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Retirement Planning

September 26th, 2013 at 06:46 pm

A year ago I resolved to increase my retirement savings by 1 percentage point each year, until my contribution plus my employer's contribution is at 20% of my gross salary. I'm currently at 16%. Last October, I increased from 15% to 16%, and now it's time to make the jump to 17%, sometime in the next month. The issue is to log back into my retirement account and slog through the pages, and figure out how to do it again. Maybe I'll get aggressive, and do it yet this month.

But, this prompted me to update the excel spreadsheet I set up a year ago to project retirement. My employers current requirement (emphasis on current) is that I have to work until I'm 62 to keep my health insurance. So, working at least until I'm 62 appears to be a given. Crossing fingers that I stay with my current employer.

I'm tempted to go into a degree of detail here about my projection sheet, but there are just too many variables, and unknowns at this point, so I won't. I'll just say that I can make a projection that works until I'm 100 and DW is 98 at a retirement age of 64, which is 23 years and two months from now. Clearly, a lot can change between now and then.

I will say one thing on my projection. I assume a 1.5K monthly, 18K annual SS payment starting at age 72. I see another debate has popped up recently in the forums on this. The prevailing opinion of the regulars is that they are not counting on SS in their retirement planning. Maybe I shouldn't be either. But, I think a monthly 1.5K payment starting at age 72 is conservative.

For now, I'll pump as much into my retirement as I can, while taking care of present needs and wants. Hopefully when I get to that 62-64 age range I have a few years left in me to continue building my nest egg.

1 Responses to “Retirement Planning”

  1. Petunia 100 Says:
    1380222102

    I am counting on SS too. Smile

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