Your life expectancy is not a precise number. You need to plan to be pretty old when you are waving your last dollar. You don’t want to save enough to get to 80 just to find you are good until 95.
The other factor to consider is the potential that the last few years of life can be insanely expensive. If you need help, it can easily cost $100k/yr today. There is no way to know if you need this care or for how long. Long term care insurance might offset this risk.
You also might not collect as much social security as you expect today. It is getting pretty likely that retirement age will be kicked further out. And Medicare may be a lot more expensive, as well. Both of these benefits are going to go under increased financial pressure.
My personal approach is to some day pay off my mortgage and use my home as a store of value to handle a major life change like assisted living.
In other words, you probably want to save enough to cover your expenses in retirement, maybe add a bit to give you flexibility for things like vacations, and have an extra pile to handle massive end of life expenses.
paltum t1_jegtk31 wrote
Reply to comment by [deleted] in Is there a time where I can stop saving for retirement? by [deleted]
Your life expectancy is not a precise number. You need to plan to be pretty old when you are waving your last dollar. You don’t want to save enough to get to 80 just to find you are good until 95.
The other factor to consider is the potential that the last few years of life can be insanely expensive. If you need help, it can easily cost $100k/yr today. There is no way to know if you need this care or for how long. Long term care insurance might offset this risk.
You also might not collect as much social security as you expect today. It is getting pretty likely that retirement age will be kicked further out. And Medicare may be a lot more expensive, as well. Both of these benefits are going to go under increased financial pressure.
My personal approach is to some day pay off my mortgage and use my home as a store of value to handle a major life change like assisted living.
In other words, you probably want to save enough to cover your expenses in retirement, maybe add a bit to give you flexibility for things like vacations, and have an extra pile to handle massive end of life expenses.