With today’s inflation rate how much do you think a person in their seventies needs to have in income producing assets so they won’t outlive their assets.
This depends on many variables. How long do you expect to live? Do you own a home? What state you are in? Do you anticipate needing assistance living or live in care taker? Do you plan to do things like trips or just survive and stay home and die?
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My parents were pretty active into their late 70’s then slowed down, but they were happy they had enough to travel and do the things they wanted to do.
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That number is different for everyone. My parents liked to travel, nice restaurants, go to plays and shows, and liked having people over to their house often. Some people are happy sitting at home and not going out much. One person might only need a few thousand dollars a month, others 3 times that amount.
I’ve heard if you take 4% from your retirement accounts the first year and then 4% plus the inflation rate each year after you’ll never run out of money. That’s assuming you can live on the 4% the first year and probably didn’t expect Bidenflation and the highest inflation in decades.
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Thanks for your responses To answer your questions…
I am a widow who owns a house in Connecticut
I don’t have a mortgage or any other debt
With the exception of withdrawing the minimum amounts I am required to take from retirement accounts I am not touching my principal at this point in time.
I am currently living on investment income and social security and am reinvesting part of my investment income
I am in good health for my age and am not even taking any prescription medications. However, given my age there is a possibility that I might need an assistant living or a skilled care facility in the future. I don’t have long term care insurance because my husband and I decided to be self insured. So I will have to pay the cost of long term care if the situation arises.
My oldest granddaughter will be starting college next year and her younger brothers will be doing so a few years later. Even though my daughter and son in law have college accounts that will cover some of their tuition I would like to help with the cost of my grandkids education by starting to gift some money to my daughter yearly.
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Don’t just look at assets, One of the better books I read on retirement was written by Wes Moss, an Atlanta financial guy. Don’t remember the name of the book. It emphasized multiple streams of income. Currently we have several. My small pension, my SS, wife’s SS. my very part time work, couple of days a month, wife’s part time work, averages 3-4 half days a week, a little interest income. The biggest income will be when our RMD kicks in, in 3-4 years. We live comfortably on our current income.
IMHO the key is to be out of debt, especially your mortgage. May not work for everyone, but works for us.
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What you’ve described is pretty much our situation, except we’re into RMDs. As it turns out, our post-tax investment accounts, 2 S/S and a small pension (truncated because we retired at 52) throw off enough income to meet our ongoing current needs and we use the RMDs to pay income taxes and make more QCDs than I ever thought possible. We were always aggressive investors and only stepped down the risks 6-7 years ago (still about 40% stock etfs).
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You can gift up to a certain amount yearly, with no tax penalty. If you have enough, some to your daughter, SIL, and each of the kids.
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The current gift exemption is $18,000/year per recipient per donor.
The increases were included in the 2017 tax bill that expires next year. The IRS has issued a reg that states they will not revert to the old levels when the tax bill expires. Not sure how they can do that if the law states otherwise. So stay alert for that.
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If I make a check payable to my daughter and son in law is that considered to be one recipient or two recipients
SCOTUS just said they can’t do that.
Generally, that’s considered half to each. I’m not sure if there’s a reg on that or just a common understanding.
I was taking BM’s question to be whether, if she wanted to gift the full $36,000, she needed to write separate checks or one to both would be fine.
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@BridgeMaven the first question to ask is what is your annual nut ? Total annual expenses including monthlies, property tax, insurance, and all irregulars. Then we can provide some guidance.
As a reference …I am retiring at the end of 2024 with passive income equal to 400% of my annual expenses. I want to travel and live abroad…
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Thanks for all the helpful responses to my question!