I think I have been spending too much time on this today… It’s like a video game that tells you when you can retire.
Some of the variables are pretty interesting. For instance, a 1% increase in average capital returns means I can retire 2 years earlier. This variable is more important than say, my spouse working for another 3 years.
Also, it’s interesting to use this to visualize your unnecessary purchases in terms of cost to your life. For instance, buying a Porsche every 5 years will change your career length by X years… etc.
I got the same result as you with regards to a 1% change in the return assumption impacting my retirement date by 2 years. However, I got a strange result with regards to inflation. Bumping it up to 6% inflation kept my retirement date unchanged, and then from 7% to 29% was only one-year back on the retirement (interestingly enough with 29% inflation, I would die with 500mn+ but it wouldn’t be enough for retirement).
The return assumptions and perhaps the raise assumptions are in real terms, so the inflation assumptions don’t really matter that much.
A new report from the ING Retirement Research Institute, “Retirement Revealed,” takes a look at how ready females are to retire today. The women are lagging behind the men, but the gap is not huge. You can read the article: Women slightly less ready to retire than men. There have been many studies lately demonstrating how unprepared most Americans feel when it comes to retirement. While just more than half of men feel ready (58 percent), the number, according to the ING report, is lower still for women (44 percent). As for me, I’m one of the 44%.
I’m a bit confused about how all these people retire with less than $200k in savings. Does this not include 401k or pensions? Or are they just going to rely on Social Security?
I never know what to make of these statistics, eg. half of women 50 and over have never calculated their savings… does that just mean that they are depending on their husbands to do the financial planning or they just have no idea?