How much money do you need to retire?

Determine how much money you need for retirement

How much money is needed to retire is going to be different for everyone. Your timeline, lifestyle, where you want to retire, and overall financial goals will all factor in to how much you should save. To determine how much you should have in retirement savings, here are a couple of methods to arrive at a figure.

The 4% rule

There's the 4% rule — the idea that you need to have enough money set aside so you could live on 4% withdrawals each year.

Inflation makes this a complicated equation, plus it's based on the notion that retirement savings should sustain you for at least 30 years. That's no good if you:

• Want to retire early
• Plan to keep working into your 70s
• Think a long life is unrealistic for you

And not to be a buzzkill or anything, but the average U.S. life expectancy is 76.4 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

It's worth noting that the creator of the 4% rule, a financial adviser named William Bengen, bumped up his recommendation to 4.5% in 2006 and recently suggested that 5% might be safe based on the current level of inflation.

An extra 1% might not seem like much, but it could shave hundreds of thousands off the amount you'll need to save to live comfortably during your retirement.

More: How to choose a retirement adviser

The 'multiply by 25' rule

There's also something called the multiply by 25 rule, which is sort of the flip side of the 4% rule. You think about how much annual income you'd like to have in retirement, then multiply it by 25. That's how much you should save.

So if you'd want to live on $60,000 a year in retirement, you'd need to have $1.5 million socked away. If you might get by on $35,000 a year, you'd have to save $875,000.

A big flaw with both this rule and the 4% rule is that they don't take into account your other sources of retirement money, like Social Security.

Plus, they ignore how pretty darn hard it is for a younger person to know how much monthly income will be enough to survive on decades from now.

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Is $1 million enough money to retire?

That $1 million benchmark came from a different era, when life expectancies were shorter and pensions were still a thing. Are there employers who even offer pensions anymore?

Plus, $1 million ain't what it used to be, and it will be worth even less for tomorrow's retirees.

Mark Avallone, president of Potomac Wealth Advisors and author of Countdown to Financial Freedom, told CNBC back in 2017 that a 67-year-old could retire with $1 million and enjoy a $40,000 annual income by withdrawing 4% a year.

But a 42-year-old aiming to save $1 million by age 67 can count on just $19,000 a year in retirement, after inflation is factored in. A 32-year-old millennial who wants to retire at 67 with $1 million would live below the poverty level.

The struggle to save for retirement

Maybe it's no wonder a recent survey found that while the overwhelming majority of millennials are saving, 40% still picked money as their biggest source of stress.

Also, only about a third (35%) of millennials said they're saving beyond employer retirement plans, like 401(k)s.

It'll take more than that to reach $1 million or more, if that's the goal. But most of us are a long way off.

A 2016 study from the Economic Policy Institute found the average U.S. household had less than $96,000 in retirement savings. Families close to retirement — in their late 50s and early 60s — had about $164,000 put away.

And that's the average.

A 2021 report from the Federal Reserve on the economic well-being of U.S. households shows that an astounding one in four Americans (including the 27% who consider themselves retired) have absolutely nothing saved.

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So how much do you need to retire?

So maybe this is the best answer to the "How much should I save for retirement?" question: SAVE SOMETHING.

Save whatever you can, invest the money so it will grow, and don't allow yourself to wind up with a goose egg instead of a nest egg. There's a ton of free or low-cost resources to get you going.

There's no good, standard savings goal everyone should shoot for, so don't worry about whether $1 million or $2 million will be enough.