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Ask HN: How much have you saved for retirement?

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Re: Ask HN: How much have you saved for retirement?

#31

Post by toomuchtodo »

cylinder wrote: post #25
hanoz wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a bit depressing, and a damning indictment of the system, that most people's only hope for a comfortable retirement is basically a massively leveraged bet on the housing market.

Stocks are leveraged too. Our entire economy runs on credit.

> Stocks are leveraged too.

Half-true. You only need 3-25% down to purchase a home. No one is going to extend you credit at that leverage for equities, bonds, etc (you could trade futures and options, or even 3x/4x ETFs, but that's pretty exotic for your typical investor).

Re: Ask HN: How much have you saved for retirement?

#32

Post by toomuchtodo »

kolijila wrote: post #11

I'm 24 and have 10k in Wealthsimple because I can't be bothered to learn more about how to manage my investments myself right now (and I've been a dumbass with money for the past 6 years). WS tells me I'll have ~$5,222,649 when I'm 65 if I continually add $5k/mo to my invesments. They say "We include your scheduled contributions into this projection and assume a return of 5.1-5.45% on stocks and 0.74-1.05% on bonds a…

Why waste your money at Wealthsimple when you could open a Vanguard account and put the money in a target date fund?

https://investor.vanguard.com/home/

https://investor.vanguard.com/mutual-funds/target-retirement...

EDIT: Sweet jesus, wealthsimple charges 0.5% of your first 100k, Vanguard is like 0.16%. You might as well be stuck in a crap 401k at wealthsimple expense ratios.

https://www.wealthsimple.com/en-us/details#pricing

Re: Ask HN: How much have you saved for retirement?

#33

Post by TheAdamAndChe »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #30
TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would only be below a million if you stuck your money in a savings account. If it's in an investment account, after 30 years at 7% growth per year and $20k deposited per year, you should have $1.87 million dollars saved. Which isn't tons when you consider inflation, but it's definitely better than what you're suggesting.

7% returns are unrealistic moving forward; I would target ~5-6%. CalPERS came to this conclusion a few months ago, and they're a bit behind the rest of Wall Street when it comes to returns estimation. http://www.cnbc.com/2017/02/08/calperss-sees-58-percent-retu... Some Wall Street veterans are predicting returns even lower. https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Historical_and_expected_retu...

This honestly doesn't surprise me. The fact that tons of men aren't working anymore is an indicator that the old methods of maximizing productivity by lowering wages and increasing hours isn't going to work as well in the future.

Re: Ask HN: How much have you saved for retirement?

#34

Post by kolijila »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #32
kolijila wrote: post #11

I'm 24 and have 10k in Wealthsimple because I can't be bothered to learn more about how to manage my investments myself right now (and I've been a dumbass with money for the past 6 years). WS tells me I'll have ~$5,222,649 when I'm 65 if I continually add $5k/mo to my invesments. They say "We include your scheduled contributions into this projection and assume a return of 5.1-5.45% on stocks and 0.74-1.05% on bonds a…

Why waste your money at Wealthsimple when you could open a Vanguard account and put the money in a target date fund? https://investor.vanguard.com/home/ https://investor.vanguard.com/mutual-funds/target-retirement... EDIT: Sweet jesus, wealthsimple charges 0.5% of your first 100k, Vanguard is like 0.16%. You might as well be stuck in a crap 401k at wealthsimple expense ratios. https://www.wealthsimple.com/en-us/detai…

>Why waste your money at Wealthsimple when you could open a Vanguard account and put the money in a target date fund?

Because I would have to know what any of that stuff is, hence: "can't be bothered to learn more about how to manage my investments myself right now"

Thanks for the links. Also I'm a Canadian and their MER is lower than everyone elses all things considering, even tangerine.

What can I do as a Canadian?

Re: Ask HN: How much have you saved for retirement?

#35

Post by kolijila »

cylinder wrote: post #26
kolijila wrote: post #11

I'm 24 and have 10k in Wealthsimple because I can't be bothered to learn more about how to manage my investments myself right now (and I've been a dumbass with money for the past 6 years). WS tells me I'll have ~$5,222,649 when I'm 65 if I continually add $5k/mo to my invesments. They say "We include your scheduled contributions into this projection and assume a return of 5.1-5.45% on stocks and 0.74-1.05% on bonds a…

New account - suspicious. I don't doubt that startups like Wealthfront are gaslighting HN and Reddit.

Don't want financial data tied permanently to a popular username of mine. I realize it looks like an Ad yes. I provided the third paragraph for people unfamiliar with WS returns as background to the $5m number I posted.

Re: Ask HN: How much have you saved for retirement?

#36

Post by pm90 »

kolijila wrote: post #13
kingbirdy wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much are you earning if you can afford to drop $60k/year in investments?

Roughly $85k net.

So you're living on $15k per year? That's just slightly over $1k a month. My rent alone is $1k a month :).

Re: Ask HN: How much have you saved for retirement?

#37

Post by pm90 »

cylinder wrote: post #26
kolijila wrote: post #11

I'm 24 and have 10k in Wealthsimple because I can't be bothered to learn more about how to manage my investments myself right now (and I've been a dumbass with money for the past 6 years). WS tells me I'll have ~$5,222,649 when I'm 65 if I continually add $5k/mo to my invesments. They say "We include your scheduled contributions into this projection and assume a return of 5.1-5.45% on stocks and 0.74-1.05% on bonds a…

New account - suspicious. I don't doubt that startups like Wealthfront are gaslighting HN and Reddit.

Or it might simply be that people don't like to discuss specific numbers related to their income/investment on a public forum under their real name.

Re: Ask HN: How much have you saved for retirement?

#38

Post by kolijila »

pm90 wrote: post #36
kolijila wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Roughly $85k net.

So you're living on $15k per year? That's just slightly over $1k a month. My rent alone is $1k a month :).

2-3k/mo, sometimes I hit 3, most of the time it's the lower 2000. That's why I said roughly 85. So yeah, 2-3k on living, and anything I didn't use that month goes to investments which is usually 4-5k.

Re: Ask HN: How much have you saved for retirement?

#39

Post by pm90 »

DamonHD wrote: post #2

In the UK the (usual) limit you can have in your pension fund is now £1m. I would expect to have about 20 times whatever I wanted to live on per year, and that yearly amount would high enough above what I know is enough to be comfortable. The state pension should kick in something too. However, I don't expect to completely retire at any point though legally I currently could in only 5 years' time (then another 10 yea…

This is my thinking as well. I like to think I would be working in some capacity much beyond the current retirement age. One of the reasons I like to keep a healthy lifestyle is that I want to be physically and mentally capable of continuing to make useful contributions until the very end... and that last part really scares me, but that's another conversation.

Re: Ask HN: How much have you saved for retirement?

#40

Post by Artlav »

> Ballpark, you make about $100k a year in your 20s

I'm green with envy... With that much money i could have probably retire right now at 30, and i'm half way there.

Then again, i live in a country with free medicine, free education, no lawyers, a recently-ended oversupply of housing leaving me with 1.5 apartments and a house from grand-grand parents who "moved on", and all bills and necessities coverable by about $2k a year, so i'm not sure if i have a right to be envious.

More to the point, i keep the money scattered around - foreign currencies, gold, crypto, etc, to avoid losing all at once and staying ahead of the inflation. I don't expect to ever become a millionaire, barring a lucky investment or something.

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