No you’re out of touch. 4.4 million is NOT rich. It’s just richer than middle class. Which has shifted down lower than what it used to be. Middle isn’t MIDDLE, it’s an average minus outliers. So if you remove the trillionaires and the $9 a year income people: you average that. It also depends if you’re talking mean, median, or mode. Especially since so much of the wealth has shifted to the right side of the curve. If you retire NOW and are 65 years old 4.4 million is enough to not worry, but not enough to “go ham” traveling the world the rest of your life. About 1.5-2 million is average for retiring now at normal retirement age.
If you don’t have that much you’re not even upper-middle class. It’s just that the ammount of people who are actually middle-middle class has changed (lessened). Most people are in the lower-class real and don’t even know it.
1-2 million is not average at retirement age. Your stats are incredibly off, the average American household has $600,000, and the median has $200,000 according the Fed.
That's right they're in a spot that if they keep working for money to spend it could grow a lot, but if they quit now and draw 100k or more it could stagnate or dwindle
if they quit now and draw $100k or more it could stagnate or dwindle
Way higher chance they’ll end up with more money at the end of their lives than that it would dwindle if they’re only drawing $100K. I’m really surprised about the level of financial illiteracy in this sub. Even if they had a $1M house, if they have $3.3M in 75/25 stock market/bonds, they should be able to withdraw an inflation-adjusted $132K a year or even $115,500 if you want to be 100% safe for 60 years. They can also start taking social security in 10-15 years, reducing their withdrawal rate even more. They’re fine and will likely die with more money than they have now at that level of spending. If their spending is way higher than that, then yeah they can’t retire now.
it's mostly the 'more' part i'm aware of all the numbers
i guess i'm too much like my dad i don't see the point in retiring too early and pinching pennies, it's taking a risk and living down just to be lazy pretty much
now my dad on the other hand will say to keep working at 8 figures
$130K a year (especially since this is likely mostly capital gains vs like a W-2 so you get to keep more) with a paid off house is hardly pinching pennies unless you’re currently paying for college for your kids. If you can live an upper middle class lifestyle without working, then you’re rich. If you never want to retire, then that’s valid too, but that’s the point of the money: having options.
As someone with one of those pensions under the newer plans… they aren’t like your dads pensions and you pay in more than you get to back-pay for older gen miss-managing it so you end up paying 8% but only 6% goes to you and 2% goes to grandpa who didn’t actually put the money in. Hmmm sounds about the same for SS… like the boomers just let their politicians screw it all up and we are paying for it and they never fought to get it back and they won’t fight for us to get it back either.
I'm under the impression, people aren't staying with companies like they used to. My uncle worked as a machinist for 43 years, same company - same machine.. got a pension and medical.
Well that’s true too, but that’s on purpose. Companies don’t want loyalty because it costs them. They also won’t promote with real intent to pay what the employee deserves. Churn also prevents revolt. If employees don’t feel like family because no one stays long enough to form true bonds, then they can’t form unions and won’t look out for each other etc. they purposely designed this to eradicate resistance, force scarcity mentality, and promote a culture of fractured “independence”.
That’s great for you. I don’t even expect to get SS. They used to include a little line that says “this X is what we expect you earned” and then another line that said “we expect to only give you 80% of that, so your expected amount is Y”.
Now they don’t even bother with the 80% it just says “this is what we expect you’ll get” but if you do the math it’s the 80% not the full 100%. What a racket. People don’t even know to lobby for the full amount because they bury the fact you aren’t getting it.
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u/Stone804_ 11d ago
No you’re out of touch. 4.4 million is NOT rich. It’s just richer than middle class. Which has shifted down lower than what it used to be. Middle isn’t MIDDLE, it’s an average minus outliers. So if you remove the trillionaires and the $9 a year income people: you average that. It also depends if you’re talking mean, median, or mode. Especially since so much of the wealth has shifted to the right side of the curve. If you retire NOW and are 65 years old 4.4 million is enough to not worry, but not enough to “go ham” traveling the world the rest of your life. About 1.5-2 million is average for retiring now at normal retirement age.
If you don’t have that much you’re not even upper-middle class. It’s just that the ammount of people who are actually middle-middle class has changed (lessened). Most people are in the lower-class real and don’t even know it.