Poll: Target monthly retirement income

[Teacher Terry]

I missed the word "desired." Of course then 20k/month sounds great! As others have mentioned there are a lot of variables that make a huge difference on the amount someone can live on.

 

[ERD50]

My initial interpretation of "desired income" means infinity.

And Beyond! ™

-ERD50

 

[CaliKid]

I would love to see lifestyle details of the $20K/month club. How many homes? How big are they? Which travel/tour companies do you use? What are your indulgences?

None of my business, I know, but it would be fun to know

I am not saying me personally but I know many people who spend over $20k a month with just one home ($500k-1m), fairly extensive travel, some have kids in home which can cost a lot, some spend money helping parents/inlaws, etc.... It's not that hard to spend $20k a month if you are not being careful with your expenses.

 

[daylatedollarshort]

My goal these days is to live a champagne life on a beer budget. We are going to a party in the city this weekend with free champagne on seat filler discount tickets and free train fare from a county commuter promotion. I get a kick out of finding deals like that. We used to spend much more but the free time in retirement for optimizing expenses made it much easier to keep the same lifestyle but now with much lower expenses.

 

[Scuba]

Would very likely cause a fair bit of negative feedback for such a poster.

[emoji23] I can imagine the comments!

 

[youbet]

my 3 biggest items are travel, charity and health insurance, in that order,.

By far my biggest expense category is taxes. Fed income tax. State income tax. Property tax. Sales tax. Gotta stop..... getting nauseous thinking about it.

Like many geezers, the onset of RMD's made this all the worse. Moving money from one account to another and paying a hefty fee to Uncle Sam to do so isn't as much fun as I anticipated!

 

[Surewhitey]

Our past year of expenses came in just under $3,500 / mo...I'd like to get this + 10-20% (+ inflation of course on the balance) to cover the unknowns / one time expenses.

This included 5-6 trips to MX, Cali & family, so everything is included.

Ok, I'll bite...
mortgage free home
paid for vehicles
living in a State with 0% State income tax TX
desire to travel
Type of travel, hotels, camping and explore on your own.
Size of home, a 1,700 sq ft home

 

[dunkelblau]

I would love to see lifestyle details of the $20K/month club. How many homes? How big are they? Which travel/tour companies do you use? What are your indulgences?

None of my business, I know, but it would be fun to know

Poll title says the bins are income not spending. My annual cap gains/interest/dividends fluctuate quite a bit, so instead of trying to guess those, I'll use SWR + SS + pension minus income taxes. That puts me in the upper bin (assuming those are today's USD), so here are my answers:
(1) one
(2) 1000 sq ft apartment
(3) I don't travel; my last airplane ride was an international business trip 10 years ago
(4) I enjoy high-risk stock market punts aka gambling in the wall street casino
I don't mind negative feedback; fire away!

 

[Pilot2013]

My target (based on estimates of what I will need at that time) is $5k-$6k/month.

 

[Amethyst]

I s'pose so. It's OK when posters talk about the fancy food or toys/doodads they buy, as long as they don't do it in the context of income. I never will entirely understand social convention.

Would very likely cause a fair bit of negative feedback for such a poster.

 

[Danmar]

I s'pose so. It's OK when posters talk about the fancy food or toys/doodads they buy, as long as they don't do it in the context of income. I never will entirely understand social convention.

Yes a little strange. Talking about small luxuries doesn’t come across as boasting as much as disclosing a very large income or net worth would.

 

[VanWinkle]

Currently getting by on 4200 per month. That is all tax free at this time but taxes may increase in the future when we start SS at 65 or 66. That will put another 3500 per month in the kitty, but my withdrawals from investments will go to 1% or below at that time.

VW

 

[W2R]

Yes a little strange. Talking about small luxuries doesn’t come across as boasting as much as disclosing a very large income or net worth would.

To me, high income people here don't sound at all like they are boasting, as long as:

(1) the person doesn't appear to think less of others who have smaller incomes, and
(2) what they say sounds honest and true. We do have some posting on the forum who believe "you can be whatever you want to be on the internet", but usually they don't stay long.

Then I love hearing about their lifestyle, just as I enjoy hearing about other lifestyles different from mine (like eternal travelers, or those with dozens of grandchildren, and so on). If someone tells me that they just spent two weeks babysitting the grandkids, I don't resent it just because I don't personally have any.

The same is true for some of our members who are enjoying a blissful retirement on amazingly low incomes. As long as they don't think less of me for not being as thrifty, and as long as they are honest, I enjoy them and their posts a lot!

 

[YVRRocketSurgery]

Not retired yet. We're currently spending about $3k USD/month which supports what we consider a fairly comfortable lifestyle for us with a few weeks of international travel. No debt with a paid off house though.

The retirement goal and corresponding retirement income target is to travel 6 months a year and we've estimated, based on our previous trip costs, that we'll need about $6k USD/month to support the combined 6 months at home and away. However, as we age, I suspect we'll get lazier and/or be more susceptible to physical limitation impacting the way we travel so I can see the number trending to the $7k USD/month.

 

[street]

As I read it, this is an income not spending poll. Some members might have $20k income but not spend it all. Heck, based on the S&P most people with $1 million in stocks have generated close to $20k a month in cap gains since last November.

Exactly! I would say the numbers should be more then 6% that had income over 20K a month with stocks hitting all time highs. It all depends on how you read the question to how you answered it.

 

[tmm99]

This "per household" thing always gets me. It's fun to take polls, but I wonder how things would look differently if it were "per person"? I got married a few years ago and I look as if I spend more money now since they used to be just one person in my household and now I have two.

