How much is enough?

That’s up to you to determine based on how you want to live out your retirement years. You may have heard the general rule you need 80% of your pre-retirement income for annual use in retirement. That is a good starting point. But then you need to factor in your anticipated lifestyle and health scenario to come up with a figure that reflects your needs.

For example, with all that extra time on your hands, finding entertaining ways to fill the hours could mean spending more than 80% of the income you were earning before retirement. And that can quickly break any budget.

This doesn’t have to happen to you—if you look at retirement more like a marathon and less like a sprint.

Keep your eyes on the prize

If you want to comfortably enjoy your retirement years, it may help to avoid these common temptations:

Spending too much in the early years. This temptation comes from the hard balance of enjoying your time while you are younger and healthy, but potentially needing extra income to balance additional medical challenges later in retirement years.

Here are the challenges of leaning too hard on the enjoying time younger side:

• Excessively withdrawing from your retirement savings reduces the power of compounding interest on your investments. 
• You may be very lucky and live longer than you expect.

While the current life expectancy in the U.S. is about 79.3 years for women and 73.5 for men,² those numbers climb as people get older. For instance:

• If you’re a 65-year-old male, you would be projected to live to 84 years old.³
• A 65-year-old woman would be projected to live to almost 87.³

You could say that the longer you live, the longer you will live. And your retirement assets will need to last longer, too.

Taking early retirement. That’s not always by choice. Health concerns and job loss sometimes make it unavoidable. But some people do retire earlier than they should.

This may be because you don’t want to wait, particularly when you can start collecting Social Security at age 62. But that also means you’ll receive only 70% of the Social Security retirement amount you would have received if you had waited until age 67 (assuming you were born 1960 or later). Retire at age 70, and you’ll get 124% of that benefit.⁴

In other words, while taking your Social Security benefits early means you get your money sooner, it also means less income per month for the rest of your life. And by retiring early, you’ll also be withdrawing sooner from your other retirement accounts.

Keeping the fun in your retirement

If retirement is starting to look a bit more boring than you expected, there are some ways around that. You can craft a plan that combines a budget and retirement asset preservation—while still including a healthy helping of fun. For instance:

Consider withdrawing from your taxable retirement accounts first. This lets you take advantage of what could be potentially lower capital gains tax rates while allowing your tax-deferred and tax-free accounts to keep growing.

The success of this strategy depends on your retirement age—and other financial considerations. Keep in mind that at age 73, you may be required to take a minimum distribution from certain tax-deferred accounts like a 401(k) or traditional IRA.

Tailor your withdrawals to you—not to what everyone else is doing. Some people say you should commit to withdrawing 4% of your total assets per year during retirement. While that may work just fine for some people, everyone’s situation is different. You need to develop a retirement spending plan that fits your financial situation.

When deciding on a plan for yourself, here are a couple factors to keep in mind:

Inflation. Even at a fairly modest level, over a period of years or decades, inflation could take a big bite out of your buying power.

For example, with an average annual inflation rate of 4%, here's what happens to $1,000:
 

To put it another way, after 20 years, inflation would have cut your buying power to less than half of your original $1,000.

Health care costs. While Medicare and Medicaid—or similar health insurance plans—may cover much of your health care costs during retirement, they won’t cover everything. For instance, while Medicaid may cover some of the costs of an assisted living or long-term care facility, it may not cover them all.

Because of this, your plan might need to include setting aside extra savings in case you need to cover a portion of your assisted living or medical care costs in the future.

Be prepared to pivot. Even with a carefully designed savings and investment plan, you may find that you won’t be able to build up enough assets to live out your retirement dreams.

Which means you may have to pare back your aspirations. Or you may decide to work longer to sock away more retirement dollars. You also might decide to work part time or start a small business after you’ve retired from your full-time job to add more dollars to your retirement nest egg.

Taking the long view

The bottom line is that retirement isn’t the time to give up the habits that enabled you to build your assets. Budgeting, planning and long-term thinking—and yes, a little delayed gratification—will give you the best chance of having the funds you need in time for your retirement date.

Maybe you won’t be able to afford all your retirement dreams. But by planning ahead and playing it smart, you may still be able to afford an enjoyable and generous life throughout your retirement.

¹ “2023 Retirement Confidence Survey.” The Employee Benefit Research Institute. 2023.

² “Life Expectancy.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Center for Health Statistics. 2023. (February 12, 2024).

³ Social Security Administration, Retirement & Survivors Benefits: Life Expectancy Calculator.

⁴ “Effect of Early or Delayed Retirement on Retirement Benefits.” Social Security Administration. https://www.ssa.gov/oact/ProgData/ar_drc.html (February 12, 2024).