Quote Originally Posted by Johnson85 View Post
That's pretty good advice. I wish somebody had explained to me that 15% was barely adequate when I started off.

If you get 6% real returns (which I view as on the optimistic going forward), and save 15% year in, year out, you'll be financially independent in 38.6 years. Obviously that assumes you will the same amount of money in real terms your entire career which won't be the case, but that means to do any better, you actually have to start saving more than 15% as your salary grows if you want to maintain the same lifestyle in retirement as you do while working. And that assumes that you save every year, and don't have setbacks, which is not going to be the case for most people.

Of course you should have social security on top of that, but I'd never want to be in a position where I felt compelled by my financial position to argue that younger and on average poorer people should have to pay more taxes to support my lifestyle.
I assume that "38.6 years" is the time it takes to where the interest alone allows you to retire. If you set up an annuity obviously you can retire before that time

By the time you retire, your house is paid off and kids are out of college, so that's significantly less $$$ needed to live than when you were say 40.

Lastly I agree in about SS, BUT there's no way in hell the Gov't will ever say "Hey largest group of voters in the country, I know we promised you SS your whole life, and you paid into it, but F you you're going to starve to death". They'd never do it because of the old people vote, they'd never do it because our kids (who'd suddenly be responsible for keeping mom and dads' electricity on) would riot, and they'd never do it because there's NOTHING the Gov't loves more than to have us dependent on them. They'd print $$$ or raise SS taxes before they gave us nothing. So yeah, there will definitely be something we can count on in addition to our own savings