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Retirement Forecast - How Much to Save?

Let's, start with your retirement forecast don't be afraid of this exercise. It is so important I can not say it enough. I know I guarantee you that these numbers will not be what you want them to be. They will be higher than you want them to be, and you'll be doing less than it says it's. Like when, um when you read those articles about your ideal weight always last year, you'll be a meyer, nothing is perfect. And the other thing about this exercise is this is an exercise you do every year because money is not static, our situations change all the time like I'm listening to usual marine, it sounds like you've got step kids and businesses and and that that probably changes all the time, right? You know, hobby air, you're starting a production company and you've got your current income inside, so I'm sure like a year or two from now, you're going to be in a completely different situation. So this is an exercise you're going to do every year, and what I'm going to end with is what if I d...

on't have enough saved what half a mold and I don't have enough, so just don't freak out, but just say, how can I get through this exercise? So what I want you to gather is this information but I'm gonna we're gonna actually go through some examples your age I start with the easiest one first you might have to look that one up the amount of money you have currently saved it's so funny because when I'm dealing with so many of these artists and frail answers and I say oh, well, how much do you have saved? And I just assumed no one has saved because I'm sort of getting this starving artist mentality and the more people I talk to or just we were like oh yeah we'll have this eye our area I've done this so I think a lot of you are doing better than you I think you are and you have saved money and maybe it's a thousand maybe it's two thousand maybe it's ten thousand maybe it's one hundred thousand look I worked with somebody recently he showed up I was thinking the way he was talking to me it's not my impression of him but the way he was talking to me I assumed he had zero saved one hundred thousand dollars saved how much have you saved now the this is probably the I want to say the toughest question but this is the amount of money you earn per year in today's dollars so are you earning thirty five thousand year fifty thousand year one hundred thousand year and again, all of you know this number unless you are truly just starting out and so what did you earn in your last job? And the reason we're asking this is this is the amount of money you want to live on and so what this calculator does it will take inflation into account because obviously if you live on fifty thousand today twenty years from now that's not fifty thousand that's one hundred fifty thousand this calculator takes that into account because people always ask that question but put the amount of money you earned today and are living on today so again, maybe you're living on fifty thousand today, but you're like that's not enough I want to live on seventy five thousand I want to live in a hundred thousand and put one hundred thousand on there or on the flip side, maybe you've got kids maybe of some really high expenses and you hope by the time you retire you're going to live on less like I know for us I really, really hope our expenses we're going to go down our goals to be mortgage free by the time we retire and I really hope I'm not paying as much for my kids by the time we retired, so while maybe we're living on one hundred fifty thousand today, I'm hoping we can live on one hundred thousand or seventy five thousand in retirement so I might run the stand. I'll run this exercise with different scenarios, but think a little bit about that, how much you want to live on or how much you're living on today? Is that enough? The next question is, how much are you saving per month? And so maybe you're saving zero, maybe you're saving fifty dollars. What people also forget is that some of you might be saving through four oh one k through part time work like a lot of freelancers and artists are working part time and are able to get some benefits from that, and they forget they're like, oh yeah, I am saving should that or maybe I'm just going to start contributing to the raw fire and doing two hundred a month so that's two hundred, the investment style we're going to talk about that tomorrow at nauseam, but the ideas and in this specific calculator, it's do you want to be conservative? Or do you want to be aggressive and whatever I ask people, what kind of investment style are they? Of course, people don't know the answer, especially artists are like, oh, I don't know forget about money, what's your personality used to have this little quiz saying you know, if you go skiing or you kind of like a cross country skier, you like, no, give me those bumps in the black diamonds, you know, if someone says, oh, I went skydiving and you think there's, no way I would ever do that or you think, wow, that's so cool, I can't wait to try that or, you know, gosh, who was I talking to? Since I came to san francisco? This woman told me that she when drag car racing in morocco or when car raising in morocco, and I thought that is amazing, I don't know why, whatever do that, this woman is probably a little more aggressive than I am. So think about your investment style think about who you are, so he's in this particular calculator is just really short term, which is very conservative to most aggressive I'm a moderate gal balanced, I've done some things that are pretty crazy, but I'm also, you know, like to have my eggs in the fridge and such and then the year you would like to retire, it defaults to sixty five, so you're not going to