Retirement planning starts with one question: how much annual income do you need? Account for travel and hobbies, housing costs, healthcare, taxes on 401(k) withdrawals, and inflation. A modest 2% annual inflation rate compounds significantly over 20 years.
Chapters
As we plan for our retirement, there are 4 questions we need to ask ourselves or our retirement planning advisor: How much? How long? How safe? And what cost? Let's start with how much. That is, how much income we think we'll need each and every year for the rest of our lives, including all the activities we want to enjoy during our retirement, like travel, recreation, and entertainment. Plus the cost of housing, including repair and maintenance, taxes, insurance, and utilities, as well as the cost of healthcare, including expenses not covered by Medicare, like deductibles and copayments, prescription medications, assisted living, and home nursing. We also need to account for income taxes because all of our 401(k) or IRA money is taxable, even if we don't take it. Of course, we also need to consider inflation too, because even a minimal 2% annual rate of inflation over 20