Retirement musings

[jlt19]

This may be all over the place because my brain is. There's a possibility that DH and I will be divorcing and coincidentally he just received a large raise yesterday so I began to look at things last night. But our unique situation has us all over the place on retirement calculators. Some say we're great, some not so much. I'm going to use actual numbers because I really don't care, lol

For the most part, we're pretty equal on everything which is good and how I always intended it because I'm a realist. So either doing it combined or separate it works out closely.

I just started a job with a 401k in June, he started one 2 years ago but I focused on maxing out Roth's first because his employers contribute 3% regardless. Prior we had Union pensions paid entirely by our employers.

Me: 38, retire at 65. Current salary $65,000 with a large company and do expect 8% bonuses and 3% COL raises as well as potential promotions.

Roth-$93,000 and max out (just started that a few months ago)

401k-$1500, 6% me, 4.5% match. Plan is to increase my contribution by half of each raise until it's maxed.

Old pension-starts at 65, $1900/month for life. Vested and in good shape.

New cash balance account (employer paid) 5% put in with minimum 5% interest. Their calculator (with only 2.5% raises accounted for) shows me getting between $2000-$2500 monthly at 65 for life monthly (depends on joint/survivor option).

DH: 42 retiring at 65, current salary $69,300 after just getting 10% raise with small business. Gets a bonus but no set amount could be $2000-$10,000. Got 5%raise last year. Has been told he'll be running the place with the daughter within two years as two owners retire. No guarantees of course.

Roth-$88,000, maxing out

401k- 0, just starting with 5% and employer contribution of 3%. Will add half of each raise.

Cash balance plan- employer puts money in randomly. Putting in $5k due to his raise but sometimes does profit sharing. NO clue what the terms are. Have asked him to get paperwork but hasn't happened yet.

Old pension: $893/month starting at 65 for life


I never account for SS in these calculators but so many don't let me put the pension/cash accounts into consideration.

We're both in fairly high risk funds for the time being. I'll start to adjust as we age (or if we get divorced I'll probably move his to an age based one prior because he has no clue).

Thoughts? It seems what we have is so low but then some sites say we're good. There's not much more to contribute at this moment but hopefully as we further our careers we can.

Sorry it got so long!

[Deleted]

I think you are fine depending on your cost of living and home ownership. The MM collective freaks a lot of people out due to numbers. The pension you have comes in clutch. Half of what my grandma lived on in retirement was from two teacher pensions. These are rare. I have one that would have been useless so I pulled the funds to make more on the (crashed) market. I am a few years younger than you and my FA is saying the new retirement age for my generation is 70-72. We are aiming for a younger age so I have the option to just not work. Whomever your money is invested with should have FA for you to talk with a flat fee. I would go ahead and speak with one since your situation is unique with pensions and it would give you better peace of mind.

[dragon's breath]

I really like firecalc for retirement calculations. It's completely different than other types, showing a graph with the rate of success using historical stock market values and give you a percentage of success (not going negative). It allows you to put in pensions, ss, extra spending, etc. I haven't found any others I like near as much.

[SusanBAnthony]

I think you are in good shape,and how good is highly dependant on your housing costs in retirement. If you have a paid off house or condo, or live in a LCOL area and have inexpensive rent, you'll have lots of padding to do fun stuff in retirement. If not you'll still be fine but less splurging.

The good news is you have control of this- you can always move to a LCOL area or downsize when the kids move out to keep your expenses lower.

[mich1]

I think it sounds like you are sitting ok. It's really hard to estimate what's going to happen in retirement when you are 25 years out. We are only a few years out and have gotten variable numbers and what we have is far more close to where we will wind up than we were 25 years ago.

I DO think that you need to look seriously at long and short term disability policies. That is the one thing that can easily derail your plans.