How much would you need..

[old fashioned]

Just my opinion here, but I'd think it would really be hard to pinpoint a real $ amount since there are a lot of variables. Like your perception of a frugal lifestyle may not be the same as anyone else's, cost of living flucuations, or the possibility of financial chaos as in banking meltdowns, global $ collapse, zombie biker invasions, etc (I include this possibility due to current global economic uncertainty & flucuations)
What appears to be a safe dollar amount today may not hold true in 5 or 10 years. It would also depend on length of your & dh's life after retirement. You can plan for an average of say 15 years of retirement that would put you in the 80yo range, but if one or both lived till 90 or more you'd need even more.

But as a direct answer & given above possibilities, I'd say ATLEAST twice what your parents saved and that's not including kids education expenses.

Another angle is to not consider how big your savings account is, but look more to getting your mortgage & bills paid off (lessen your expenses) vs whatever your income would have to pay for during retirement. You can still build a nest egg, but your needs (like your parents) would be less than if you still had a mountain of debt.

 

[miss_thenorth]

But as a direct answer & given above possibilities, I'd say ATLEAST twice what your parents saved and that's not including kids education expenses.

I agree with this. Even though my parents don't do much in the way of extra curricular activities, my dh is never satisfied and always wants more (of whatever ). My parents are living fairly comfortably. When dh retires, in 24 years, our cost of living will be that much more.

See, here's the situation. Hubby wants to buy something worth $25k --that is a totally selfish want, as it would benefit no one else in this family except for him. We hav a mortgage, and the way it looks right now, we will have this mortgage for at least another 20 years. Plus we have a line of credit which is equal to the amount he wants to use to buy this toy.

Plus, we have two kids who need to go to college/university, plus we need to save for retirement. His plan is to (and I love him, but he's out of his bloomin' mind), since I am opposed to increasing our debt, take out money form his RRSP ( of which total $170K) to buy it. So, now the cost of this toy goes up, cuz he will be taxed at his current tax bracket, (which is the highest it can be) So now, this toy will be approx $35K. and it has lessened our retirement savings. And we still need to pay for kids education, plus we still need to pay mortgage and line of credit.

He is bound and determined to buy this toy. With or without my blessing, and he will not get my blessing. I just need to get some numbers together so that I have something to put on the table for him to consider. and to top it all off, (and if any of you know me, you will know that I HATE debt, try my best to get rid of debt, and am very frugal in every sense of the word).HE thinks I am being the unreasonable one, because in his mind, his idea makes perfect sense.

Signed MTN, who normally has a very wonderful, fulfilling marriage, except for the last week.

 

[old fashioned]

My DH is like that too and it seems like whenever we get something paid off, he finds something he wants to buy
Tell him (try to anyway) not to take the money from his retirement account-anywhere but there.
We don't have alot of $ after bills are paid for spending or saving so I've been trying to do it in little ways. Like paying a little more on the mortgage each month. So far I've just rounded it up to the next 100 and that isn't much (about $15), and more when we can, but it does add up. I'm not so worried now about other bills since they never seem to go away & won't benefit us in the long run, so I'm concentrating more on what will benefit us later which is the mortgage.
Just try to work with whatever income/bills you have now with an eye on the future because as time goes on, things will change. Eventually his perception of life/income/bills/need for toys will probably shift. It's possible he wants toys while he's still young enough to have/enjoy them because he knows he won't/can't later.
I've been trying to see it from his eyes & working with/around it to compromise & both be happy. Sure I'd much rather be stuffing 100's away each month & toward payoffs....but for now I'm doing what I can.
Just an idea & to let you know you're not alone in the battle of the sexes.

 

[ORChick]

A very quick and very incomplete synopsis of the book I recommended earlier - "Your Money or Your Life". Figure out exactly how much you need to live comfortably every month - a spending diary is the way to do it. You should figure out what you need "plus a little bit more". Then look at safe investments that will generate interest. How much do you need to invest to generate the interest you need? At today's rates probably a lot more than you think. Sock away all that you can spare every month until you can generate the interest you need to live comfortably, and there you are (yeah right! Easier said than done, I know). This book was written in (I think) the 80's, so the numbers are a bit off for now - the author retired at age 40, and lived on interest from investments totaling 600 dollars a month. We did something along the same lines (following, in part, his good advice), and, while not living on 600 dollars a month, we did retire, debt free - I at 48, DH at 51. Of course neither we, nor the author of the book, needed to be concerned about helping children through uni., which changes the equation quite a bit.

