Shocked how anyone could answer 500k-1m. I answered 3m-5m and was expecting to be a bit on the low end.

the cost of living varies a lot from country to country.

http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living..._countries.jsp


if 2m gets you 60k/y with <1% ror, that'll afford you the same lifestyle in the US as 1m yielding 30k/y in a lot of small european /south american country.

the costs don't translate exactly, but it's close.

You can get 1% APY by doing a 12 month CD with a good online bank. That would pay $50k per year which would afford you a comfortable lifestyle if you lived in Florida or someplace stupid. You could even take $500,000 out right away and put it into savings accounts or something else you can access right away for any unexpected expenses that came up (also will need some of that to live off of in year 1 since we don't get paid the interest right away). That still leaves you with $45k per year. I would personally start myself out at $35k per year and leave the rest in the CD and give myself a 3% raise per year. That way it would take 20 years before I'd have to dip into the initial principle.

Putting anywhere close to 100% in CDs is ridiculous.

Is there something that pays better with little to no risk? I was thinking CDs because they give a guaranteed return and the more money we have in there the more it pays back. I'd still be putting $500k aside that I could get to if I needed it. Not really thinking in terms of percentages, just trying to stretch the money as far as possible while being risk averse.

that's alot easier said than done ('retiring').

I bet all of it on black

why the hell would you buy CDs instead of US Treasuries if you were looking for safe, long-term returns with minimal risk?

nope

not even close

also you are not considering taxes or inflation

$10K and half a brain....in 1986







...I had the $10K

The only reason this question is difficult is because you may not know how long you are gonna live. All I would really need is 10 bucks for a bottle of sleeping pills. Surely one of you guys can spare 10 measly bucks.

this thread is tl;dr

but, I suspect the answer heavily depends on what kind of an investment return you are comfortable "pulling." you have to define your risk tolerance (and I don't just mean in a stock and bond sense as that's only a small piece of the full risk spectrum). what if money loses 95% of its value? one of the safest ways to invest money is to invest money in yourself because that cannot be taken away from you. it can only be destroyed by killing you. So lets say you invest the wealth in street fighting training, farming, building skill trades, first aid, theft/ spy skills, military training, bunker full of supplies, etc. that eats up a lot of money but starts to build a buffer against worst case scenario. when we are talking big bucks, worst case scenario preparation is an obvious choice for some fraction of your wealth (may just be a couple percentage points even). so, this is what I see as the key of the discussion. how much risk are you comfortable with when retiring? there is so much depth to this part of the conversation.

the other part of the discussion is lifestyle choices which isn't as exciting. I mean do you want to be watching TV all day or traveling from 5 star hotel to 5 star hotel? this part of the discussion is trivial and uninteresting.

That last post is funny. Nicely done

Gold.

If you can't get all that with 200k a year, there's something very wrong with you.

Probably should have substituted "zero risk" with "low risk". It would be kind of stupid to invest only in CD's etc. But even with something like 30% stocks and 70% bonds you would be earning 4-5% with very little risk.

The poll results are also extremely ironic since the majority of people won't even earn more than $2 million in their lifetimes working. Guy making 40k a year right now gets offered $2 mil to retire, he should snap take it. And if he's 35 yrs old, he should probably snap take $1 mil to retire.

How is that ironic? Do you think the average lifestyle of people that won't make $2 million over the course of their life is the same as the lifestyle most of us are thinking about having while being "Set for Life"?

The question wasn't how much should a person making 40K/year with little to no future career advancement accept to retire right now.

The wide array of possible as well as displayed definitions of "set for life" makes this whole discussion the equivalent of a special olympics event in expressive dancing.

Well he did title his debut album "Ready to Die".

Some of you people crack me up. The vast majority of the people on here don't make several hundred k a year but think they need that much to be set for life despite spending close half of their waking hours working and commuting to and from work for 40 years for much less.

Also lmao @the guy who HAS to live in Manhattan.

Although I do agree with goode that most people wouldnt be happy living off 50k with 1.5 mil in the bank.and that's bc most people are complete ****ing idiots who would blow through that money in a few years and spend the rest of their lives working jobs they hate for less than 50k.

Yeah I guess what I learned is that my idea of "set for life" is very meager, I simply see it as not having to work anymore and not having to worry about all of the basic bills and expenses in life.

I can't believe so many people would find that so unsatisfactory and need a lavish lifestyle to consider themselves set.

Just reading this makes me want to kill myself.

I think you vastly underestimate how much this would take. Especially the "not having to worry" part.