How much would this person need to retire?

[maxtower]

People tell me they would be bored without work too. Work is the last thing I would ever want to do. I say if you can't figure out how to occupy your time without working, then you just aren't being creative enough.

[Henry17]

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People tell me they would be bored without work too. Work is the last thing I would ever want to do. I say if you can't figure out how to occupy your time without working, then you just aren't being creative enough.

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I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying you can't occupy your time on a $30k budget.

[maxtower]

[ QUOTE ]
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People tell me they would be bored without work too. Work is the last thing I would ever want to do. I say if you can't figure out how to occupy your time without working, then you just aren't being creative enough.

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I'm not saying that at all. I'm saying you can't occupy your time on a $30k budget.

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That makes it trickier, fortunately you'll have plenty of time learn how to distill your own moonshine.

[chopstick]

Something to keep in mind is that you don't need to maintain the full initial balance during the duration of the timespan. You don't want to check out at 90 having drawn 30k per year every year, and have your balance still at 900k or whatever it started at. You can afford to be much more aggressive than some of these posts suggest, because you can allow your principal amount to drop over the years as long as you time it according to when you think you yourself will drop. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[Henry17]

The $850-900k was with him drawing down to 0 at 90.

He might get something out of CPP. Not sure how that works for someone who retires that early. But with 15-20 years of contributing I believe he should get something when he is in his 60s. That would give him a few hundred a month extra.

He also has the option of doing a reverse mortgage on his home.

[prohornblower]

I THINK $900K is do-able for retirement. But I'm not sure. I mean, 40 is pretty damn young.

Getting older yields more expenses for things like medical to name one big one. Travelling 2-3 times per year + normal expenses probably costs substantially more than $30K. I'm assuming by "travelling" you mean 1-2 weeks in another country pretty much doing whatever you want within means. Not going crazy, but coming back without regrets.

I think it's do-able. But like you said, if you are running thin, working part-time for a few years certainly shouldn't kill you. I don't think it's a great retirement. At all. I think you should want a lot more. Also, you didn't say how much the home was worth. I'm assuming average home.

[celiboy]

I'm in Canada, so health insurance is not an issue. Home is average home in this area...about 400K. Personally I think 900K is too low. 1.5Mil would make me comfortable. At 900K I'd still want to consult on the side to basically cover expenses and let the capital grow for 5-10 more years.

[Henry17]

I'm not sure you can discount health care insurance completely. Yes in Canada we have free health care in theory. The quality of health care though is sad and I see it getting much worse. I've already had to pay for medical services and I certainly expect to pay for them in 20 years.

[Yoshi63]

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You don't want to check out at 90 having drawn 30k per year every year, and have your balance still at 900k or whatever it started at.

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Ya, you kind of do want this. You definitely don't want to be slowly depleting your retirement to the degree that you're actually timing it to your death. That'll be pretty stressful if you live a while. Most everyone who saves well for retirement and lives long, ends up with a decent estate when they die. There's a reason for this - you can't predict how long you'll live, what kind of health problems you may have, ect..