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Add to the 49.5%, those with savings under $100k (somewhat immaterial to a 30 yr retirement plan) and you're up to over 80% retiring with under $100k in retirement 'savings'.
Not that the $5m examples are very common (or very wise / relevant) examples of spending in retirement.
WSJ is obviously very short on 'news'. (What was the value of this article to their readership, except "Hey, I'm not so bad" back-patting )
Within the 8 retired, of 10 rural neighbors... we are all as different as can be in our careers, family, glide-path, and retirement spending.
So many options and lifestyles.
That's good.
Ironically, over 1/2 of us have been traveling overseas (more than once) already this yr. As there are plenty of reasons to stay home! (nice view, quiet, plenty to do, very CHEAP (except for property taxes).)
Wonder how many of the $5m retirees are cutting firewood, picking their own produce and drying / canning
and storing food for the winter.
Hope they're really happy! Life is drawing very short.
You may get your final call yet today.
If $4.99m left in retirement spending acct AFTER I'm gone? Someone (else) will have a wonderful time. My last rites will be well under $1000, and Poof, I'm GONE! Yippee!
If $499,000 remaining... Yippee!
If $0.05 remaining... Yippee, I made it to the end (debt / burden free).
Somebody with 4.99 million in savings could easily live high off the hog on the interest alone without ever touching their principal.
FWIW, a lot of those self made millionaires have frugality deeply ingrained in them. They probably do shop the sales and watch how they spend their money because that is how they got to where they are now. They will never be frivolous spendthrifts and probably have to make an effort to spend what they do. Hopefully, they've taught their heirs to be responsible, too.
Great post. I am guessing a more accurate number is a low thirty something percent.
I'm a mortgage broker and just helped a client with her first home. She is 62. Very little savings but a hard, tough life, 3 children (one just graduated college), widowed 16 years ago so children were young.
She was working in NY so she now gets a pension at age 62 which she has taken. She now gets the survivor's benefits from her deceased husband. Those 2 items will pay her mortgage.
She has never owned a home before.
She had gone to college way back and based on that, became accredited to become a teacher in Florida. She has now been there 5 years. If she stays another 15 years, she will get a pension over $3500 monthly plus she will have her own SS when she is 70 which will be more than she is receiving now.
So, even though she doesn't have a lot in the bank, she will be better off than a lot of us.
She is a strong woman and her children don't realize it yet but they will benefit from that. One of her sons got a job with UPS. I told him at the closing to make sure he stayed there and please contribute to the 401K and forget you have it.
A lot of my clients I deal with are like this woman. She is a kind, upstanding person who would walk or take buses to work if she didn't have a car.
I have a heart for these clients. Tears of joy at the closing - and her first home all her own. It's also in a 55 plus community so she is very excited to be around people her own age and meet them.
Somebody with 4.99 million in savings could easily live high off the hog on the interest alone without ever touching their principal.
FWIW, a lot of those self made millionaires have frugality deeply ingrained in them. They probably do shop the sales and watch how they spend their money because that is how they got to where they are now. They will never be frivolous spendthrifts and probably have to make an effort to spend what they do. Hopefully, they've taught their heirs to be responsible, too.
Trust me - they know how to spend when they want to.
I'm a mortgage broker and just helped a client with her first home. She is 62. Very little savings but a hard, tough life, 3 children (one just graduated college), widowed 16 years ago so children were young.
She was working in NY so she now gets a pension at age 62 which she has taken. She now gets the survivor's benefits from her deceased husband. Those 2 items will pay her mortgage.
She has never owned a home before.
She had gone to college way back and based on that, became accredited to become a teacher in Florida. She has now been there 5 years. If she stays another 15 years, she will get a pension over $3500 monthly plus she will have her own SS when she is 70 which will be more than she is receiving now.
So, even though she doesn't have a lot in the bank, she will be better off than a lot of us.
She is a strong woman and her children don't realize it yet but they will benefit from that. One of her sons got a job with UPS. I told him at the closing to make sure he stayed there and please contribute to the 401K and forget you have it.
A lot of my clients I deal with are like this woman. She is a kind, upstanding person who would walk or take buses to work if she didn't have a car.
I have a heart for these clients. Tears of joy at the closing - and her first home all her own. It's also in a 55 plus community so she is very excited to be around people her own age and meet them.
At 62 she banks on employer benefits due in 15 years?
Not likely - the average pension is about $22K/year (Pension center data) and the average SS check is about $22K/year (SS data) - barely above poverty and certainly not decent sized.
A pension is certainly an asset, but not really something to include in a net worth calculation.
I was one of the ones who said under some circumstances, it would be included. We have a pension and will get a lump sum. I include the lump sum in our net worth. I know government employees rarely get a lump sum, so in that case, it would make no sense to include it. But there IS a present value to their income stream based on actuarial tables.
Trust me - they know how to spend when they want to.
I live in a gated community and wow, do I see some spending. lol. A few men who comment they still have to work much harder than they would like because of their wive's spending.