change that. But what you want to think about is if you don't have enough saved, you probably not be able to retire at sixty five and truthfully, most of us can so in this example, I kind of started it. Someone who's, really, starting out there. Thirty one years old. They've saved zero, the earning thirty five thousand dollars. We found five hundred dollars a month for them to save, and I picked aggressive growth. You ready for the numbers? So this is a calculator it's like anything. Nothing is perfect. This is a fidelity calculator. So it's, the fidelity. My plan. I love this calculator, especially for those of you that are artists that are visual this's a very visual calculator. Very easy to read. Very easy to understand. So what I love about this is all you need is this information and probably most of you have it. Hopefully you're getting it together. You see how I just quickly got it together? Thirty one year old she saved zero. She makes thirty five thousand a year, saves five hundred a month. Aggressive growth is enough, right? This is what it looks like. Thirty one years old. She's gonna retire with thirty five thousand she save zero. So that means thirty one. When she's sixty five years old, she will need to have saved almost one point, four million dollars. But if she saves five hundred dollars a month and it's aggressive growth, which will talk about tomorrow, she'll get there so, here's the good news, you're thirty one years old if you can find five hundred dollars a month, which hopefully you found that yesterday or you gonna strive to find it? You can retire and live on thirty five thousand a year, obviously when you're sixty five, it'll be more, but in today's dollars, this isn't so bleak. Rain this is the next slide. What if you want to live on more money? What if you want to live on seventy five thousand a year like you just don't want to work, okay? You can see the gap here now, so now if you want to live on seventy five thousand, you need to save more. So if you could bump it up to nine hundred dollars a month at age thirty one, you'll have enough to live on seventy five thousand a year or on lee say, five hundred cause that's how you confined in your budget but you'll retired age seventy one set of sixty five so there's options here it's not like I know you don't have enough game over it's really thinking about, you know, it's building upon what we talked about yesterday, which is how much can I save per month like, can I? Can I save nine hundred per month, probably not. A lot of us can if you're earning thirty five thousand year that's a thousand dollars a month, no curing seventy five thousand year, you might be able to find nine hundred dollars a month. What I would say is if you're already saving for retirement, which hopefully some of you are, see what you're saving and say, okay, I can't do nine hundred a month, but I could do seven hundred and that's a greeley powerful way to look at it and that's what I do with a lot of my clients, obviously, if you're not saving anything, you've got to go from zero to five hundred. So you gotta work on that and that's why yesterday's exercise was so important was really finding that money in our budget, but what I find with the five hundred is that most of my clients are saving something. They are saving something for retirement or a lot of my clients are, and I don't have high net worth. I have a lot of artists I've got playwrights, I've got dancers, I've got painters, I have graphic designers, I have writers, have you no business owners? I've got pr, I've got a load of musicians, I've got wonderful musician clients, um, actors. A lot of them are saving something so if you're saving five hundred and you need to go to nine hundred that's a big jump maybe say you know what? This year I'm going to go two, six fifty that's my goal I've gotta find an extra one fifty a month I could do that and the next year I'll go from six, fifty two, eight hundred like make it manageable when you're running the numbers that the end goal the annual income is free to support you on lee or to support your house is such a great question I mean this is where you've got to run this a few different ways you know it's a little bit like the own spend earned run it for yourself and your partner I mean realistically, if you are married you're in a partnership and you really see yourself living your life together you should run it together so that's why like I mean, yes, you might need fifty thousand year but maybe you need one hundred thousand year for both of you so that's where you can play with these numbers you input the numbers this you're not changing that's your current age change this change this change that these numbers go up and down it's a really, really easy visual calculator to change so here's just kind of like a what if, which I think is interesting um what if you don't have enough saved most of us don't retire later work part time that is a big big what if I cannot stress that enough? I've worked with these wonderful group of clients that lived in new york city and they retired in palm springs and they don't have enough saved in their seventy years old and they just they have to work but by doing this exercise they're able to get thirty thousand a year from their savings and where they live they now khun live on sixty seventy thousand a year so they just had to come up with thirty thousand year in income they weren't depressed about that first of all they want to keep working just to get their mind and you know keep the motivation going but when they realize okay, so I've got some savings that supplementing me and I just need to find part time work you know, one guy he actually he's a copywriter for years and years he's got copyright part time work I think I just got a job in a book stories