How Much Money Is Enough

I was speaking at a wealth building conference and one of the other speakers, a noted financial planner, made the statement that when you retire you only need about 30% of you pre-retirement income. I was amazed at this statement and I asked him back stage how he came to that conclusion. He told me that all retired people do is sit around and watch television all day.

My response to him was that this was a description of what broke people do (namely his clients). Retired people who have successfully built a decent wealth portfolio are living the time of their life!

What are you aiming at? The lifestyle of the television watching clients of our financial planning friend or the time of your life lifestyle that comes with wealth?

How much will you need for a good lifestyle in retirement?

The short answer is that, if you want to maintain the lifestyle that you are accustomed to then you will need a monthly income equal to your monthly income one month before you retired. Anything less and there is something that you will have to give up.

When I say this I often hear the following argument. If you were investing money prior to retirement and you no longer need to do this after retirement then you don't need as large an income as you did before retirement.

I don't know why so many people are so determined to aim at reducing their income but I will answer the question anyway, Firstly it dependents on what age you are retiring at. If you are young or at least plan to live a long time after retirement then you may well need to keep investing.

Secondly, even if it is true that you don't need to invest any longer then let me ask you what you plan to do in retirement. You see the biggest difference that retirement makes in your life is that you suddenly have a lot more free time to fill. How do you plan to fill it and what will that cost you?

If you plan to do some traveling then you will need to fund it. I don't know too many retired people who would prefer roughing it in low quality accommodation of last resort. The retired people I know prefer high quality accommodation of a five star resort.

Realistically determining your financial needs in retirement is the first step to actually achieving the income that will provide for those needs. The only thing worse than aiming too high and missing it is aiming too low and getting it.

I would like to suggest that you put pen to paper and answer a few simple questions.

1. What age do you want to retire at?
2. How many years do you hope to live after retiring?
3. What lifestyle would you like to live in retirement?
4. What will that lifestyle cost per month?
5. Am I doing enough now to provide for that?

Please don't make the mistake of aiming too low; there are too many people at that end of the retirement economy now!

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