Trust me - they know how to spend when they want to.
I was used to making meals at home under a fairly tight budget when we were first starting out and again when the kids were little.
Many of those meals I still make today because 1) we all enjoy them and 2) they are what we are used to.
Last night I made dinner for 3 people for under 7 bucks - my version of dirty rice - and we have leftovers for lunches. And that meal is a family favorite - no one really thinks of it as a budget meal. Had we gone through the McDonald's drive thru, instead, and ordered 3 Quarter Pounder meals we would have paid twice that amount and had no leftovers to show for it.
That is what I mean by you get into a habit of not spending money and you have to think to "allow" yourself to spend more on yourself.
Another example, when we book a hotel we typically stay at generally nice but nothing fancy hotels. We could afford to stay at a hotel with a spa, gym, restaurant and bar but, the fact is, we rarely do that. For some people, they ONLY stay at fancy hotels and they would feel deprived having to stay in a Holiday Inn Express, for example.
The little things have a way of adding up over the years. Some people really have no savings because they frittered their hard earned money away on lattes and Big Macs. They then complain how *impossible* it is to save money and afford to pay their bills.
(Adding: we have nowhere near 5 million dollars! But I can see how some of these self made millionaires who started with nothing and built enormous wealth for themselves are used to trimming excess expenses. They wouldn't be where they are now if they had not learned to do that.)
Last edited by springfieldva; 08-12-2023 at 04:14 PM..
The pilot did really well in the market, to have over $6M by age 65, after raising two kids and divorcing (pilots have a great life, but do not earn all that much, ie, his $ must be chiefly from the market). The general surgeon is not particularly retired, ie, if he made $300k in per diem work last year, he must have worked a total of about 9 months with no night call (which agrees with his statement that he travels 3 months per year. It sounds as though he has $1.7M in equity in two houses plus a little over $1M in investments, equaling about $3M, which is about exactly the average at which MDs retire).
If the retirement savings figures are for all the US households (not just for the retirees), the fact that 50% haven't saved anything for retirement is unsurprising. Median age in the US is 39 years.
It is also unsurprising that financially stable retirees who are not centimillionaires or billionaires don't pursue any extravagant spending.
It depends on if he was a captain and the aircraft he flew. A 777 pilot made roughly $200,000-$300,000. Plus he got a couple million in a lump sum at retirement. That was with Americans Airlines, and if he retired before bankruptcy.
I'm a mortgage broker and just helped a client with her first home. She is 62. Very little savings but a hard, tough life, 3 children (one just graduated college), widowed 16 years ago so children were young.
She was working in NY so she now gets a pension at age 62 which she has taken. She now gets the survivor's benefits from her deceased husband. Those 2 items will pay her mortgage.
She has never owned a home before.
She had gone to college way back and based on that, became accredited to become a teacher in Florida. She has now been there 5 years. If she stays another 15 years, she will get a pension over $3500 monthly plus she will have her own SS when she is 70 which will be more than she is receiving now.
So, even though she doesn't have a lot in the bank, she will be better off than a lot of us.
She is a strong woman and her children don't realize it yet but they will benefit from that. One of her sons got a job with UPS. I told him at the closing to make sure he stayed there and please contribute to the 401K and forget you have it.
A lot of my clients I deal with are like this woman. She is a kind, upstanding person who would walk or take buses to work if she didn't have a car.
I have a heart for these clients. Tears of joy at the closing - and her first home all her own. It's also in a 55 plus community so she is very excited to be around people her own age and meet them.
It's interesting that she would choose to live in a retirement community when she is considering working FT as a teacher until she is close to 80.
Does she teach online or does she commute to/from school every day? Hopefully if she does teach at the physical school, she at least lives very close to it.
Hopefully, it'll all work out well for her. It's going to be harder for her to meet people her own age if she is working all day because most retirement communities are early to bed, early to rise kinds of places. People do their activities during the day and then spend their evenings at home or sometimes go out to catch an early bird special in the late afternoon.
Personally, I'd probably rather have a roommate than try to work a second career like she's doing.
I made it as far as the former pilot goes. Not included in the numbers are military retirement (very likely officer), retiree benefits such as Tricare/Tricare for life for him/spouse, airline retirement including free flight for him/immediate family. Is he a designated examiner or FAA instructor on the side? He could easily have lived on his retirement and saved/invested the airline check.
Three perfect click bait examples.
49% have no retirement savings?
While he obviously was an officer because of being listed as a fighter pilot, it lists him as having 13 years of military service, that is not enough for a retirement pension or Tricare for life coverage from the military. Also lists him as divorced and spending $3K a month on travel - not every airline gives free or reduced flight costs for retired pilots. But they are really glossing over some info - he is likely getting a good pension and medical benefits from the airlines and with reported $6M in his retirement accounts, is not close to what could be spending. Maybe he got to $6M by cashing out his pension for a lump sum.
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back-patting )
No savings ---