like I've always wanted to work in a bookstore and pays me enough and it's someplace to go so the idea is like maybe you're like I can't save more than five hundred but I need to live on seventy five thousand a year so that means I'm gonna have to find part time work that's what it is the more you do, though, the more these this gap sort of fills in. So running this these numbers and this exercise is just it's absolutely essential, and I'm going to go through them a few times, um, retiring later. So here's somebody I took to the next level, a forty year old, which is somebody that's a little bit closer to retirement. They've already saved twenty thousand dollars, but they want to live on seventy without seventy five thousand a year. They need to save seven hundred a month in essentially a shorter period of time till live on seventy five thousand a year. Can they save seventeen hundred a month? I don't know that's a lot of money, so maybe they're not going to retire at age sixty five, maybe that, you know, the more you push this out, the lower this will be or maybe they'll be like, wow, you know, like I for example, I worked with these two women who had their own business for a long, long time really wonderful women, they just hadn't taken retirement saving seriously, and they sat down with me. They're in their forties and their magic number was they had a fine twenty thousand a year to save for retirement. You know, I was so nervous about oh, my god, they're going to freak out, and I knew that this was their number, they were like, that's what it is we've got to find twenty thousand year guess what? They found it, they found it there like we got to find the work to pay us an extra, whatever so we can save twenty thousand year. So this number makes sense because also they realize they're in their forties thes air are high peak years, they were earning great money, they've built up their business let's find that twenty thousand. So what? I want you to walk away from this exercise, not there freaking out part, but really the part of saying okay, this this is my number, this is how much I need to earn, so I can really take care of myself, because when I'm sixty five, I won't be able to find the work is easily is when I'm forty, I cannot borrow it, so let me focus on finding this right now, and if I don't have enough, then I'll work part time. We're all retire later, you may saving for retirement, do you need to take into consideration how long you hope to live past with overtime is still continuing a separate savings plan it's such a great question, so you know, so I actually, when I'm really working with a client, actually do this on an excel spreadsheet, I've got it all model doubt, and I so and I've looked into the question is, how long are you living? And I'm a suit that's an annuity on an actuary? Excuse me? You know, I don't know the answer to that, but I'm assuming that they're your living probably the average numbers, which is, like ninety for a woman and eighty five for men, because men, women to live longer than men, so I think they're using the average number, so I think they're assuming that again eighty five and ninety, roughly that's a very generalized number. Frankly, if you're not earning money and living off your savings, you're not saving more money. So is that the question? But are you still saving in retirement? Or it was a question, yeah, I think if you're retired, you're not saving you're living off your retirement, but again, this is an extra because you want to make sure your money last. So if you're at that stage already living off retirement and we're not talking about that too much, I think most people on that air listening on the caller really just focused on I'm still in that saving and working move consideration, perhaps health challenges during your retirement, absolutely so here's one of the things. So when I first started doing this eleven years ago, they used to say I don't know who they are, but just like from the experts and I used to read a lot of like, the financial planning journals and such is that when you retire, you only need eighty percent or eighty five percent of your income today, I don't agree with that because health care costs have gone up so much, and also older people who are retiring are not necessarily living a more sedentary lifestyle. They're travelling, they're doing more things. So that's, why? I said, look at what you're living on today and you're going to live on that same dollar amount. The only way I really reduced it is if you have a lot of expenses from child care, so perhaps is we're going to go away or maybe you pay off your mortgage, but I didn't reduce your day to day because of health care costs or maybe you're just living a more active lifestyle. So I agree with that, and I think health care costs unfortunately only gonna go up so that's why? I think whatever you live on today is what you're going to continue to live on oh golly, will you be addressing health care, health insurance, life insurance yes. Tomorrow? Yes, absolutely. Tomorrow we're going to talk about that's. What? You know, we sort of called it the estate planning part of your yep, the financial checklist, the end of it. So for those of you that downloaded the financial checklist for way actually to talk about that a little bit. So are there any other questions and there's a really interesting one on a calculation that is more about this, plus a student line. So let me let me run this past. You see this fitz pure joy, galya. You keep mentioning that you're a fat a student loans. But how much is too much to invest in your education? Especially not sure your career goals are planning a korean right in a low paying fields such as fine arts. Is there some formula you can apply such a student? Lina's. A percentage of