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« FMF March Money Madness, Round 2, Posts 25-28 | Main | Box of Books #24 »

March 21, 2012

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You're right, calculating out how much money you need to be saving to hit your retirement goals is a wake up call!

I know that I'm 25 - have my whole life ahead of me - and yet I feel pressed to get started on retirement right away! If I don't start now, I might wake up at 45 and wonder why I didn't start 20 years ago.

Thanks for the reminder to plan our financial lives - even when it comes to goals we have to hit many years down the road.

It's important to gauge if you are saving way too much for your retirement. You might be sacrificing other life goals.

Here's my comment about the previous post.
I live in Silicon Valley, home to a few trillionaires, quite a few billionaires and thousands of milionaires. Every day after watching a NETFLIX movie we drive to the post office about 1/2 mile away to drop it in the box. We pass by a bus stop and there are always a group of dishevelled, dirty and unhappy looking homeless people of both sexes sitting in a doorway with their many shopping buggies piled high with their life's possessions waiting for a bus to take them to wherever they spend the night.

My question is: Should you sacrifice some pleasures today in order to accumulate money for a future that is unknown or should you just live for the present?

For me, saving money is all about increasing my future security and capability to survive what ever misfortunes life sends my way. That saving started with my very first paycheck and continues to this day at the age of 77.

>the only way you can find the answers is to calculate >your number. Anything less is guessing.

Actually, you really need to re-calculate it every few years- as there is a LOT of uncertainty in that number. You need to predict inflation, health care costs, your investment returns, etc. If you make one calculation 30 years before retirement it won't be correct- it can get you started on a reasonable path- but you should expect at least some of your predictions to be wrong... I know mine were.

-Rick Francis

Why not just live frugally, save and invest as much and as well as you can, and trust God to provide?

Terry:
There's a saying that goes, "God helps those that help themselves", and I believe it.

@Old Limey
"I live in Silicon Valley, home to a few trillionaires, quite a few billionaires and thousands of milionaires"

Can you name one Trillionaire. I think you are either exagerating or you are mistaken. Carlos Slim is the richest person in the world and his net worth is around $60B-$70B.

@Terry - because you don't want to die with regrets.

When my mother was dying and was a little delirious one phrase she said was "all this money" - and I still don't know what she meant. She wasn't rich, but she and my father lived very modestly and they saved enough for modest retirement. Probably not enough for my retirement, but enough for theirs. All of the money they saved were still there, and for some reason I think she meant that all the money she saved didn't help her at the end. I think in hindsight she could've enjoyed life just a little bit more, maybe took an extra trip or something.

You want to save for retirement, but you also don't want to die without having enjoyed the money you saved a little. There should be a balance. You don't know how many good years you are going to have. Think of it as diversifying - saving enough so that if you live long you don't end up broke but also not too much so that if tomorrow you find out you have a disease you have lived.

I completely agree the sooner you set a retirement saving goal the greater the probability you will meet your retirement needs. You can never start too early. The longer you have until retirement the less you will need to save and the more aggressive you can be with the money you have saved.

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