Are you on target for retirement?

**rosebron** · 07-30-2007, 09:54 PM

Click on the myplan link at Fidelity.com to get a snapshot of what you need to retire.

http://personal.fidelity.com/plannin...an/index.shtml

Are you on target, close or way off??

**dcompton** · 07-30-2007, 11:59 PM

I have dial up and it was taking forever to load the plan calculator, so I bailed out. I just put away as much as I can and that's ALL I can do. If it works, wonderful, if not, well ... I'll cross that bridge when I come to it as we say. I got a late start on retirement for several boring reasons, and it used to worry me. But I've decided worrying won't improve it, so I really don't think about it much. I do take the estimates you see everywhere with a grain of salt. I want to sit around in grubby clothes reading library books; I have no ambition to live the "good life" and see the world. The ideal retirement held up before us sounds much too strenuous to me! I plan to spend it resting. So, on target? Probably not, probably not even close, but I can't do any more to fix that than I already am.

**Grayce** · 07-31-2007, 02:22 AM

according to this calculator I am not on target but according to others I have done I am. This one fails to take into account that I have a company pension that is going to make up a significant portion of my retirement income.

**Jaded** · 07-31-2007, 10:08 PM

My retirement savings were wiped out by stock market crashes and illness/injury. I have $13 in an IRA. I'll probably die working!

**annymoll** · 07-31-2007, 11:09 PM

I want to retire in comfort, and to be able to travel. The idea of rocking out my life is not appealing. I know we have planned, prepared and are exactly where we need to be, but I still want and expect more. On with the work, the saving, the investing.

**pkellyc** · 08-01-2007, 12:01 PM

We went to a financial advisor and he claims we need two million dollars to retire and keep our current life style.
I laughed and went out to buy a lottery ticket! (It was either that or a gun)
No seriously, he did not count in a few factors, like the fact that my house will be paid for, our college loans will be paid for, and our cars will last longer because DH will not need a new one every 5 or 6 years for his commute. And those are just the big factors.
Some of these people are extreme and I have to wonder what their cut is.

**dcompton** · 08-01-2007, 12:14 PM

In responses to Jaded and the stock market crash -- this is something that I find somewhat disturbing. Everyone says not to rely on social security, and I understand why. Rely on private accounts. So that means we're to base our future on the stock market? I find it difficult to be reassured by that! Whatever happens, the future is still a risky proposition.

Two million? Good grief! I've already lived nicely for 59 years on a WAY less than that! Maybe these guys who tell us things like that just watch too much television and forget how most people actually live.

**Jaded** · 08-02-2007, 08:14 PM

dcompton, I wasn't basing my future on the stock market. I had some money invested in an IRA in the stock market, and the fund lost a lot of money. I had cancer once, and was injured once and had surgery, and that took the rest of it. You can plan all you want, but things happen.

BTW, they're talking about $2,000,000 to last you for the length of your retirement, not $2,000,000 a year. That's if you want to retire in style, like having a nice home, traveling, entertaining, boating, etc. I don't think a normal couple would need that much, but with the cost of living going up every day, you might actually NEED that much every year!

**Michelle** · 08-03-2007, 06:37 AM

I have to laugh because according to this, we are WAY OFF target--I mean in another universe or something. Other sources have said that we are very close to target, and we contribute the maximum allowable in our 401K. Once we get our CC's paid off we'll contribute to an IRA too.

One thing to keep in mind is that this calculation doesn't know how we spend the money that we earn. We live way below our means, and that's just not factored in here. No to mention considering the source--a company that wants your investment

**Telephus44** · 08-03-2007, 08:54 PM

Yeah - according to this calculator we're way off target, but I disagree with the assumptions it makes in our case. First, it thinks that we need 6 million dollars to retire - I don't think that we're going to need that much. I don't think that our expenses in retirement will be as large a percentage of our income as they are now, since we plan on owning our own home. We will also continue to max out my Roth IRA, and the limit for that will go up next year - and probably continue to go up after that. So our monthly contribution will increase. Most calculators I've run say that we're pretty on track.

**dcompton** · 08-03-2007, 09:21 PM

Jaded,

That was a generic concern, not about your specific experience. Your remark just resonated because this is something that does concern me. My social security, as I said in another thread, will be pretty miniscule, and where I am working now, we don't even pay into social security -- it goes into a private account, so there is no possibility of adding to that amount. So actually, a very large part of mine (a large part of my little) is indeed riding on investments, and yes, that is something of a worry. We're told over time such investments always prosper, which is fine, unless the years the market, or a substantial slice of it, chooses to crater are the years you are relying on having that income. Some of my friends who were quite comfortably retired took a real and serious hit to their income a few years ago when the stock market fell apart.

I've also been ill, and I certainly understand where you are coming from. I had cancer diagnosed this last fall and if I had not been fortunate enough to have really good insurance at the time, I would have been wiped out. Totally. The negotiated costs the insurance company paid the providers -- a fraction of the actual billed amount -- was at least twice my annual income. The really wild card, I think, in any retirement, not to mention just day to day life now, is medical costs.

So I guess I really take a rather fatalistic view about the whole subject. I can only do so much to prepare, and then will have to just let the chips fall where they may. And I am sure that by any calculator, I am way off, way behind. But, well, we work with the cards we're dealt -- to be trite.

Please don't take what I said personally, though I may have implied that. It was much more about me than about you.

**jamie79** · 08-06-2007, 11:01 PM

It says we are way off target. We put 15% of dh's pay into a retirement acct. In January we hope to raise it to 18%. We never made enough money to do anything with until a few yrs ago. Dh will get a monthly pension. We will probably work all of our lives. I think most people will now a days

**frugalandsimple** · 08-07-2007, 07:57 AM

I'm way off target but I'm planning on living a simple, frugal live when I retire. Currently, the only debt I have is on my car and hoping to have it paid off by the end of this year. I save money for retirement when I can. After getting my car paid, off, I'll focus more on saving for retirement.

**Sonnenwende** · 08-01-2008, 03:51 PM

Hmm, not quite yet. I am in my mid 20s though. I just enrolled in my company's 401k program today.

I can only afford to contribute 2% right now, but it is all 100% matched. I picked the most aggressive investment option (mix of domestic and international stocks), because I don't have a lot to work with and time is on my side.

I imagine in the future (next 2-3 years), I will be able to contribute more. This is life right now though. This will be the first and only money I have saved for retirement. Long road ahead!