We’ve climbed to 40% from less than 10% a few years ago through a combination of salary increases and spending reductions. My wife and I are working our way up the savings rate ladder, achieving about 40% in 2013 and hopefully more in years to come as we optimize housing, transportation, and other costs even further. Hopefully, it clicks for you the way it did for me when I first came across this information. The other major assumption is that your absolute income and spending levels stay relatively consistent over the years (keeping up with inflation). Additionally, if you wait long enough, you might have some other sources of passive income like social security or pensions. Just check out the purple chart up top for a more accurate estimate. Growth will probably shorten your years to retirement a bit more than what the data table shows above. Investment growth doesn’t really have much impact on people with high savings rates because there isn’t much time for money to grow in the few years that they are building nest eggs for retirement, but people on the lower end of the spectrum shouldn’t stress too much either. The purple dotted chart above, however, does assume growth, but all the others don’t, mostly because it is easier to understand the pure logic this way. I’ve oversimplified a bit, most notably by assuming that your savings doesn’t generate investment growth. Those are the basics of how savings rates impact the number of years you will have to work until retirement. Here is a chart that illustrates said relationship: If you wanted to take an entire year off from work, you would have the money to do that. This is equivalent to one year of retirement. So now you have one year of future spending in the bank (or mattress). At the end of that first year, you will have spent $20,000 and saved another $20,000. Let’s say you saved 50% of a $40,000 salary for one year. The idea is simple and intuitive enough: save more, retire earlier save less, retire later. The savings rate – retirement connection: Roth also invoked this explanation recently in his guest post for MMM – How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Mustachianism.Īnyway, the point is: this isn’t an original idea by any stretch of the imagination, but I’m going to present it again here with a few more charts, because, hey, this is important stuff and a little repetition never killed anybody. I first came across this alternative, easy to understand explanation at Jim Collins’ blog (I believe), but I can’t find the link for the life of me. My goal here is to explain how the savings rate and early retirement dynamic works in a simple, logical way. Money Mustache’s Shockingly Simple Math Behind Early Retirement if you’re interested in learning more. I encourage you to read my post and/or check out my inspiration, Mr. This chart illustrates the relationship between savings rate and years of work required to retire, based on certain assumptions like 4% inflation-adjusted investment growth.
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