every celery to try and put all of this out at an early. Okay, is such a great question. So, yes, I am a fan of student loans with moderation without being said. So. If you are, how can I put this without being too blunt? I went to a state university. Because I wasn't sure if I'm going to graduate finance I'm going to be a teacher I you know what I was going to do but I knew for a fact that I didn't want to take on a lot of debt and my parents were saying they were definitely not taking on any of that so is very independent self sufficient in that standpoint so if you are at that point where you're making the decision should you take on the student loan and you're choosing an industry or field where you won't make a lot no, you shouldn't take it on yes of all the debts that are out there in terms of the mortgage is the credit cards the irs it is the best debt to get and it is the best at that it works on your credit report and in the best of to work with you, but at the end of the day, if you've got sixty five thousand dollars in student loans and you have a six hundred dollar monthly payment, you gotta find the money to pay it off and if you're going to be paying off that and never earning that much that's a decision that you should probably think about so I hate to say this to the people who've already made that decision are you know, stuck if you will, so I'm not saying you should just get it and never paid off for don't take the responsibility. I just think that if you have to make that decision now, think about a state school, which is what I did or think about working part time. I've got this wonderful woman who baby sits my kids, who's, you know, she's she's, baby sitting through through grad school through school she's a savior for us, I mean, she's putting herself through school by baby sitting so she's, by the way, wonderful artist, wonderful, graphic designer. So, you know, you can make some decisions about if I'm ready to take on those student loans really think about if I'm choosing to go into a low paying industry. No, I should not take on student loans that are going to really hinder me and hold me back from saving an ongoing basis, or with that being said, maybe I choose to work in a place that offers a retirement. I mean, I have a lot of clients that have chosen to work as a teacher working a musicality because the retirement benefits are fantastic, so if you can stick with it and I know a lot of artists that are teachers, by the way, who teach art just for the benefits, not saying you should do it, I'm just saying the decisions that I have seen people make so I get it though if you have already taken on those student loans and you have a six hundred dollar monthly payment and you go through this exercise and you've gotta have another seven hundred that's thirteen hundred a month, you've got to find we'll talk about that at least you know the number no, there was a great great study many years ago about worrying and what it found is that the first step in reducing the worry and obviously we worry about money, right? I have a word about money I'm not gonna lie, we all do. The first happened really reducing the worry is just finding the fax, and so this study really talked about medical because very often people have fear about cancer. Is this mole going to turn into something or my heart turning? Should I this? I mean hyper contract, whatever not, but we have a lot of worries around that as soon as they went to a doctor and got the results, they felt better and these are people who were diagnosed with things and people who weren't this was a study that I read and then it talked about money, so this is where I'm comparing that, so we have worries about money because we just don't know the numbers, so so much of what we're doing is we're just getting to know our numbers so what do you guys thinking about these numbers? Are these sitting with you you have you are, um I think I definitely I definitely do go back into the numbers because I am one of those people with a large soon lone that, um so when you graduate school and I'm you know, I live with it, I'm not upset about it happens, but I do have to do this and figure out how much I can retire on what I want working on on that stage in life, and I'm only thirty two years old, so I'm like closer to a lot too example, you gave and so for me, it's just a really good idea for me to start getting on this now supposed to ten years from right? Right? Yeah, and a lot of people that are listening in our young I mean time's on your side there's no question about it. Uh, yeah. Habits you don't worry. Well, for me, I mean, it's obviously sitting down with my husband and really looking at what we have or want is a shared vision. And then the other thing is, um, I have a property right now, but I was, you know, considering investing again and I was wondering, you know, if I invested in a market where the the actual value of the property is gonna be higher than a place that I would want to retire at what how would that affect my endgame as well? So that's kind of what's going through my head is just thinking about not just the actual investments but if there's a property investment as well, what does that look like? Where would we be? Um you know, at the end yeah, those were the kind of things were going I don't know that that's actually a great point I mean, when I do my spreadsheet, one of things that I do is like I might do like, so you're ages forty here's the dollar amount that you've saved kind of like we were talking about so forty one forty two this is literally the spreadsheet ideo nothing fancy you go down to sixty so here you just do the dollar amount you can save every year, which again, it does change, but then maybe you might say, ok, at age sixty, I'm not saving, but now I'm