[BunnySlippers]

Anyone who imagines they can retire with $25K in the bank is delusional.

Anyone who imagines they can retire with $250K in the bank is delusional.

[mylife]

You are probably very right.

But many people will retire with less than 500K in savings, SS and a pension.

Of course SS and pensions may be taken away, and they have designs on 401ks and IRA’s.

Even cash is not safe today.

[rbg81]

Anyone who imagines they can retire with $250K in the bank is delusional.

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Concur. The truth is you probably need enough to maintain 75% of your current “working” income. Say you make $100K/year, then you might need $75K. Say about $25K of that comes from SS. To generate $50K per year of income (w/out touching your principal), you would need ~ $1.7M (assuming you’ve got a CD yielding 3%).

Its probably slightly better than that because you can draw down your principal if you assume a reasonable time horizon for living (let’s say 20 years max after you retire). But you also have to adjust for inflation.

So.....my estimate is that $1.5M is really the current minimum if you want to maintain a middle class lifestyle.

[2001convSVT]

"Anyone who imagines they can retire with $250K in the bank is delusional."

You have that right. You need $1,000,000 in investments to generate $50,000 a year, assuming a measly 5% return. And with returns averaging 1% and inflation thrown in you are going to need a lot more than $1,000,000 to have a sustainable income through retirement.