If I recall correctly, it seems that pensions have about as much to do with successful RE as portfolio size. When we take polls on portfolio size, we always wind up realizing at the end that a person's pension situation is really key. For example, I'd take a 50k/yr cola'd govt pension over a one million dollar portfolio anytime, assuming the starting date for the pension and the portfolio withdrawals were the same.
A good pension does make a world of difference. Before my pension plan got really good, it was well-known joke. Most people retired and just went to w*rk somewhere else. The pension allowed them to w*rk someplace that didn't pay as well, but it wasn't enough for anybody to live on for the rest of their life.
(Which was better than what we had before the pension; w*rk until you can't show up anymore.)
I once joked that with the pension I could afford to lead the lifestyle of an
affluent wino; sleep in a flophouse hotel instead of a vacant lot, buy the better vintage of Mogen David, smoke generic cigs rather than hand-rolled, etc.
I even had the perfect flophouse picked out; it was a blow to my retirement planning when gentrification caused the place to be imploded:
When the affluent-wino pension turned into something better, it opened up a lot of new possibilities. Certainly it meant retirement came earlier and with less concern over fluctuations in the capital markets. But the increased importance of the pension in retirement brought new complexities in planning for retirement.
My plans changed as my circumstances changed. I came to this forum as a lurker two years before I retired, and one of the most important things I learned from the experiences of others is how changeable our individual situations can be. How people succeed or fail in their own circumstances stimulates my own thinking and refines my planning.
My eyes have been opened to many good and bad possibilities that I would never have considered without the discussions here. I went past "I need X dollars in my portfolio before I can ring the bell", to "what I need will depend on what's going on in my life and what my needs are at the time, and I need to look at all the ways I can have the appropriate amount available at the right time." Like I said, planning became more complicated.
I'll contribute to some of the "how much" conversations, because this forum is about each of us trying to help each other find the info they want/need (and I find more than a few are useful and informative). But I have to say that I don't find much use in knowing how much more or less than me you guys have accumulated. It's much more useful to learn how you accumulated what you have, why you thought that was enough, how you invest it, how you protect it, how you spend it, and all the stuff you used in making your decisions.
Knowing someone has a certain amount is okay, but I really want to know the things they did right and what they did wrong and what they would do different if they could have a do-over.