getting, you know, thousand dollars among from my property or you know, so that kind of looks like a fun calculation, teo yeah, because I do actually have ah rental income as well, so so when you think about the rental income, what I would suggest to run this calculator into that is that maybe that is considered an asset of the property or on the flip side, if you need one hundred thousand to live on? But if the rental income is giving you two thousand dollars a month, so what is that that's twenty four thousand a year so you actually only need one hundred minus twenty four is seventy eight seventy six thousand, so you'd put seventy six thousand up here, that makes because now you're getting income from rental so you could play around with out a little bit, so don't let this exercise get you down really focus on what can I do? Mohr turn more money, and we're going to end with that. We're going to talk about that in a few minutes is just really like, how much more do I need to take charge of myself because of that? So in this case, the person who's got the student loan and wants to save for retirement needs to find thirteen hundred dollars a month, and I hope you get paid that way from doing something you love, but if you don't, then you've got to find the money elsewhere and you know what, you're actually taking care of yourself doing this? I cannot stress that enough like we I love what I do, but we all take jobs that maybe aren't exactly what we want to do and I have a lot of my artists I have an artist who has an m f a from yale who is nominated for tony practically and guess what when times are tough he does catering so we all do what we need to dio I also have a lot of artists get richly paid I have this wonderful musician who has just paid richly for what he does I hope he's finding that thirteen hundred a month so really looking at your money and finding it that way and like I said there's very few people I work with that that are doing this the nine hundred that's doing what they should be doing, but the benefit of it is that when they get clear on this number they have a goal to strive towards so if you think about yesterday how we were so like talking about our goals and really getting focused on I don't know what my goal is well, hopefully going through this you've been like, okay, I need to find that nine hundred a month I need to find that thirteen hundred a month or maybe I'm just freaking out a little bit and let me just do the calculator a few times just as a question my husband currently has a retirement count with his work, but should we try to plan for both spouses in our retirement account? Okay separate and just be beneficiaries or should I consider him for how much I should save each month on my own if he has a retirement account with his business and she's saying do we just rely on that does she have her well I think the first step they could do is do this exercise and see what they need to live on so living on combined and is what they're saving through his plan enough so that's number one and if it is enough that's great but even if it is enough I still would want her to have some money in her name so you never know how things happen that's where my little feminist comes out so I would still say open and ira I mean she's obviously I'm it's called because she's a freelancer or she's an artist so she clearly has some income or wants to have some income so maybe his income is enough to support them but then she should create some sort of roth ira guess what what's the worst case scenario you save too much great give it away find a charity started foundation give it to your kids give it to your pet whatever I mean really that's the worst case scenario so hopefully his savings is enough if it's not then they definitely have to save more and what if it's too much so this is where I worked with this wonderful couple she was friend she was american and they were both freelancers, and they went through this exercise and they realized they weren't saving enough at all and right away, she says, well, I have to say for my kid's college they had, you know, nine ten year old kids and I said, I know I hear you, I've got two kids around that age to go you're not sitting close to what you should be saving she's like well in france, but I'm like, I know do you want to retire in france? No, no, no, we're staying here, we live in new york, I'm like then you cannot rely on the french pension or the french socialist system and again, I'm not an expert there, but she's and my mother is belgian, so I do know a little bit about it, but you can she's not gonna live there, she won't have access to it. She doesn't live there a long time, but she was so focused on taking care of her kids and I can't that I totally get that I love my kids, I would do anything for them, I'm so dedicated to them, but I don't want to be a burden on them I don't want when I'm in my sixties or seventies and my kids or thirty to say I don't have enough money can you spare me an extra five hundred thousand dollars a month that's? The last thing I want to do or, god forbid, go live with unless, you know, I want to do that, so I don't want to do that for them and what if I don't have another choice? So very often that comes up? It is the decision is that we wanted, like, especially if you've got kids and you want to save for retirement is like, you just want to provide for your kids, you want to give them everything, but if you're sacrificing yourself to do so, you're doing them a disservice. And by the way, you're really good yourself, no options at that. I mean, it's such a relief to know that my mom is more than fully taken care of everything in her life is paid off. I don't even need to worry about that just now. I can just worry about like me and my family and