How much money do you need to retire with $120000 a year income?
Let's say you consider yourself the typical retiree. Between you and your spouse, you currently have an annual income of $120,000. Based on the 80% principle, you can expect to need about $96,000 in annual income after you retire, which is $8,000 per month.
The Final Multiple: 10-12 times your annual income at retirement age. If you plan to retire at 67, for instance, and your income is $150,000 per year, then you should have between $1.5 and $1.8 million set aside for retirement.
In most cases $300,000 is simply not enough money on which to retire early. If you retire at age 60, you will have to live on your $15,000 drawdown and nothing more. This is close to the $12,760 poverty line for an individual and translates into a monthly income of about $1,250 per month.
It may be possible to retire at 45 years of age, but it depends on a variety of factors. If you have $500,000 in savings, then according to the 4% rule, you will have access to roughly $20,000 per year for 30 years. Retiring early will affect the amount of your Social Security benefit.
At the current Treasury rate of 4.3%, a $1 million portfolio would generate about $43,000 per year, or roughly $3,500 per month. With your Social Security payments that would generate about $6,000, again enough to live comfortably in most places.
For example, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average retiree spends about $52,141 annually. Meanwhile, a $2 million retirement account will provide you 25 years of $80,000 in annual income -- based on the 4% retirement rule.
The Bottom Line
A retirement account with $2 million should be enough to make most people comfortable. With an average income, you can expect it to last 35 years or more.
The short answer is yes, $500,000 is enough for many retirees. The question is how that will work out for you. With an income source like Social Security, modes spending, and a bit of good luck, this is feasible. And when two people in your household get Social Security or pension income, it's even easier.
As a result, an oft-stated rule of thumb suggests workers can base their retirement on a percentage of their current income. “Seventy to 80% of pre-retirement income is good to shoot for,” said Ben Bakkum, senior investment strategist with New York City financial firm Betterment, in an email.
There are various formulas people rely on to estimate retirement expenses, all of which are rough guesses at best. One well-known method is the 80% rule. This rule of thumb suggests that you'll have to ensure you have 80% of your pre-retirement income per year in retirement.
How much money do most people retire with?
The average retirement savings for all families is $333,940 according to the 2022 Survey of Consumer Finances. Taken on their own, those numbers aren't incredibly helpful. There are a variety of decent retirement savings benchmarks out there, but how much money other people have isn't one of them.
While $1,500 might not be enough for non-housing retirement expenses for many people, it doesn't mean it's impossible to stick to this or other amounts, such as if you're already retired and don't have the ability to increase your budget.
Once you have $1 million in assets, you can look seriously at living entirely off the returns of a portfolio. After all, the S&P 500 alone averages 10% returns per year. Setting aside taxes and down-year investment portfolio management, a $1 million index fund could provide $100,000 annually.
1,821,745 Households in the United States Have Investment Portfolios Worth $3,000,000 or More.
ASFA estimates that the lump sum needed at retirement to support a comfortable lifestyle is $690,000 for a couple and $595,000 for a single person.
In fact, statistically, around 10% of retirees have $1 million or more in savings. The majority of retirees, however, have far less saved.
The rule of thumb: A common rule of thumb for real estate allocation is to invest no more than 25% to 40% of your net worth in real estate, including your home.
$3 million could also be enough for you to retire even earlier, at 40 or even 30, depending on the kind of retirement lifestyle you're after and the sorts of expenses you'll face month to month. Let's look at some calculations. Say you want your $3 million to last until you reach the age of 80.
In this situation, your nest egg would last around five years and four months. Remember, the above figures don't account for interest or investment income, which help your nest egg last longer. That said, your rate of return on $250,000 would provide an additional $10,000 per year if you estimate conservatively.
Will my money last in retirement?
This rule is based on research finding that if you invested at least 50% of your money in stocks and the rest in bonds, you'd have a strong likelihood of being able to withdraw an inflation-adjusted 4% of your nest egg every year for 30 years (and possibly longer, depending on your investment return over that time).
With $800k initially saved, you could withdraw $40k-60k annually and still have your portfolio last between 19-28 years. The higher your spending amount, the faster your savings get depleted.
Bottom Line. With $800,000 in savings, you can probably cover $4,000 in monthly living costs. However, retirement accounts alone cannot safely sustain that spending for a 25- or 30-year retirement.
Retiring with $200k is possible, if not ideal. If you're closer to retirement age and hoping to leave the working world sooner rather than later, budget carefully and set realistic expectations. Only you can decide what's within your power and right for your situation.
After analyzing many scenarios, we found that 75% is a good starting point to consider for your income replacement rate. This means that if you make $100,000 shortly before retirement, you can start to plan using the ballpark expectation that you'll need about $75,000 a year to live on in retirement.