 

[Mackay]

Hey, these are the same jerks that tell you it costs 100,000 to raise a kid.

The best to do is make sure your house is paid for and then think of supplemental ways to make a little extra,,, grow your garden, get agricultural tax breaks, raise a few goats or chickens. Have something to barter...

I've decided to seriously look into raising meat chickens...

We have started already with retirement. We have about 150,000 after we finish the house, own our land and have no debt.

What investments we had did survive this crash, but it may not happen again... hard to predict and hard to count on. Buy silver and gold..

But we really worked our asses off to get it.

 

[lupinfarm]

DON'T TAKE MONEY OUT OF THE RRSP

My parents did this and its NOT a great plan, IMO. They took the money out quite a while ago and were paying for it up until a couple years ago. Not a smart financial move. For us, it has been really scarey because my dad is self-employed so he's pretty much going to have to work till he drops and his health isn't so great (high blood pressure + the whole cancer thing).

 

[hwillm1977]

One thing to remember is that you cannot necessarily assume that you will have no healthcare needs beyond what the gummint pays for. Unless you have other coverage, things like dental and prescription drugs will be largely on your own tab, and when you get older they can potentially be LARGE expenses.

This is really true... my father developed a heart condition 5 years before he was due to retire... when he retires, he will lose the drug coverage he gets through work and even with the government subsidies for prescriptions his and my mothers monthly costs for the drugs required to keep them alive will be around $900... (they are walking advertisements of why you should not smoke... ) Dad will continue working for as long as he can just to have the drug coverage.

I think that looking at what your idea of frugal living is, calculating a monthly cost, plus at least 25% for padding and unexpected expenses, plus a vacation here and there... then figure out how much you would need in guaranteed investments to produce that much interest. I would look at things for your retirement income that aren't based in the stock market (like GICs... things covered by the banking insurance so that you never lose your principle... although who knows how long that will last)

How long before your kids go to college? Do they have time to save up the money themselves? My parents made me put away 25% of everything I made at part time jobs, right from my paper route up to working at the mall, for college... then they both lost their jobs two years before I was supposed to go to college and the family lived on my college savings for a year and a half... and I was left with nothing, so I went on student loans.

The boyfriend and I are trying to retire in about the same amount of time you and your hubby will... we're buying real estate... that's our retirement plan... lol Our home will be paid off this year, next year we will buy our first apartment building while continuing at our current jobs... we'll roll any apartment income into paying down the mortgages, and buying more buildings, while living off of our income from our jobs.... hopefully in 20 years we can own 10-15 buildings with at least 3 units in each one. (you can buy a 3 unit building here starting around $130,000 and get $600-1000/month rent per unit). Ideally with increasing real estate prices, and any improvements we can do, that will give us about $2,000,000 in equity... we can sell everything off at a good point in the market and retire when we're around 50 years old.... at least that's the plan.

 

[patandchickens]

One thing to remember is that you cannot necessarily assume that you will have no healthcare needs beyond what the gummint pays for. Unless you have other coverage, things like dental and prescription drugs will be largely on your own tab, and when you get older they can potentially be LARGE expenses

Another thing is house repairs, btw.

Round about the time you get the mortgage paid off and retire, tends to ALSO be about the time that things that were fine when you bought the house are no longer fine.

I know that my parents spent probably $5,000-15,000 per year, the last decade or so that they were in their house (they're in their 80s now and just moved to a retirement community), on things like the roof, the greenhouse foundation, etc. And then there was the famous "replace the taps in the shower stall" incident, wherein the plumbers discovered that the backerboard behind the tiles was moldy, and in replacing it they discovered that the chimney liner (from furnace) behind the shower wall was cracked, and then when they were replacing the chimney liner (ka-ching) the chimney bricks had to go, too... And it could be much worse if you had, say, a septic system or well problem, or *serious* roof or foundation problem, or something like that. It may be reasonable to do some of that yourself when you are in your 40s but not so much in your 70s and 80s.

So there's another reason to sock away more than your current daily budgeting might suggest you'd need.

Pat