Skip to main content

You Cannot Retire with Only Your 401K: Let Me Explain Part 1

It's been quite some time since a new post surfaced on this blog.
I promised I was going to write a series pointing out reasons to care about stocks. They're coming, but this topic came up instead.

I am currently employed at an employee benefits company where we assemble, create, manage, and update employee benefits such as retirement, medical, and ancillary (dental, vision, life, etc) plans for a number of employers. In other words, we set up all the extra perks you look at besides salary when you get a new job.

As my familiarity with this arena grows, I noticed that many of the employees of these clients are older Americans with balances less than $100,000 in their 401K plans. As a person with a lifelong focus on helping individuals leave an inheritance for not only their children but also their children's children, my senses immediately alerted me that there is no way this amount of money is enough for retirement.

So, I decided to do the math to either confirm or reject my hypothesis.

As a premise for the math, consider these facts:

  1. The reported median annual U.S. household income for 2016 according to the US Census Bureau is $57,617. (Household Income: 2016)
  2. According to the US Social Security Administration, "Full retirement age (also called "normal retirement age") had been 65 for many years." (Benefits Planner: Retirement)
  3. U.S. life expectancy at age 65 as of 2016 is 84.4 according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Mortality in the United States)

Translation?
If a person lives up to age 65 and decides to retire then, they are expected to live on average 19.4 more years.

So will $100,000 saved at 65 be enough?

In Part 2, we'll discuss just how much retirement savings is needed to live 19.4 more years with no additional income. I'll make the numbers more round with a $60,000 annual income, retirement at 65 and life expectancy of 85 for 20 more years of living.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

An Introduction

I've been meaning to create this site for some time, but never got around to it. Today, I finally did. My former speculative exploits in the financial markets can be seen at  Get Rich Quick(er)  and more recently on the social platform built on blockchain technology called  Steemit . As the need to enter the professional realm of investing draws nearer, I have taken it upon myself to create a more personal website that better reflects who I am and what I am about. Google's blogger is the most monetarily conservative avenue to implement this given the benefits it offers. It is my intention, through this site, to share the knowledge I have gained about creating and retaining wealth from both formal avenues of education and self education. I strongly believe in the concept of leaving an inheritance for not just the next generation, but also for the one following that as implied in Proverbs 13:22 . Though I am biased towards topics like investing in stocks and cryptocu...
3 comments
Read more

Reasons to Care about Stocks

When the stock market crashed during the period from 2000-2002, I was almost a teen and did not have a single clue what was going on. It wasn't till years later that I realized the reason many people were panicking and I no longer saw the pets.com ads on TV was the stock market. In 2008 when I heard that Circuit City, a company my father used to work for some years earlier, filed for bankruptcy and would no longer be in business and the value of our house where my parents just managed to pay the mortgage at the time had halved in the time span of a few months, I still had no clue that the stock market had anything to do with it. Since I just got out of high school at the time, I would occasionally hear on the news that the economy was down with not a single understanding of what that meant for us. I have come to realize that unless you have a particular interest in these things as a hobby or your profession is related to managing money, not many people actually pay attention to w...
1 comment
Read more

You Cannot Retire with Only Your 401K: Let Me Explain Part 2

If you haven't already read the first post of these series , I suggest you go back and do so to get the background of what we are trying to show. For this particular post, we just want to know how much is needed to live for the 20 years between the ages of 65 and 85 if you were making $60,000 a year prior to retirement. Again, read the last post , to see where the numbers came from. Speaking of numbers, it is important to note that individual goals and resources ultimately dictate how one will fare in retirement. The numbers presented here are general and are only used to make a point. To begin figuring out how much is needed for 20 years of retirement, we have to first establish how much income is needed during retirement years. After taking into account certain changes like healthcare costs and taxes, a recent study by the Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) found that even after 5 or 6 years in retirement, 46.9% of households spend at more than 80% of their preretire...
Post a Comment
Read more