and, uh, that that is such a relief that's such a great mind jumper and actually that's something to that very often, like I'll work on this with a client and right away they say, you know, maybe I should do this with my parents actually tomorrow when we talk about insurance, that something that you could do with your parents you might be freaking out. So why not maybe do this with your mom and dad? Talk about a great gift to them to say, hey, can we sit down and talk about our money? I mean, we started today talking about love and money, like why not do this with love and money? Sit down and say, can we do through retirement calculator? And so what I would suggest if you do this again, this is the fidelity, my plan. And by the way, there's lots of financial calculators that have retirement calculators like cnn money has one. Bankrate I have played with a lot of them. I found this one to be the most visual, the most fun. So what? I was thinking about the artists and the freelancers that were on this course that needed a more visual picture, which, you know, and I say visual, but I don't think we're sacrificing any sort of integrity of the underlying product here. Um, play around with it, like your age is probably the only thing you don't play around, but your annual income when you want to retire your money. What's interesting about this is social security is not in here and I don't know if that's a question that came up yeah, I did see that come up in the chat what is my deal with I'll talk a little bit about that great reggie is there a specific question or should just yet we had a couple of such security you know that was life insurance alligator thirty says should we make the assumption that there will be no social security in twenty five years? Well in today's day social security's paying about twenty five to thirty percent ofwhat retirees need today so that's two thousand thirteen fourteen so if you're five ten years from now that's probably what you can rely on is if you need five thousand dollars a month you need thirty thousand years seventy five thousand year social security will give you twenty five to thirty percent I have worked with so many clients I have has anyone ever gotten that social security statement in the mail that shows isn't it crazy to see your earnings mystery in the nineteen, ninety, ninety, ninety five so what's interesting about it is I have worked with many people who have worked full time their whole career made you know, the eighty five thousand sixty five thousand maxie you could make to quit social security the most they'll still get in today's dollars is twenty, five hundred a month so what is that? Twenty six thousand a year? Twenty eight thousand dollars a year? I mean, if you could live on twenty thousand a year on retirement. Good for you, probably you don't have a mortgage and you're living in a very cheap, non urban area. It could be done. Of course, I've worked with clients who live in areas like that. Oh, not everyone's gonna live like that. Not everybody chooses to live like that. So if that's what you're going to depend on in today's dollars and you have worked full time and put money into the system, you're going to get twenty five, thirty thousand a year? Well, that, um I have you social security is like the icing. Like it would be this. Yeah, but but how? How does that affect your taxable rate or any anything like that? If you have that coming in, so really the the negative of security in terms of you are getting it, and you're still working is you have to pay taxes on it. And again, it's, whatever your tax rate is at the time. So hopefully, I mean, the financial question is you should take social security as late as possible. Used to take it at age sixty six sixty seven sixty you know whatever seventy two if you can nobody does most people take it early so if you are god forbid sick or you're just thinking I'm not gonna live as long take it as early as possible that's the financial reason most people take it early sixty two sixty five if you can hold off you're going to get more and the other thing is if you are still earning money you pay taxes on the social security it's considered income if that's the only income that you've got you don't pay taxes but if you are taking some income from investments and such you will pay for you know it's it's a different tax rate and again having this epa we'll figure that out but yeah you do pay taxes on it yeah so what well social security do so does this calculator take this into account I believe it does but it's probably a very nominal amount and when I do my spreadsheet I take it into account but again I'm assuming that twenty thirty years from now it's going to give us ten percent fifteen percent of what we need so like I said no one can live on that so I don't really assume it and I agree with usual marie I look it is the icing on the cake I look it is it's gonna pay for my don't know probably my prescriptions no are my my medicaid, extra supplemental insurance or something, but it's not going to pay for my living costs and really let me live my life the way I want to live. Uh, jamie, one does other any calculators that could do this backwards. So this is putting it in that saying how much you want having retirement and then it's going to tell you how much you need to learn now, could you make this one work like, well, yeah, that's, what this is so I mean, the question is, like, how much do you want to live on? Yes. So do you wanna live on fifty thousand, a hundred thousand hundred fifty thousand? You put this on here, and then it tells you how much you need to save actually, though, that leads us to the next question. So let's, say in jamey's example that jamie does this calculator and says, okay, I need to save a thousand dollars nine hundred a month.