Retirement Savings Musings

[Life_is_Simple]

In the summer, I helped my sister create a spreadsheet of her retirement accounts, and how much income she would have if she would retire at different ages.

Since then, I have been thinking a lot about whether I have my retirement savings on track. In some ways, it's better for me to set a plan, make it automatic, and ignore it for a while. Then re-evaluate later.

I have a spreadsheet of yearly contributions to retirement and savings, and how that builds up over the next 10+ years. I re-allocated some of the funds to a little riskier, but not too risky, so I can sleep at night. And increased my automatic monthly Roth contribution a little, and put some more into my SEP IRA.

A few days ago, I received a letter and brochure in the mail from the place where most of my retirement accounts are stored. It said, "Congratulations! :+1: You are a Preferred So-And-So for reaching $___ in your accounts. You get a bunch of extra benefits from us for that."

That made me smile, :) because I've never been a Preferred So-And-So before. It made me feel good to have hit a milestone, like I am climbing a mountain and have reached a plateau, and can drink a big swig of water from my canteen while glancing at the wilderness below. :cool:

But you know, it's hard because you always feel like you should save more *sigh*

[razz]

Just to start and maintain some savings that builds with time is a major strategy as so many have not done that much less tried to pay off a mortgage and CC.

[try2bfrugal]

In the summer, I helped my sister create a spreadsheet of her retirement accounts, and how much income she would have if she would retire at different ages.

Since then, I have been thinking a lot about whether I have my retirement savings on track. In some ways, it's better for me to set a plan, make it automatic, and ignore it for a while. Then re-evaluate later.

I have a spreadsheet of yearly contributions to retirement and savings, and how that builds up over the next 10+ years. I re-allocated some of the funds to a little riskier, but not too risky, so I can sleep at night. And increased my automatic monthly Roth contribution a little, and put some more into my SEP IRA.

A few days ago, I received a letter and brochure in the mail from the place where most of my retirement accounts are stored. It said, "Congratulations! :+1: You are a Preferred So-And-So for reaching $___ in your accounts. You get a bunch of extra benefits from us for that."

That made me smile, :) because I've never been a Preferred So-And-So before. It made me feel good to have hit a milestone, like I am climbing a mountain and have reached a plateau, and can drink a big swig of water from my canteen while glancing at the wilderness below. :cool:

But you know, it's hard because you always feel like you should save more *sigh*

Congratulation on planning so well and becoming a preferred account holder! On the early-retirement.org forum some of the posters seem to have saved more than they will likely need for retirement and still have a hard time cutting back or (gasp!) spending what they have saved up. I am a bit like that too so I can relate. I read an article that said it had to do with being a pessimist versus an optimist. Pessimists seem to be better savers because they always worry they might not have enough. It is one advantage over being an optimist.

[HumboldtGurl]

Wow, that is wonderful, congrats!

That spreadsheet.....if you ever feel like sharing it (minus your figures of course), I would love to see it. DH and I have a plan with goals and where we are in terms of meeting them, but our retirement planner maps it out and it's nothing that I could play with. I'd love to be able to do that but I'm always too lazy to go look for one online.

[Life_is_Simple]

Wow, that is wonderful, congrats!

That spreadsheet.....if you ever feel like sharing it (minus your figures of course), I would love to see it. DH and I have a plan with goals and where we are in terms of meeting them, but our retirement planner maps it out and it's nothing that I could play with. I'd love to be able to do that but I'm always too lazy to go look for one online.
Oh, I should see if I can clean up the spreadsheet, for public use ;) I could make it a little more generalizable, where a person can plug things like yearly contributions and growth rate percentages, and do "what-if" scenarios. How would I get the spreadsheet to you? Email, or can it be posted here?

[Tussiemussies]

Wow, that is really great news. Glad for you!

[junkman]

Wow, that is wonderful, congrats!

That spreadsheet.....if you ever feel like sharing it (minus your figures of course), I would love to see it. DH and I have a plan with goals and where we are in terms of meeting them, but our retirement planner maps it out and it's nothing that I could play with. I'd love to be able to do that but I'm always too lazy to go look for one online.

Google the term <retirement planner spreadsheets>. There's plenty of free ones out there. They might meet your needs. OTOH, the spreadsheet you build yourself, row by row, column by column, formula by formula, is the one you will trust.

It probably took me 40 hours to build mine over the course of many revisions. But mine allows me to run the sort of "What If's?" that really are needed in planning over long time frames. E.g., the typical planning SS asks you to make a guess about the inflation rate and then uses that number to adjust SSI payments. But SSI is indexed to the CPI, which understates inflation as the typical household experiences it. So two inflation numbers are needed. One to estimate SSI COLAs, and the other to adjust projected living-expense increases.

In short, because each of our financial situations is unique, a borrowed spreadsheet is merely a place to begin, and do expect to to spend about 40 hours on the project before you get it doing the things you want it to do for you. That isn't to say the work is hard. But computers can be so "dumb" when they do only what you told them to do, instead of what you meant for them to understand what you meant to say.

Charlie