 

[RobLJ]

Do you stop to ask for directions--I don't unless I see a bear or wolf.

Even the poll title says “see text of post”, but it is only human nature to not read instructions.

My wife assures me that I am the world’s worst at not reading a manual or instructions.

 

[FI_RElater]

Didn’t vote___question too ambiguous

Because it asked both desired and current. (and upthread notes that the proper response , of course, is “over 20k/month “) the poll really doesn’t give any information. I didn’t vote and add to the ambiguity.


When originally planning for retirement, I used the existing outlays, warts and all, and presumed a 25% tax rate on top to get pre-tax of about $85k/yr.

Now, in third year of retirement, I’ve yet to exceed 3% WR even when purchasing new vehicle or replacing HVAC and reasonably large renovations.

Most calculators would say that we could have over $120k/yr and much more once we start SS, but with paid off house in our new retirement location along with new vehicle (also paid off) it’s not necessary to have as much unless we travel more.
{unfortunately, with the difficulties of spouses parents, one death and the other having to be put into nursing home while before that needing to insure that they were taken care of, there wasn’t much time to travel}.
We’ll change that, hopefully, this next year and try to bring our spending up; we joke about getting letters from the treasury/etc about having us spend more to help out the economy. It certainly beats the alternative that we see elsewhere of those trying to survive with little means, but we don’t know if that’s the result of not planning or of not having the resources in the first place.

 

[RobLJ]

I spilled some Lagunitas in the conversation about income versus spending--I assumed the intent was spending despite the wording, but didn't really worry about it.
Youse guys and gals are a lot of fun, though. Might as well be an Engineer Convention (INTJs--all the way!).

 

[Amethyst]

This is how I see it, too. Especially given it is just the Internet, and if things get overwhelming, we can just step away from the computer

To me, high income people here don't sound at all like they are boasting, as long as:

(1) the person doesn't appear to think less of others who have smaller incomes, and
(2) what they say sounds honest and true. We do have some posting on the forum who believe "you can be whatever you want to be on the internet", but usually they don't stay long.

Then I love hearing about their lifestyle, just as I enjoy hearing about other lifestyles different from mine (like eternal travelers, or those with dozens of grandchildren, and so on). If someone tells me that they just spent two weeks babysitting the grandkids, I don't resent it just because I don't personally have any.

The same is true for some of our members who are enjoying a blissful retirement on amazingly low incomes. As long as they don't think less of me for not being as thrifty, and as long as they are honest, I enjoy them and their posts a lot!

 

[Perryinva]

I only read the question in green and took desired to mean (since not yet retired), the planned objective for pre tax income amount from all sources. The poll is only vaguely useful when combining not yet retired objectives with achieved and established current retirement incomes. My objective is, and always has been, for a gross income that nets after deductions in retirement, approximately what my working income nets after all taxes, FICA/MED, savings etc. I simply knock off those eliminated gross costs from what I make and use that number, keeping the tax costs the same, to compensate for inflation, simce so much of our retirement income will be non COLA. AT retirement, income must start out higher than expected expenses to compensate for the drag of inflation in later years. I will have many less years of retirement than the majority of FIREs here (start at 62), yet ironically my parents ERed at age 50, THINKING they were FI. They were not, and only an early loss of DM at 69 saved DF financially, along with a significant (yet perfectly comfortable for him) drop in lifestyle. So I have no successful gauge for what my spending profile will be, besides examples here, but lasting less long (assume 35 years) I can be more aggressive in SWR than you all with 50-55 year FIREs.

In addition, it would greatly change the numbers depending on whether one chooses to carry a mortgage or pay off the home. Even a $500k mortgage, that could be paid off, w/o a tax penalty, is the difference in required income and subsequently expenses of $2800 a month.

The joke will be on me if it turns out our spending will drop as we age, but since ER never even entered my mind until I was already 55, I’ve never had a problem spending money, and I don’t live a big lifestyle. I just didn’t save as smartly and aggressively as others here because I passively planned on my pension and large SS covering most costs after 40 years of working.

Pensions
Max SS
Mortgage (by choice)
No debt (CC, etc, take advantage of 0% financing if it makes sense)
MCOL
Couple
No/low cost Corp Health Insur.

 

[iloveyoga]

I am still a little surprised because we spend more than I thought we would. No debt or big bills at all but travel and entertainment adds up. I do enjoy reading about all the different spending levels on this board.

 

[wmc1000]

I answered $5-$6 for a 2 person HH. This is our "desired" income because it makes our WR rate 0% - This is approximately $1500/ mo. over our routine expenses so it allows a nice cushion for travel, major household repairs, etc. while leaving our investments available in older age to cover LTC or other medically necessary costs. Sure I could have chosen > $20K but that would have been only a dream and I think the Op was looking for a bit of reality that can be achieved.

No mortgage
No auto loans
No debt
CC paid off every month
No pensions
No corporate health insurance

 

[Winemaker]

I planned on having the same net income in retirement as I did while w@rking. I did not want to take a backward step in lifestyle just because I told the circus I wasn't going to be one of their monkeys anymore. I have been very conservative these 3 years to create a buffer that a bad sequence of returns in the early years might create. The past 3 years have been better than I thought, and it's about time to loosen the purse strings a little. I won't buy a Porsche because I can, I just don't want to attract the attention it may create. If I correctly assume it creates attention.

 

[Meadbh]

I answered $5-$6 for a 2 person HH.

You are very frugal!