre- Medicare eligibility to get the correct number for our expenses.
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I never saved enough when young and at age 50, I got a job with a big company that had Fidelity 401K options, with about a $2-3K match on my money per year. I socked away about $24K/yr for 12 yrs from my salary, which of course grew, and I managed it myself with no load mutual funds. When I got laid off at age 62 and consulted several financial planners, -mostly free but 1 as a fee only CFP- the idea of living on 80% of my income was used as data to determine my expenses in retirement. My spouse and I were ALREADY living well below our means, with little travel, older cars, doing my own minor home maintenance jobs, minimal eating out, etc. So I argued against our expenses going down in retirement since we were living on $50K/ year without any debt...in a state with high and ever-increasing car and home insurance prices. So our post-retirement expenses were what we were already spending, plus adding costs for travel or hobbies, inflation, and my health insurance pre- Medicare eligibility to get the correct number for our expenses.
Post: Confusing Ourselves
Link to comment from July 24, 2024