Chapter One

It's a tough question, and it's essentially the topic of just about every retirement book, article, or seminar. Everyone's trying to figure out how much they'll need, and all the experts are trying to tell you how to do it. So how much will you need? How much does it take? Will you have enough? How much is enough?

Chances are it's more than you think, thanks in part to some good news. We're living longer, for one thing. Today's 50-year-olds are a lot younger than the 50-year-olds of two generations ago. A lot of us will live to be 100. As a result, what we used to call retirement can last 30 or even 40 years. Not only that: we're healthier and therefore more active, so what we used to call our retirement years are a little more costly. And we have less help from the government - Social Security isn't what it used to be. So while a lot of people think that if they have $300,000 or $400,000 set aside for retirement, they're set for life, they're probably wrong. True, that's a lot of money; chances are that it's a lot more than your parents had. But in reality, it may not be enough. So how much will it take to sustain the lifestyle you're picturing? There are some dangerous estimates out there. One number that's tossed around is 70%, meaning that in retirement you'll need 70% of your current income to live comfortably. That argument seems logical enough: a lot of costs will, after all, go down. If you're not working, you won't commute, you won't have to buy work clothes, and all those other work-related expenses will diminish.

But do the costs go down enoug