The answer, if you're talking about retirement, is clearly: more than you have. No matter what you have. There's probably a point where you can't possibly contemplate spending all that you have, barring a) a switch to a hedonistic life style (hmm.....) or massive medical bills (huh....) but for people like me, that point is right out there with the likelihood of winning the Nobel Prize for Cookie Making. (Those cookies I said I'd make? Not bad.) Basically, no matter what you have, there will be someone to say that that's not nearly enough, unless you're planning on living a miserly existence in a trailer out west. And not where Rockford lived, either.
The spark for these thoughts is, as it so frequently is, an article on retirement planning. It makes good points, including a couple I hadn't thought of, contemplation of which makes my head hurt (Evaluate the taxing structure of potential retirement locations?), but it also has this :
If further evidence were needed that $1 million isn't what it used to be, a survey by the Spectrem Group consulting firm refers to those with $100,000 to $1 million in "investable assets" as merely the "mass affluent." Because investable assets account for 22 percent of these folks' total assets, many have substantially more than $1 million total. Spectrem found that when their residences are included, these people have 37 percent of their wealth in real estate, putting them "at significant risk" in a real estate market collapse.
Sheesh !
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