Friday Fluff: How much money do you need to retire?

I think option 4 is typed wrong.

My FA has never told me *what* I needed to retire. What he has shown me and we have discussed is how far what I have will go as I age. Especially helpful when I’m planning on moving and/or planing a remodel.

If it helps, I’ll turn 60 in a couple of weeks and have been retired for coming up on 11 years.

Neither of us knows. We spent last weekend with a retired couple who basically kicked our asses to get my retirement account set up. I work for my husband he pays the minimum and I don’t contribute to an ira. That’s going to change next month. He’s called his accountant and money guy to pay me more and contribute that extra pay to my own retirement account.

He has a retirement account plus investment properties. We could probably fully retire at 55 if we wanted but again I’m not sure how much money we need invested to do so. I know what we have invested and it “sounds” like enough but that’s not factoring my adult disabled child.

Well I know we won't have as much as I want. Like another pea, we both have a pension rather than ss so when we retire determines how much our month pay will be.

I just started my own 401k. We put it all into dh's because his employer matched up to a certain percentage.

We have at least 13 years until we retire. Our goal is to have student loans and the house paid off.

If you don’t mind answering, since you’re not old enough for Medicare, what are you doing for health insurance?

ETA: I posted before I got to the end of the thread. 

We have been been retired for 20 years, and are in our eighties, so the amount we needed then was less than today’s estimates.  We are very, very fortunate to have excellent health insurance and continued supplement from his company.  We have also been blessed with good health—no surgeries (other than cataract) until last month when DH had a cornea transplant.  Our savings have remained almost steady during this period, thanks to a good financial advisor.  Our lifestyle has not changed a lot, but we are not big travelers. 
So I guess the reason for my post is to say that your future financial needs are closely tied to your health and medical needs which no one knows, so the higher estimates are a hedge against illness, and for your peace of mind.

I’m interested to know what your financial advisor told you. Our number was much higher than $2M. If I recall it was in the realm of 6 or 8 million.

Using the 4% rule of needing 25 times expenses for retirement, I answered between 1.5M and 2M for us as a couple. As we are in the USA health insurance needs and getting 2 kids through college is what would prevent us from an early retirement. My husband is pretty happy with his job though so it works out.

For those of you wondering what someone might pay in health insurance, I am 63, so I need private insurance. I pay $575 per month with an $8k deductible. DH's medicare supplement policy is $249 per month. We still have to pay $1k per month for his share of his cancer medication.

We made saving for retirement our #1 priority, because neither of us had defined pension plans. I realize a lot of people don't even have the luxury of savings towards retirement, due to low pay.

My DH 100% is one of those people - he knew what he wanted to do when he was in junior high and that's what he does and he loves it. Being a sportscaster isn't as glamorous as a lot of people think it is, but I don't know many in the industry who don't truly love what they do.

Had I stayed in finance, I'd be counting the days until retirement. But moving to tech, and specifically to a startup - damn, I love this stuff. It's so fun and exciting and challenging and ever-changing and the field I'm, I get to see our hard work literally change the lives of people and their families. It's soooo compelling and I love it. I'm currently contemplating looking for a new role at an earlier stage start-up in the field because I think I'm addicted to thet constant iteration.

That's totally my husband. He loves what he does so much, he can't even imagine not doing it. He's living his dream life. He'd love to shed some parts of his job and concentrate all his time on the engineering side of it. He's been working on setting that up.

Same for me, but I don't want to work full time. I'm already scaling back a little bit.

We're in our early 50s, and we're looking at moving / buying a different house (with some property), instead of paying our current house off...  Backwards from what most people want to be doing at this stage, I know.  But that's because we finally talked seriously about it and neither of us want to retire in Arizona with the weather and water situation the way they're going.

DH has retired three times in two years LOL. He really sucks at being retired while I am working. He will be 65 in January, and I will be 60 in March. He says he is going to start Social Security in January, but I’ll believe it when I see it.

He is currently working at an insane hourly rate, and this was supposed to be a temporary position until they hired someone for him to mentor. Eight months later, they finally hired the replacement guy, and DH will continue full time to train him with an end date of August. After that, he will cut back to no more than half-time doing some back office work that needs to be caught up, and then he should be ready to really retire in January.

We have more than enough to retire now, but the sticking point is health care. Our 21 yo twins are still on my plan and probably will be for at least 2 or 3 years. I qualify for retiree health at age 60, so I could retire then, but the premiums are high since I have only been with the university for 7 years. If I wait until May 2024 to retire at age 62, and the girls have their own benefits, my monthly premiums (today) based on that scenario would be about $1000 less than if I retire next March. The rates are based on years of service at the time of retirement, and they would not go down in May 2024 if I am already retired. Of course, they would go down a bit when both girls are off the policy.

But retirement at 60 is very tempting….