Comments on: When Can You Retire?

By: 106th Edition of Carnival of Personal Finance | The Dough Roller

106th Edition of Carnival of Personal Finance | The Dough Roller — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 13:43:37 +0000

[...] When Can You Retire? @ Lazy Man and Money: Describes and links to what looks like a promising retirement calculator. [...]

By: 91 Ways To Wealth: The Carnival of Personal Finance, Epic Journey Edition » Money and Personal Finance Blog In Silicon Valley

Thu, 30 Aug 2007 16:31:32 +0000

[...] Lazy Man from Lazy Man and Money suggests checking out a fine retirement calculator to determine when it’s time for you to “hang in the towel”: When Can You Retire? [...]

By: Lazy Man

Lazy Man — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 00:14:15 +0000

I don’t know, I could see a negative portfolio as being in debt. The nature of the calculation is how much you’ll have at various points given the assumptions. If you say that you need 10,000,000 a year to live on, but only make $100 a year, I can see how negative numbers would result.

By: Minimum Wage

Minimum Wage — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 23:53:34 +0000

OK, thanks. Obviously, once a portfolio reaches zero, it can’t go any lower! (Also, you can’t retire.)

By: Lazy Man

Lazy Man — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 21:28:11 +0000

MW: I invite you to play with the numbers, calculate the specific flaw and e-mail the developer. He gives his e-mail all over the site.

By: Minimum Wage

Minimum Wage — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 20:29:46 +0000

This calculator is serioujsly flawed.

The result I got is that my portfolio will be worth approx -$500,000 after 30 years and that my retirement plan has a success rate of 0.0 percent.

Obviously, this result is not mathematically possible. Who designed this thing?

By: minimum wage

minimum wage — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 07:23:33 +0000

If an adult earning minimum wage has a child, wouldn’t that have to be considered lifestyle inflation – and inappropriate?

Which reminds me of something which has been bugging me for some time:

If you can’t earn enough to support a family, playing by the rules requires you to not have children. Fair enough. But if you don’t have children and you also don’t earn enough to save a sufficient nest egg, how are you to be supported when you can no longer work?

By: Minimum Wage

Minimum Wage — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 06:54:39 +0000

What’s with the bit about phased decreases in spending after age 55. Where would my spending decrease?

By: Lazy Man

Lazy Man — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 02:43:59 +0000

I don’t consider having a child “lifestyle” inflation. I consider it “life.” I don’t want to skip the joys of life in a mad dash for retiring at age 45. I’d rather have children and homes and aim for a retirement at 55 if need be.

By: Greg

Greg — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 02:09:01 +0000

For myself, the IRA and 401(k) max is a non-negotiable must. I dont consider that part of my earnings available for any other budgeting. So if I have lifestyle inflation, then I’m going to need to make more money. Otherwise I can’t afford it ( whatever it is: a kid, a car, a boat, whatever).

By: GeekMan

GeekMan — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 22:42:06 +0000

Since I’m self employed I’ve never been able to figure out how to properly use these types of calculators. There are so many out there and none that I’ve found take into account the needs of those who are self employed or running their own business. Where’s the retirement calculator for those who have SEP IRAs with irregular contributions? Or how about those who are pouring all their resources into a small business with huge upside potential, or have their retirement investments tied up in other ways like real estate or something like that? How will we know how close we are to retirement? :)

By: MossySF

MossySF — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 20:07:31 +0000

I think most calculators don’t factor in social security because it’s a moving target so that’s one area where the optimism comes in.

The Bloomberg calculator has really one big bug. It does not calculate your expenses correctly by reducing your income by the investment contributions so it’s totally inaccurate for anybody who contributes a high percentage of income.

By: Brad

Brad — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 15:55:30 +0000

Same here. The results seem too positive to me. Great detail . . . I hope it’s right. :-)

By: Glenn

Glenn — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 15:51:50 +0000

I prefer a calculator on Bloomberg. http://www.bloomberg.com/invest/calculators/retire.html

By: Lazy Man

Lazy Man — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 15:40:17 +0000

broknowrchlatr: That’s what I was thinking. I need to spend a little more time to understand the charts and make sure they make sense.

By: broknowrchlatr

broknowrchlatr — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 15:35:03 +0000

This tool is great. Far more detailed than I have ever seen. The only drawback is that it only uses 6 models. I’ve used tools that do hundreds of models. So, the graphs are great, but the usefulness of the data is depreciated.

This also gives a more positive outlook than I have ever seen before. IT says that with my current contributions and balance, I would have 100% success rate retiring at 47 (2027) and having an annual retirement income of $104000. I doubt that is accurate. Other tools have given me near 80% success rate on the same but retiring at 55, a more believable result.

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 15:23:18 +0000

Looks like a good one. A student tried to do the same thing with Excel and it took him 2 months!