Poll: Monthly Income goals? How much is enough?

[Steve40th]

What is a reasonable goal expected for your retirement? Off of your investments, pension etc?

 

[REWahoo]

NOTICE: This is a public poll. OTHER USERS CAN SEE YOUR CHOICES.

OP, would you like to request a mod to change that setting for you?

 

[rayinpenn]

Earn enough so we can continue with our champagne and caviar lifestyle.

 

[brewer12345]

Enough so that we can continue our homebrew and squirrel pot pie lifestyle...

 

[Independent]

Typical questions for any poll like this.

One person? Two people? Four people?

Before or after taxes?

Just "basic expenses"?
Or, "normal annual expenses with our typical extras"?
Or, "average over long period, including those years when we have high home repair, travel, medical, wedding, ... expenses"?

 

[Independent]

When I hit 70, it hit back

Good line. For me, it was 69.

 

[Blue Collar Guy]

Earn enough so we can continue with our champagne and caviar lifestyle.

Oh i like ur style.

 

[audreyh1]

Wasn't there a pole already?

 

[Blue Collar Guy]

Enough so that we can continue our homebrew and squirrel pot pie lifestyle...

That's roughing it, but it works too

 

[Fedup]

I want to be in the $30k+ per month group. Hell yeah, that's my goal.

 

[Blue Collar Guy]

I want to be in the $30k per month group. Hell yeah, that's my goal.

Lets dream big
988 5th Ave,
New York, NY 10075
3 beds 3.5 baths 6,330 sqft

FOR RENT
$100,000 /mo

 

[imoldernu]

Don't know that I'd take the poll. but it brings up an interesting point (for me, at least}...
I've periodically written about a two phase retirement, as in before age 70 or after age 70, but it's more involved than that. When you get down to the nitty gritty, the dollars are changing almost by the month. Not enough to do a broad brush of the amount we'll be spending, but taken together, a substantial amount over a longer period... in our case, (roughly) from age 62 to 70, then from 70 to 75, and more recently from 75 to 80, and I expect, beyond.
Your own changes will certainly be different from ours, both as far as age, and activity goes. This will affect the dollars.

Up until age 70, we were very active... costs involved in travel, living as snowbirds and doing daily travel in between. We ate out quite often, and bought "things" for our houses and camp. Considerable fuel and maintenance costs for the cars, and going to parties, visiting the kids and relatives etc, etc.
Monies for recreation... boats, bikes, memberships etc.

Between 70 and 80, along the way, stopped snowbirding, fewer trips, and less concern about other things like new stuff for the house, a lot less partying and now, hardly going out for meals as it's too much of a nuisance.

That said, in the next year or two, we'll sell our camp and Florida place, which we just keep for the kids vacations. That alone will cut our expenses by another 12+K/yr. The sales will also allow us to keep from paying income tax after our IRA's are depleted.

Most of this sounds like nickel and dime savings, but when I do a year end accounting of our assets, each year shows thousands of dollars less than the year before.

This won't work for everyone. Those who will be doing world travel 'til they're in their 80's and 90's, or who have large homes to keep, and like to have new cars... won't see the same savings.

We didn't really plan it ths way. It has only been in the past 3 or four years that we've been able to look back and analyze where the savings came in. the nice part is that our original plan to die dead broke @ age 85, now looks to be pushed out into our mid 90's.

How much is enough? Don't really know, but it's a lot less than our original plan.

oops... too many words... should have just given a number.

 

[Steve40th]

NOTICE: This is a public poll. OTHER USERS CAN SEE YOUR CHOICES.

OP, would you like to request a mod to change that setting for you?

Sure, thanks.

 

[Steve40th]

Typical questions for any poll like this.

One person? Two people? Four people?

Before or after taxes?

Just "basic expenses"?
Or, "normal annual expenses with our typical extras"?
Or, "average over long period, including those years when we have high home repair, travel, medical, wedding, ... expenses"?

2 plus child..

 

[brewer12345]

That's roughing it, but it works too

Not roughing it in the slightest, far as I can tell.

 

[Steve40th]

Seems like there are visions based off of where you are in life. I am on my first retirement in life, a young 49. My next retirement and final retirement will be by 62. I am not expecting much from SS, but anything I get from it will be nice.

 

[Car-Guy]

Income? No specific income goal but since I retired, I usually spend more than I make most months. As planned, I'll continue to do that until my NW reaches a preset level. "If" I ever reach that preset number, I'll cut back spending to "maintain" that level of NW.

 

[6miths]

looks like there should be a bunch more choices on the high end.

 

[Blue Collar Guy]

Not roughing it in the slightest, far as I can tell.

hahaha, squirrel pot pie in my neck of the woods is roughin it , im sure i have been fed pigeon and cat but it was without my knowledge.

 

[exnavynuke]

looks like there should be a bunch more choices on the high end.

That's kinda what I was thinking when I saw the choices. I'm between the two highest choices and I know from reading various threads that a good percentage of the forum participants spend double+ what I do.

 

[braumeister]

hahaha, squirrel pot pie in my neck of the woods is roughin it , im sure i have been fed pigeon and cat but it was without my knowledge.

IIRC, in your neck of the woods anything west of the Hudson River is "camping out."

 

[Danmar]

Not sure how these type of polls can possibly be useful. Surely the only reasonable answer is "it depends on your desired lifestyle and where you intend to retire to". How high is up?

 

[2017ish]

looks like there should be a bunch more choices on the high end.

Definitely. Under current law, with relatively early (mid-50s) retirement, we'd be very close, maybe even in the highest choice with only social security--even if I took at 62 and DW at age 70.

Also agree with Danmar:

Not sure how these type of polls can possibly be useful. Surely the only reasonable answer is "it depends on your desired lifestyle and where you intend to retire to". How high is up?

 

[scrabbler1]

I have two main sources of dividend income which are used to pay my expenses. One is monthly and the other is quarterly which is good because some of my expenses are lumpier than others. Together, those two sources provide me just over $2k a month, so I have a comfortable cushion to cover any small, unforeseen expenses.


I have other income sources such as some small monthly dividends and the far more erratic cap gain distributions, all of which automatically get reinvested. Those average about $1.5k a month.

 

[daylatedollarshort]

In making our retirement budget, we looked at the Consumer Expenditure Tables, put our budget in the same categories and compared them side by side for a reasonableness check -

https://www.bls.gov/cex/tables.htm

Some areas we were okay with being higher than average, and some categories provided us opportunities to analyze and optimize our spending.